Day Four of the Holidays - how to get the most from your time off

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I know the holiday break is a while away yet, but I want to share something with you to make sure you maximise your break and use it to rest rather than recover.

I talk to people all the time about burnout, particularly mid-tier leaders.

And, and I firmly believe that taking time off for the sake of time off is not and should not be our first line of defence for the levels of burnout that we're experiencing.

So see if this rings a bell for you.

You'd usually notice it around day four of a holiday that you've taken. Day four is kind of the first proper breath, which tells you something about days one to three, and about the 12 months before them.

And then go back to work after the break, and within about a week of returning to work, it's as though you'd never been away. Does that sound familiar?

I bet it does for most people. That's not you holidaying badly. The best evidence we have, and Speth et al, in 2023, did a huge meta-analysis on all of this, and they found that the best evidence says the well-being gains from a break statistically are gone within roughly a week of walking back into the job that caused it in the first place.

So a holiday will treat tiredness, but it doesn't go near the thing that's producing the tiredness.

You've returned to the same role, running the same way, under the same conditions. And the same conditions just produce the same result.

So when capacity returns, like in our Full Flight Program, you should arrive at the holiday already unclenched because the recovery is happening inside the working week instead of being stockpiled into annual leave.

I always say, "Burnout doesn't resolve on a beach, it resolves on a Tuesday." And that's the shift.

Recovery isn't something you save up and then spend once or twice a year. It's built in to how your week runs.

And the strongest evidence favours a kind of absorption and mastery, not just rest and time off. To be clear, time off isn't the enemy, but expecting it to do a job that it was never capable of doing is the enemy, and it shouldn't be the first place we look for recovery from burnout.

If you want a private read on where you are, the capacity map for high performers is right here. It takes about four minutes.

And reach out and let's have a chat if you want to know more about my Full Flight Program. Or please share this with anyone you think would appreciate learning about it.

You know where to find me.