Take Your Leave

I’ve always told my teams “don’t do what I do.” Take your PTO. Disconnect. Trust the team to handle things while you’re out. And then I’d turn around and exemplify every bad habit I was warning them against — constantly available, messaging at all hours, checking in when I was supposed to be on PTO, and answering “just one quick thing” that turned into an hour.

This wasn’t a one-off. Across several prior life events, I flexed my time and came back earlier than I should have. Was it good for advancing my career at the time? Possibly. It signaled reliability, commitment, or whatever story I was telling myself in the moment. What it didn’t do was give me the space or time I actually needed.

However, I recently took a significant amount of leave (over 12 weeks), which ended up being extremely cathartic and one of the best things I’ve done for myself in years.

Now I can actually say “do what I did.” I turned everything off, focused on relaxing, personal life goals, and a few side projects. Now I’m returning fresh, with clear ideas for direction, and ready to drive new strategic initiatives instead of just reacting to whatever’s in front of me.

Even better, nothing was on fire when I returned. The teams tracked the roadmap, delivered, and handled any issues that came up. Turns out the trust I kept asking everyone else to have in their teams works both ways.