When You Feel Afraid to Take Vacation

It's that time of year — you're tired, ready for a break, but there's roughly 1,483 tiny pots boiling over at work.  Or if you're a freelancer, maybe you just got a windfall of client projects and you're afraid to ease off the momentum, even though you feel like you're sleepwalking during the day.

So how do you deal with the anxiety you feel about resting long enough to actually rest? 

That's what today's podcast is all about. I'm going to give you some tips on how to set yourself up to feel rested all year round, not just in the holiday season.

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I’m Cathy Davenport Lee, and I hope today’s episode leaves you feeling inspired and ready to push the boundaries of your creative career.

Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and sign up for Lunchbox Notes—my free encouragement and advice letter for creatives. Stay connected for more insights, tools, and resources to help you thrive. Until next time, keep creating, keep pushing, and let’s move this industry forward together.

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Transcript

Folks often feel afraid to take vacation. Honestly, same. I’ve gotten a TON of coaching about this.
 
It’s totally understandable given the pressures of a job or the pressures of being a freelancer trying to stay busy. However, taking regular breaks is important on many levels. Even if you don’t feel “tired” per se...making space for your life to BE A LIFE is important.
 
Here’re my thoughts on the subject…take what serves you, leave what doesn’t.


1: Make sure your rest is restful.
Plan what recharges you. For example: family vacations drain me for all kinds of reasons. That is not “rest” even if it involves taking time off. I try to make sure I plan rest that I actually find replenishing…like taking a class, having a quiet day to write, seeing a museum I never got to see yet, etc.

2. Make actual plans.
Literally sit down, look at the whole year, and try to assess the best chunks of time for you to take off. It can feel annoying to do this, but it’s never too late to start. I notice that I immediately feel relief when I start planning my rest in advance. The other little mental trick here is that when you actually have an itinerary in hand (even if it’s a couple classes you signed up for because you are taking a “staycation”), it’s harder to “accidentally start working” when you are supposed to be on vacation.

3. Make your own MINIMUM time-off policy.
Whether you are working for yourself, in between staff jobs, or doing contract work, you need to schedule your rest. No one will tell you to do that on purpose (except me lol), so you’re going to have to make your own policy where that’s concerned. Therefore, you should work to identify the minimum amount of rest that will serve you (a MINIMUM time-off policy)…whether it’s pre-planning some longer breaks that you can communicate in advance, or possibly doing more of a minimum days-off-per-month approach (like 2 days a month). But I would literally go to the extent of writing down, so you don’t feel tempted to abandon it later.
Note here that a lot of workplaces seem to have “unlimited” vacation policies these days. This can feel very psychologically intimidating, especially when it’s combined with not having official company holidays.  This is where this kind of thing becomes especially clutch. I wouldn’t necessarily communicate your minimum-time-off policy to anyone in your office environment, unless you have a wildly supportive manager…it’s more of an internal policy for YOU.

4. Make it technologically difficult for you to log in and “check on” stuff.
This goes for logging off at the end of the day or on weekends as well as vacations. Don’t put your work email on your phone. If you feel tempted to check work chats, remove that program from your phone as well.

5. Wait a long beat if someone actually does try to communicate with you on vacation.
Unless it’s an actual emergency (you forgot to hand off a file that’s due), it is best to reinforce your non-available by actually not being available…if it’s excruciating for you, I would suggest at least setting a timer to respond later. Usually you will find out whatever random question someone asked you was already resolved.

6. Give advance notice & “over-communicate” if you work in an office environment.
Be so incredibly dependable at providing advance notice of your vacation that it’s BORING how dependable you are. My rule of thumb: give a couple weeks if you want to take up to 3 days off, and one or more full months if you want to take more than that.  That’s just when you should request the vacation so it can be approved…but you also need to remind folks regularly leading up to it…people forget things. Put it on the work calendar and invite key people. Set your email auto-reply and Slack status to reflect you’re on vacation. Inform your teammates. If you’re going to be gone longer than a day or two, make a list of everything you’re working on and note who’s going to be picking things up while you’re away. If you don’t know, work with your manager to figure it out.  Around 2 weeks beforehand, send a reminder.

Why all this? Because the goal here is to make sure you really CAN walk away and relax. Part of that is on your boss, but part of that is your responsibility to make sure it’s IMPOSSIBLE for people to not realize you are out.

Final thoughts:
Don’t be so scared of asking for your vacation that you don’t tell anyone you’re working with about it until the last second and don’t make hand-off plans…people aren’t going to be able to “just adapt” on the fly and are going find that wildly inconsiderate to boot. Whereas if you are prepared…it’s again going to feed right back into making you look like you have badass leadership skills and that you are considerate of your teammates.