It’s ok to take a day off.

Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash

With all of the demands in academia—papers and grants to write and review, students to advise, conferences to prepare for and attend—it can be easy to work day in and day out. You might joke about it at first: ‘At least I have a flexible schedule. I get to choose which 20 hours of the day I want to work.’ You may then start to bargain with yourself: ‘I just have to get through this week, and then I’ll take a day off.’ But the day off never seems to come. Inevitably, something else pops up, demanding your immediate attention.

One of the wonderful things about academia is that because the work is so varied, your days never quite look the same. But the hard part is that there is just so much of that work. And a lot of it feels urgent. When the work never ends, it’s hard to find gaps where taking time off feels feasible or even responsible. You may feel guilty for taking time off when you have colleagues and students who are depending on you. You feel like when you return, you’ll have to work even harder to not fall behind, so why bother taking time off in the first place? Or maybe you take time ‘off’, but you’re doing a few hours of work each day just so you can keep up. But is that really time off? Time that allows you to fully rest and recharge? Likely not.

The problem is that if you don’t take that time to rest and recharge, your body and/or your mind will likely force it on you, whether that’s through injury, illness, or burnout. That can then leave you feeling depleted, because then you’re taking time off to recover—not recharge—as the work continues to pile up.

So, just take the day, or even multiple days, off.

You don’t need a reason. And you don’t have to go anywhere. You don’t need to have an elaborate activity or vacation planned. It can just be a day where you decide to do whatever you want to do, whether that’s just laying on your couch, walking around your neighborhood, or going to get ice cream.

But how can you possibly think about ice cream when you’ve got meetings booked until next Tuesday and you just received an unexpected revise-and-resubmit? As is true with most things, it helps to have a plan.

One strategy to feel emboldened to take time off is to set rules for yourself about when you will take that time off, no matter what. Maybe you always take off the last Friday in the month to give yourself a longer weekend. Or maybe you schedule a few weeks off either at the end of summer or at the end of the year to fully enjoy the good weather or the holiday season. Put this time in your calendar and mark it urgent. Then you can communicate these rules in advance to your teams. This allows your team to understand your boundaries, and to work within them so that they are not making last-minute, urgent requests that you require you to abandon your day off. (This will also help model positive self-care practices for your team, hopefully making them more productive as well.) Having a rule also allows you to organize your work accordingly so that you can feel less stressed about taking the time off. Maybe you won’t ever cross everything off your to-do list (because really, our lists will never actually be done), but you can plan your schedule so that everything gets done in time.

Personally, one of my rules is this: I don’t work on my birthday. It just feels like a gift of time and relaxation that I can give to myself. I’ve only broken this rule once in my 24-year career, when a colleague had a health emergency and needed someone to step in for them on a thesis defense. And my birthday isn’t at a particularly convenient time of year with respect to work; grant applications for one of the major federal agencies here in Canada tend to be due the week after. But, it’s easy for me to take off because it’s now become a habit, and in the weeks leading up to it, I plan out what I absolutely need to get done and what can wait, so that I can be present in the moment.

Of course, you don’t have to plan for a day off; you can just decide to take one in the moment. Some days, you might have to. Maybe you wake up one day and you’re just not feeling it. It’s ok to look at your calendar and ask yourself, ‘Is there anything on here today that just absolutely cannot be pushed to another day?’ If everything can be moved, and nothing will go down in flames as a result, then move the meetings, and send a message to your team. You could even solicit your team’s input first: send a message that asks whether it would seriously derail anyone’s progress if you took the day off. And then encourage them to also take a day off when they need it. If you have a group meeting on your calendar that can’t be moved, ask yourself whether your presence is really necessary. Is your unique expertise needed? Can you send an email with your input? Is this just an FYI meeting that will be summarized in the minutes anyway? And be honest with yourself; sometimes we keep ourselves busy simply because we feel like we’d look like an imposter otherwise. But this is just one day; and sometimes that one day can make all of the difference between succumbing to burnout and feeling excited about what’s on the horizon.

You can have an academic career in which taking a day off feels natural—not guilt-inducing. If you’re ready to build a career that’s sustainable—one that leaves space for rest without sacrificing progress—let’s talk. Book a free discovery call and let’s create a plan that works for you.

Next week: It’s ok to have an off day.