What We’re Reading: How to get better at taking time off
Dear reader,
This week is typically a quiet one in the U.S., with a short week for a national holiday, and summer vacation plans starting to get put into action, so I want to keep my note brief. In this newsletter, we often focus on sharing writing that will help you get better at your work or your life, so it’s high time we also highlighted a selection of smart writing about how to do time off right. These aren’t travel tips, but ways of thinking about taking time off or going on vacation that can help level up your approach.
The stories below are a mix of more recent stories and some from the vast library of great writing on Medium, and what better way to start than with Jenny Odell’s 2017 classic, “how to do nothing.” While not specifically about vacation, Odell argues that we all need to “protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, non-commercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality.” Wise words.
As always, thank you for reading (hopefully, somewhere warm, near water) and see you on Medium.
Scott Lamb
VP, Content @ Medium
Your weekend reads
“A New Way to Think About Your Vacation Time” by Laura Vanderkam, author of Off the Clock and 168 Hours, in Forge
So look at a calendar of the whole year. Look at your kids’ school calendars. Map out what time would make sense for the big chunks — maybe spring break, a few days around the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving week. Or maybe you’re not beholden to school schedules, and you can take a week off in February and October.
“How to Actually Relax on Your Next Vacation” by Markham Heid, health and science writer, in Elemental
The airport was a nightmare, and your hotel isn’t as nice as you’d hoped. You’re doing your best to relax, but your mind is adding up all the money you’ve spent — and emails from work are piling up in your inbox. You also feel like you’re getting sick.
Sound familiar? It should. Anxiety and illness are common features of vacations, and they may help explain why we sometimes don’t experience much of a boost after we’ve returned from a holiday.
“Planning a Vacation Is Practice for a Great Life” by Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable, in Better Humans
Where they go wrong is thinking that they can go on vacation together with no forethought and have an amazing time. A little planning is key to making sure you’re on the same page as your travel partners.
That’s why timeboxing is just as necessary on vacation as in everyday life. And if you’ve never used this time management technique, then on vacation is an excellent time to start.
“Be the Person You Are on Vacation” by Michele Bigley, award-winning travel writer and author
Getting out of our immediate environment opens us.
On assignment in Hawaii this spring, the captain of my snorkeling trip explained that when we travel, we are more open to experience, new ideas, new ways of being. That openness makes it so we aren’t rigidly stuck in our ideas, or our heads. For example, if you’ve never seen the ocean, and don’t understand that coral reefs are alive, and learn on a snorkeling trip that they are, your concept of the ocean has to shift. You know that when you step on a living reef, or wear most sunscreens (which are toxic to ocean creatures), you hurt this living thing. So your perspective shifts slightly. And the only reason this can happen is that we put ourselves in new situations we may have never have had the chance to experience.
“Time Off and Japan: A Culture of Leisure that Lost Its Way” by Max Frenzel, PhD, author and AI researcher
Whether as an employee, consultant, or vendor, I had worked for and with many types of companies in Japan, from small and agile tech startups to some of the largest and most traditional corporations. And in many cases I saw that the busyness everyone was wearing as a badge of honor and the long hours everyone was putting in rarely translated into genuine productivity.
What have you been reading this week? What has been your favorite story lately? Share your stories in the responses!
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“What We’re Reading” is a weekly roundup of insightful stories and perspectives from across Medium. Browse previous editions here.
