From the archive: How to take a holiday
I’m going to be taking a couple of weeks break from writing this Substack in order to engage with the insane juggle of a school aged child, their six week summer holiday and a leave allocation that will nowhere near cover it. However, please do enjoy some posts from the archive in my absence, starting with this one which hopefully may prove of use if you’re planning on taking a break this summer. Happy reading!
This week, I’m on holiday. In reality, I’m just in my house, hanging out with my partner and my kids - staycationing, if you like - but in any event, I’m not at work. Every time I take some leave from my job, I go through a similar process in the days beforehand - getting increasingly stressed by all the things I have to wrap up before I go and wondering whether the advantages of being somewhere else for a bit is really worth the hassle.
Within organisations, I find that people usually fall into two categories as regards taking holidays - either they take every single day of their allocated leave without fail, or, as they approach the end of the year, they have unmanageable amounts leftover that they don’t have time to take. I am in the former category - I have taken every day of annual leave I have ever been allocated during my working life, whether I was in junior or senior positions, in jobs that were reactive and on the ground or jobs that were more strategic. Consequently, there is a tiny part of my brain that, whenever someone comes to me and says that they haven’t got time to take all their leave before the end of the year, doesn’t quite believe them.
But that’s an ungenerous response because there are a few different and intersecting reasons why this can happen. For those moving into a salaried job from being a freelancer, annual leave is a big adjustment. I’ve not freelanced before, but those who have tell me of the challenges of taking any kind of holiday, the fear of suddenly being offered work that you’d then need to turn down always casting its dark shadow across whatever plans you make. Taking all your leave requires planning ahead, and this suits the way that my brain works - I like to have a sense of where my breaks will be in the year, and as my partner gets allocated his blocks of leave literally a year in advance, it’s also practical if we want to take our leave together. Other people’s minds or lives don’t necessarily work in the same way, perhaps preferring to be more responsive and book things at shorter notice.
I think the most significant reason, though, isn’t anything to do with the practicalities of taking leave. We are often working in contexts where the number of people and the amount of work that needs to be done don’t match up. Particularly in smaller organisations, there is very little capacity for anyone else to take over a colleague’s work when they’re away - if you’re a one person department, instructing another person in how to do all the things that you do might take as long as the holiday itself - and it’s not like they’d have time to do them on top of their own work anyway. And on top of this, the arts sector (like many other sectors) can fall into the trap of constant overwork not only becoming a way of life but also a source of pride.
The most common reason I hear for not being able to take leave is: I don’t have time - and this is a statement that demands further interrogation. If the quantity of work consistently outstrips staff time - and it often will, not only because of under-resourcing, but also because we’re a sector full of creative and innovative people who will always think of new projects to work on - then ‘I don’t have time’ isn’t the full picture. Technically, we will never have time. What we mean is: this isn’t a thing that I’m prioritising.
But even this statement isn’t quite right because it makes the problem rest solely on the shoulders of the individual. For many, it’s not just that they are not prioritising taking a break, but that we are working within a culture that doesn’t prioritise taking a break. Even though work has evolved hugely since the industrial era, it sometimes feels as though we are still in the shadow of the factories, where the production line must never stop and time is, literally, money. The hangover from this era is that persistent, driving sense that we must keep going, keep producing, no matter what.
In the book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, the economist Ha-Joon Chang’s first chapter addresses the fact that there is no such thing as the free market. He writes: “Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.” So for example, in response to someone who says that markets should be entirely free and not interfered with by governments, Chang might ask whether they believe that seven year olds should be able to be employed, as they were historically, often in those same factories that formed the foundation of the industrial era. The answer will, inevitably, be no. But this, in turn, means that the market is not entirely free. The state, from 1819 onwards, put in place child labour laws to prevent children being forced to work. Today, we would treat age restrictions on who is allowed to work as obvious - it is one of those unquestioned underlying assumptions that we fail to see. So in reality, pretty much everyone is fine with government intervention in the markets to some degree. The real question to ask is what kind, and how much.
Coming back to the issue of what we do or don’t have time to do at work, one can apply the same principle. Do I have time to take maternity leave to give birth to a baby? Do I have time to take a day off because I have Norovirus? Of course - and statutory rights are there to enforce that. (Plus, literally no one benefits from having someone with Norovirus in the office). We wouldn’t question these situations - they are the underlying, unseen restrictions that Chang speaks about. To apply his logic to this scenario shows us that we have no qualms about taking or granting some kinds of leave, and once again, the real question to ask is what kind, and how much. What is exciting about being a leader is that we get to shape the answer to that question within our organisation - in other words, we can nurture a culture in which it becomes obvious that every staff member will be encouraged and supported to take the entirety of their holiday allowance.
One of the essential ingredients in moving towards this kind of culture is to model it yourself, visibly and unapologetically - meaning that, when you’re away, the out of office is on and emails are not replied to. If you’re not able to properly switch off, then it’s extremely unlikely that anyone else in your team is going to feel able to either when it’s their turn to take a break. By taking time out, even when it’s busy, you’re showing everyone in your organisation that holidays and life outside of work are something you value and something that you are prioritising, and you have the perfect opportunity to make it clear that this applies to all of them too.
It would be naive not to acknowledge that there are times, particularly if you’re in a leadership position, when this can’t all be executed as neatly as I’ve described above. If a crisis emerges when you’re away, it might mean that your input is needed immediately and it can’t wait until you're back. I think mindset is everything here. If you go on your break anxious, worrying what might happen whilst you’re not there, checking emails regularly to keep an eye on things, then it’s much more likely that your colleagues will ask you for your input on a problem or decision. If you sign off, confident and clear that you’re now on holiday, that you won’t be checking emails and for anything urgent, your phone is on and you can be called if absolutely necessary, nine times out of ten, people will work it out for themselves and no one will bother you. You’ve empowered your team to take the decisions that need to be taken, and to make a judgement on when your input is essential, not desirable.
Even if you’re doing the best modelling in the world, diligently not checking emails and taking all your leave, some people are still going to find it hard to take the holiday that they need and deserve. In this case, I think you have to treat it like any other work based task and, rather than crossing your fingers and hoping they magically book two weeks off, actively offer them some support to make it happen. Whilst on the surface this can be a practical conversation to identify some time periods which work for everyone, it actually conveys something deeper - that one factor in doing your best work is having a life outside of it.
Technically, I have no reason to be on holiday this week. I’m not going anywhere - I have no particular plans. When I was finishing up last week, frantically powering through the last few emails before I shut my laptop for a few days, I had the usual, familiar thought of ‘is it worth it’? But the answer is unequivocal - of course it is. Quite aside from setting the tone for the rest of the team, it gives me a chance to focus on other things in my life - my family, friends I haven’t seen in a while, spending more time outdoors, and reading some of the books from the ever expanding pile on my bedside table. And I find that, when there’s a release from the day to day pressure of getting stuff done, my mind is free to wander, to chew over what’s happening at work in a different way - and, often, come up with the kind of solution or idea that would never have occurred to me if I’d not removed my nose from the grindstone.