Several years ago, while a CIO at Partners HealthCare, I wrote the email below to the information systems (IS) staff. While I am no longer a Grand PooBah with a big staff (or any staff), the message is worth repeating as we enter the summer months.
&&&&
The Deputy CIO was on vacation last week. During that week I did not receive a single email, text or phone call from her.
I am a huge fan of hers. I have worked with her for 18 years and she and I have an exceptionally effective working relationship. She has very significant responsibility and accountability for managing the Partners IS organization. More so than me, she runs Partners IS.
This relationship and her responsibilities usually result in us having several conversations and multiple emails and texts during a week.
And last week there were no conversations and no messages.
Best I can tell, project executions continued, support went on, decisions were made, issues were addressed, and the work got done.
The IS organization was quite capable of carrying on for a week without her. And it would carry on for a week without me. And it would carry on for a week without you. The organization would feel her, my and your absence if we were to be gone for many weeks. But one week – no problem.
At times folks take time off for vacations but they don’t really take time off. They check their email. They send texts and return phone calls. They might go to a Zoom meeting.
Why?
It’s clear to me that the work does not require this (OK sometimes it does). It seems to me that we can’t let go. We do this for ourselves rather than for our work colleagues.
We decide to take precious and fleeting time that we have with our family, our friends and ourselves and we decide to spend part of that time with work colleagues who probably don’t need us. And we divert time away from those who probably do need us.
We take time that could be spent swimming in a lake or playing mini-golf or reading a racy spy novel or riding a bike and divert it to worrying about a project or an issue or a budget. We take time that could have been spent holding hands with a child or hugging a spouse or watching the sunset and divert it to work stuff.
We have decided that work is more important. We are wrong.
Your body needs down time. Your heart and soul need time with friends and family. Your psyche needs time to enjoy the world and spend time on activities that you find fun. Family and friends need time with you.
We need you. But for one week or two weeks we don’t need you.
If you don’t take vacation time, I am ordering you to do so. And when you do take vacation time, you have my permission and encouragement to not check email or voice mail and to leave your mobile device in the bottom drawer of your bedroom dresser. I’ll write a note to your boss if that helps.
Enjoy the summer. Do send us photos if you take a trip to a neat place.