The Importance of Disconnecting From Work

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about how sometimes I wish life were simpler and we could more easily disconnect from our gadgets. Lately, there's been a lot of content out there about how to better disconnect from work, which is something that I and many people have a problem doing.

When I was working at the Caps, I almost never disconnected from work when we were in-season from September to May (too bad not June). That's nine months non-stop of constantly reading and writing email, strategizing, executing, managing, firefighting, and stressing. I'd take a few days off in February or March each year to go snowboarding out west, but I'd bring my laptop and catch up on some work during downtime and really never stopped thinking about it. I otherwise rarely took vacation in-season. This is a recipe for burning out, which I admittedly did towards the end of every season.

Now that I'm on my own working on Dokkit and consulting, it's gotten even worse. And I've been doing this for only two weeks!

That's why I love these articles and posts about how small business owners and startup CEOs are approaching vacations and completely disconnecting from work, whether it's for themselves or their employees.

This NY Times article shows how you can prepare yourself and your company for when you take a real, disconnected vacation.

This post from a startup called Full Contact talks about their Paid Paid Vacation policy - not only do they pay your salary when you are on vacation, they actually pay for your vacation, too! Awesome!

This Inc post talks about how Red Frog gives their employees unlimited vacation time and how that really helps them be more productive.

It's tough but I think we can gain a lot from being truly disconnected from work every now and then. What do you think?