Among academics, it’s very rare to see anyone truly logging off.
It just doesn’t seem compatible with the working style/environment. Maybe if you’re somewhat solo operator with not much dependencies and commitments going on, it’s semi-doable. But even then, international deadlines don’t care about your holiday schedule.
So what to do?
Skip and feel bad?
Go and skip the holiday mode?
In some cultures we are “taught” by the media every year that you simply must take a long holiday or all hell breaks loose. Your brains will fry. At the same time, I know it’s mostly cultural propaganda, as other countries seem to do just fine (or, one could argue, even better with people taking way shorter holidays).
As with everything, it’s of course personal.
Some need more, some need less, some don’t even want any. But even so, I find academia especially tricky with summer holidays as it’s just hard to fit them in.
And that leads to guilt.
Why do academics feel guilty for taking time off?
You go off, and you cannot stop thinking colleagues grinding hard to your joint paper. Or grant. That, is NOT a good feeling.
And ‘psychological detachment from work’, the nerdy term for mentally switching off is one of the most reliable predictors for wellbeing and recovery anyway. So you should probably at least try it once. Just to see what happens. If you’ve never tried, how would you know?
That being said, I know I’m probably not the best example. I have trouble finding longer slots to switch off. But I aim for a minimum of a good 2-week period with no job-related commitments at all.
There are a few main contributors to WHY we find this so hard. Let’s dissect the key ones.
Workplace FoMO (Fear of Missing Out at Work)
We all are probably too familiar with the fear or missing out… whether that’s the newest AI toy, or even a conference that we normally go to but one year… just can’t. As if there’s no chances in the future!
You start worrying about missing critical information, opportunities, or chances to do something good for a project where you have skin in the game.
This, in turn, causes constant checking of Slack and email, anxiety, and the all-too-familiar feeling that stepping away even for a week means falling behind or somehow becoming less valued. And, you know, this career… being less valued is a real career-related risk…
Studies link higher workplace FOMO (which, indeed, is its entirely own construct and not the same as generic FOMO tendencies) to increased burnout… So your holidays are spent in the “I can’t fully enjoy this because something might happen” loop oh so many academics feel.
And as a result you get back to work feeling the same or even worse than before your holidays… just because you fell for this “Vacation Guilt”
Vacation Guilt
We all want to be productive. Guess when we’re not?
On holidays.
Most academics I know are conscientious, high-achieving, and work-identified people. I am willing to bet you’re one of those too.
At least I like to think I am. Nothing wrong in it. It’s just that it tends to backfire at times.
You feel you’re being selfish when you’re not giving yourself to others, or that your worth is at least somewhat tied to your output. Because, let’s just be brutally honest here, at work of course it is! We’re not paid “for fun” (and in academia, you’re building your career mostly for your future self anyway, and not for your institution nearly as much).
Everything you do, you walk away with it. Your CV. Your skills. And we love to sacrifice our own well-being and brag about busyness.
Unclear tenure/advancement criteria that create somewhat chronic insecurity (“Am I doing enough?”)… so taking time off can feel just wrong or like stealing from your colleagues.
Ok, ok, I know, I’m getting into very dark waters here!
But stay with me a bit longer, I promise to end on happier notes. Starting to take this to that direction right now!
Cognitive distortions are great! Because once you see them, you can start to easily fix them
Cognitive Distortions (the traps that fuel that vacation guilt)
Ahh, my favourite! Some truly classic CBT patterns that turn our everyday hard-work and that conscientiousness into self-flagellation:
- Should statements (“I should be available/responsive to not let anyone down”).
- Catastrophising (“If I don’t check, the project will collapse and everyone will resent me”).
- All-or-nothing thinking (“Either I’m fully on top of everything or I’m completely letting the team down and useless”).
- Excessive responsibility (“Everything depends on me; my absence will cause real harm”).
- Mind-reading (assuming colleagues are judging you or struggling because of you).
Let me tell you how to dig yourself out from all this nonsense.
How to Detach?
Let me first just drop the rant below.
First of all, you should not be always available. Second, the project will not collapse without you. Sorry, you’re not that important. Also you can’t be fully on top of everything, it’s just impossible. At least, as your career grows, it’s an inevitability, so better just learn that lesson already now. Also everything does not depend on you, and if you build your life so that it does, well, you’re just setting yourself up for huge issues in the future (trust me on this one if on nothing else, I’ve seen the people who do that, and they….they collapse sooner or later, physically and mentally). And you always think more about yourself than your colleagues. They have their own life.
Huh. That was a long paragraph. But it’s all hard facts.
Let me also continue with the fact that taking time off can help your colleagues to also feel better about their time off. You do want them to feel good about their earned time off, don’t you?
Plus this is one of those things you probably shouldn’t spend too much time with to find “p values”, but just use common sense. Of course your buddies at work will feel better taking time off when you show the example! So take the damn time off. If you have done anything I preach on these emails, you do deserve it: You’re pursuing meaningful goals with healthy daily focus, and there’s not a single employer who can ask more.
That’s your job and you’re doing it.
And you know this already: partial engagement is the worst of both worlds.
It prevents you from getting that detachment needed for real recovery. It prevents your peers from understanding they deserve time off, and it just leads to lower-quality work anyway as you’re not fully on top of things.
The tricks are simple:
- Pre-annihilate the guilt. Clear communications and boundaries help. So just tell people you’re away. Duh, too simple? No, that’s why it works. Don’t overcomplicate.
- Reframe the time off as your strategy. Trust you can go look into the science of how really useful a holiday is for you. I’m not gonna do that for you because, again, this is common sense territory. You need that time off to be a better you after you come back. You’re more willing to help your peers, and you’re just going to do better work. Why would you bully your future by denying all that?
- Question yourself always. When that old feeling of guilt arises, and it will… just ask “Why exactly is taking this day/time off wrong?” What actually happens is the world keeps turning, and you feel better. Especially if you read this email all the way to this point, you will understand that this is absolutely the way to go
And trust me, I’m not coming from a higher position with this one.
As always, this post is, above anything else, a letter to myself.
But also to you.
Take that time off.