The Vacation Productivity Paradox: How to Rest AND Get Ahead
“If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.”
That’s a quote from Alex Pang’s book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.
How many of you are taking a holiday (“vacation” for my American friends) this year?
I know that for many—myself included—taking a holiday is not something they find comfortable. They know they need it, yet there’s just so much to do and so little time to do it.
Anyway, having just returned from a ten-day holiday, I thought I would share with you some ways you can get some significant rest and still use your holiday time for some useful work.
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Script | 377
Hello, and welcome to episode 377 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.
For many people, going on holiday is something they look forward to. It’s an opportunity to get away from the daily grind of meetings, deadlines, emails, and messages.
Yet for others, it can be more stressful than when at work. There’s a worry that something important will be missed or that an emergency of their making will occur while they’re away.
However, there’s is something else a holiday offers you, that few people ever take advantage of. In this week’s episode I will share with you the things I do while away.
Now, some of what I do may not be for you—I run my own business which means I need to be watching, at the very least, what is happening within the business each day. Yet, many of the things I will suggest may be just the thing for you to help you get on top of your work.
Now, before I get into the ideas, just a quick heads-up.
Before I went away, I launched a brand new, ground-shattering course. The Time-Based Productivity course.
It’s an evolution of everything I’ve taught over the last several years.
You have no control over what’s coming in each day, yet feel you must finish everything. Trying to decide what’s important, what can wait, and what must be done right now causes you to freeze, become anxious, and then spend time reorganising all your tasks.
It’s unsustainable and leaves you feeling lost, out of control, and overwhelmed.
Enter time-based productivity, where what matters is how much time you allocate to the different types of work you need to do.
It’s a method that works, and will transform your relationship with time once and for all.
There’s currently an early-bird discount of 20% on the course. So, if you want to become less stressed, more in control of your time, and have the time to do the things you want to do, this course is for you.
Oh, and I should point out that this course also gives you free access to my Areas of Focus and my all-new Time Sector System course.
Okay, now on with the podcast.
First up, we have to accept that even though we are on holiday, email and messages are not going to stop coming in. They just don’t.
If you’re employed, I would strongly advise that you set up an auto-respond email that informs the sender that you are away and will not be checking your email while away or responding to anything when you get back.
Instead, inform them to resend the email on the day AFTER you get back.
This does two things. The first is it allows you, if you wish, to delete anything that came in while you were away. For those of you who are more squeamish, you can archive them instead.
The second is it sorts out the important from the not important automatically for you. If something’s important, you will get the email again the day after you return to work.
Why the day after you return? Well, I can promise you on your return to work, there’s going to be a lot of catching up to do. You don’t want a lot of emails coming in on that day causing you to instantly feel overwhelmed on your first day back.
For those of you, like me, who cannot, or are not willing to, stay away from their email, then setting up a routine can help.
I travelled to Ireland. That’s eight hours behind Korea, so my sleep schedule changes. Normally, I am a night owl. I prefer to work late into the evening and start the day around 8:30 am.
When I am in Europe, that changes and I become an early bird. I normally wake up around 4:00 am and go to bed around 8:30 pm.
I use the two hours between 4:30 and 6:30 am to deal with communications and admin tasks that, as a business owner, are my responsibility to deal with.
It’s just two hours a day done before the day gets started.
The great thing with this approach is that once I’ve done it, that’s it for the day. I won’t return to my email or messages for the rest of the day and I get on and enjoy the holiday.
This is a better approach than to come back to 800+ emails and messages on your first day. If you’re going straight into meetings and catching up with what has happened while you were away, you’ve just created a huge backlog for yourself that will take weeks to get back on top of.
Next. One of the biggest issues I get from my coaching clients is they don’t have any time to step back and define what is important to them, reorganise their daily structure or to establish what their core work is.
Holiday time is great for this. There’s often a lot of travelling involved, and it’s likely to be with your family. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk with your partner about what you want as a family.
My wife and I use flying time to talk about what we want to accomplish as a family over the next year. It’s not planned. It’s spontaneous. And, it’s usually when we are flying back home rather than when we fly out. Yet, we always do it.
I remember when I was employed and suffering from what we called “the holiday blues”. This is where you feel slightly depressed on your return to work for a week or two. You miss the sense of relaxation and have nothing to look forward to except for the daily drudge of work and meetings.
Having a talk with your partner and or family on your return journey can give you a multitude of things you can do as a couple or family. Giving you something to look forward to.
If you’re taking a summer holiday, this is also a good time to review how you are doing on your goals this year.
When this year started, I was 88 kilograms (about 195 pounds or nearly 14 stone). That’s way above my target weight of between 80 and 83 kilograms (175 to 180 pounds or 12 ½ to 13 stone)
So, my number one health and fitness goal for 2025 was to get my weight back to within my normal range. That was achieved, but, while away I ate too much—don’t we all when on holiday?—and need to refocus my attention on getting it back.
Fortunately, it’s only two or three pounds, so the target it to get it back within acceptable limits by the end of July.
This means, I need to quickly get back into my exercise routine and eat healthily.
It’s a great way to get yourself refocused on your return.
Another thing you can do while away is to do some digital cleaning up. I love this time.
While you’re on holiday there is likely to be pockets of time you can use to clean up your notes, calendar and task manager.
Let’s be honest, when we’re in the day to day hustle, we throw a lot of useless information into our notes and add tasks into our task manager that we know we will never do.
This is a wonderful time to clear these out.
Last Wednesday, my first day back at work, my notes were organised, my task manger was clean and tight and my calendar was cleared of conflicts. What a wonderful way to restart.
What I noticed was I felt organised, focused and ready for anything. Isn’t that what a holiday is meant to do for you.
Yet, if you don’t do any cleaning up, you come back to a mess. Nothing has changed and the very things you hate about your work life continue. No control, a messed up list of things to do and a calendar that fills you with dread.
And, something powerful happens when you do this learning up. You learn a lot.
You discover better workflows and processes and you gain a sense of optimism about how the changes you make now will bring you incredible rewards once you return to work.
I often find I cannot wait to get restarted because I’m excited to test out new ways of managing my work day.
And let’s be honest, cleaning things up doesn’t require a lot of mental energy. It’s the kind of thing you can do in the evenings with a laptop on your knees while enjoying a cocktail or two. (Although not too many. You don’t want to delete important things)
Now, you may be thinking ‘no way! I’m on holiday I don’t want to deal with any work issues’. And I get that.
But, and it’s big but, your holiday may only last a week or two, and then you’re back at work. Doing all or some of these tips, will last far longer and leave you with less stress and overwhelm.
It gives you optimism, and helps you to refocus on the important things in life. Surely, a few hours out of your holiday time to do some cleaning up is worth it to feel that way?
In the past I’ve not done any of these things and just found myself in the same mess I was in before my holiday. It’s not pleasant and that’s when I struggled with the holiday blues.
Now, I do these things and I’ve never experienced holiday blues and instead am excited to get back to work feeling refreshed and energised.
It’s your choice. But I can assure you, if you do all of these or just some of them on your next holiday, you will continue to do it for every holiday in the future.
Thank you for listening and don’t forget to check out the brand new Time Based Productivity Course.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.