Never let vacation expire
Welcome to Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.
Amazon is a famously demanding workplace.
But in my 15 years, I never let vacation expire.
There is plenty of psychological research that shows that our mental abilities degrade as the work day and work week drag into extra hours.
Time away, particularly outdoors, improves our work.
Reframe your viewpoint to see breaks not as lost time, but as improved working ability.
40 good hours can beat 60 exhausted ones when the work requires clear thinking.
See the Harvard Business Review article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" to understand more about this.
It took me a long time to accept that maintaining my mental and physical health actually was a very effective form of career advancement.
Audience Insights
I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience, including:
If you have a manager who makes you feel like you cannot take time off or that you’ll need to make up for it with extra work, try this approach:
Ask about specific goals and figure out how to hit those goals via a smarter/faster method. Counting work hours is a lazy and low insight way to calculate value created, instead , focus on delivering against goals.
If you work at a high intensity company (like Amazon), identify your team’s peak seasons (e.g. Q4 Holiday) and schedule vacations after these periods.
Work Like A Lion, Not A Cow:
Cows: Lethargically graze on grass at the same slow pace, day in and day out. This is how many people are trained to work, the standard 9-5.
Lions: Patiently prepare for their prey, then sprint to capture. Lions feast in celebration, then rest and recover to generate energy for the next sprint. Prepare, sprint, rest, rinse, repeat, again and again. Focus productivity on critical projects with high velocity, then celebrate and rest. Be a lion.
When on vacation, some readers cited disabling all work related email and notification-heavy apps (social media) as effective.
In Europe, taking vacation is viewed as a responsibility to one’s self.
Team Level Executive Performance
To exhibit great executive performance, your team must execute with little oversight (which allows you to not worry when on vacation), take calculated risks, and deliver results.
This is part of the toolkit to level up to executive.
I go in-depth on this and other topics in my class Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive (I offer both a live online class and an on-demand course option). Links below.
Share This Article With Someone Who Needs To Reframe Vacation Time
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My goal is to reach and help as many people as I can, and the reach grows through your sharing (thank you!).
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