Last week, I took a day off from work. There were many things that happened including rolling power outages and cancelled meetings that left my calendar uncharacteristically open. I realized as I put my out of office message up that it was the first day in months that I had stepped away from the “office.”
I put “office” in quotes because the shift to remote work has erased the boundaries between our personal and work lives. Unless we choose to go to the secluded backwoods where there is no cellular service, we literally can be connected from anywhere in the world and keep working.
More than ever, we must make a conscious choice to take a break and step away from our work and to support our teams and colleagues as they do the same.
There were two examples from last week that allowed me to step away:
I was asked to provide some key information for leadership that required someone who was on vacation. After talking with my boss, we chose to delay a meeting rather than disturbing that person on their vacation.
On my day off, I got some news that I needed to deal with. After calling one of my team members to share the news, he told me that he was going to send me some information but extracted a promise from me to not look at it until I got back to work and to enjoy my day off.
These are small examples but made a huge difference in allowing me to unplug and reminded me of how important it is to support each other in stepping away from work.
How do you support your colleagues when they take a break?