Don’t Let an Impossible Problem Ruin Your Vacation
Seven tips for creating stress-free time off
I was wishing happy holidays to a friend when I noticed an unusually stressed expression on his face.
“I can’t go on this vacation. I have an impossible problem with a client. I need to focus on it and find a solution. I won’t enjoy my time off if I leave it floating in my head.”
I spent the next five minutes trying to convince him of the benefits of vacations. I reminded him of the Ernst & Young study that showed eight percent higher performance the year after employees took an additional ten hours of vacation. The famous 1992 Framingham Heart Study followed the health of a group of workers over twenty years. The study found that women who didn’t take vacation were fifty percent more likely to have a heart attack. My friend wasn’t convinced.
I changed the conversation to share some of the ways I have used vacations to solve some of the most obstinate problems without ruining the time off with family and friends. The following seven tips came up in the chat with my friend:
1. Do your homework before leaving the office. You want to get your brain to work in the background. Write down the problem. Describe it clearly so that a colleague could read it and understand all the challenge’s…
