It’s hard to believe, but another year is nearing its end.1 There’s a good bit to do before it comes to a close. But with the end of the year comes the holiday season. So, it’s an opportune time to reflect on how you can be really good at taking time away.
There’s more to life than your current work demands, your next upcoming project, or that last assignment that needs attention before the semester fully ends.
Honing your craft as a biblical scholar means getting really good at this kind of work. But it’s not limited to that. It also means getting better at integrating other life important domains as well.
You’re a whole person with a multifaceted life—and those multiple facets are part of what make life rich. So, although it’s often overlooked, a core skill you need to hone for the long haul is how you live as an academic in order to integrate the areas of your life that stretch beyond the academy.
The Craft of Enjoying Time Away
With that in mind, I’d like to offer 8 steps you can take to set yourself up for some enriching time away from the regular beat of academic life over the holidays.
- Recognize there’s more to life than work.
- Start preparing early.
- Clarify how long you’ll be away and what you’ll be away from.
- Identify stakeholders who may need something from you while you’re away.
- Communicate with any stakeholders who might need something from you while you’re away, and address those needs.
- Plan for your time away.
- Set an email autoresponder.
- Keep your commitment to being away.
Being away provides a valuable chance to spend time with loved ones, invest in other interests, pursue other projects, or any variety of other possibilities. Whatever the case, these steps will help you make the most of your time away.
1. Recognize there’s more to life than work.
Life doesn’t stop. That includes academic life. So, you’ll likely always have plenty enough to keep you busy for more than one lifetime. And sometimes, the best use of time in the margins is to prepare for and get ahead of what’s coming next.
But always leaning into the future can also easily leave us always leaving and unmindful of the present. It can leave us pushing forward at a frenetic pace. And that pace can easily just perpetuate itself, rather than allowing a natural rhythm for rest, reflection, and reorientation.
So, it’s important to push back on the tendency to use life’s margins only for yet more work. By doing so, you make sure you preserve space for those other aspects of life that can all too easily get pushed aside.
2. Start preparing early.
In my experience, taking time away on shorter notice hasn’t normally worked very well. That’s especially true if you’re wanting to be away for what you feel is a comparatively longer time.
When taking time away, I’ve tended to carry with me mentally whatever research, teaching, studying, or administrative activities I currently have on my plate.
I’ve also tended to forget about at least a few loose ends then feel compelled to work on tying them up during what was supposed to be the time away.
And any of this “carrying with” or “forgetting about” or “tying up” ends up subtracting some of the enjoyment from the time away.
On the other hand, if you start preparing early, you can minimize the open loops you have as your time away approaches.
Two Questions to Start Preparing
So, you want to “begin with the end in mind.”2. Start writing down answers to the question “What would have to be true for you to truly unplug during your time away?”3
Your written record will help you minimize anything you may otherwise forget amid everything that’s vying for your attention as you move forward.
Similarly, you’ll want to ask yourself “Are you on track now to be able to unplug while you’re away? Or if you go about ‘business as usual,’ are you likely to leave some loose ends that will short change time away?”
Hopefully you’ll find yourself on a good pace ahead of your time away. And if so, that’s great.
But if you’re even a little unsure, it’s likely you’re overestimating how tidy things will be before your time away. That’s because of a principle called “the planning fallacy.”
What Is the Planning Fallacy?
The “planning fallacy” is the “tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when they have actually done the task before.”4
That’s especially true when we’re faced with more pressure for that activity to be completed on time.
For example, if we’re in conversation with others or if we’re mentally contemplating such conversations we’re more liable to give overly optimistic assessments of how much we can do in a given amount of time.5
How Do You Adjust for the Planning Fallacy?
That doesn’t need to be bad news, though. It just means you’re now aware that you might need to adjust your expectations for the coming days.
You can counter the effects of the planning fallacy by adding 50% to how much time you think it will take to complete a project.6 Or to be still safer, you can try doubling your estimate.
With these updated estimates of how long it will take to complete what’s on your plate, you may find you also need to further triage what really needs to get done before your time away. You might find that some of that can easily wait until you get back.
3. Clarify how long you’ll be away and what you’ll be away from.
Next, you’ll want to decide how long you want to be away and what you want to be away from.
In doing so, you obviously need to be realistic and plan within whatever constraints you may have (e.g., the number of untaken personal days you’ve accrued at work).
But while you’re being realistic, also don’t shortchange your time away. If you have a spouse, involve him or her in clarifying these key questions.
For instance, my wife, Carrie, and I went through this process before our youngest daughter was born. After she arrived, Carrie and I decided we wanted me to be able to be out of the office for the next few weeks.
Around the time of her due date, however, I also had classes I was scheduled to teach. As it happened, these classes were either just going to be ending or they were ones that I’d taught previously. So, we were thankful for that.
We decided on a 30-day window when I’d be out of the office and completely unplugged. The only exceptions would be actions I had to take because they were necessary for teaching those classes. That said, I wasn’t entirely successful in disengaging to this extent (more about that below).
But having a clear intention made it much easier to unplug when the time came. And what I learned from that experience has definitely helped me do a better job since when it comes time to disconnect for time away. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s a craft to being away, and that craft is something that’s well worth honing.
4. Identify stakeholders who may need something from you while you’re away.
Once you’ve made some reasonable plans, you need to identify the stakeholders who might normally need something from you and not able to get it because of your time away.
If you’re going to be away only very briefly, this list is probably pretty short (or maybe even completely empty). But the longer you’re going to be away, the more people might be impacted by your time away.
From past experience, you probably know who’s likely to have an urgent request for you at the 11th hour before your time away. So, future “surprises” shouldn’t actually be surprising. Instead, include them in your list of stakeholders as appropriate.
And as you’re thinking about who might be impacted, push yourself to cast the net a bit wider than you’re initially inclined to.
For instance, before our youngest daughter’s birth, I submitted an essay for an edited volume. And I did so well ahead of when I was going to be away.
I then moved to other projects. So, I forgot to notify the volume’s principal editor about my upcoming time away.
Sure enough, while I was away, I got an email about copy editing the essay. Those questions were fairly urgent, as they often are.
So, since I hadn’t given the editor the notice needed to accommodate my time away, I felt I needed to accommodate the tight copy editing deadline.
Thankfully, it didn’t take that long to work through the editor’s questions. But in preparing for that time away, I should have taken fuller stock of not just what was on my plate but also what was going to come back on my plate.
Had I done so, I would have recognized this editor as potentially falling into the group of stakeholders who would be impacted by my time away.
5. Communicate with any stakeholders who might need something from you while you’re away, and address those needs.
Once you have a clear picture of when and how you want to be away and who might be impacted by it, you need to communicate with those stakeholders.
General Considerations
In reaching out to your stakeholders, you want to clearly indicate when you’ll be away and what you won’t be doing during that time.
Ask your stakeholders to give you any requests they foresee in time for you to complete those requests before you’ll be away.
Because you might have multiple incoming requests, you might need to your stakeholders a date several days ahead of your time away to send these requests. That way, you can have adequate time to complete them before you head out.
In this communication, you need to articulate clearly that any requests made after your time away starts won’t be able to get handled until after you return.
Send this notification or start this communication early enough to give your stakeholders adequate time to respond.
It’s probably also good to send a reminder to your stakeholders as your time away gets a bit closer. That way, they have a fresh prompt both about your openness to receiving and addressing their requests and about the boundaries you have around your time away.
Asking for Work Can Save Work
Reaching out to these individuals directly might seem counterintuitive. After all, things have a habit of taking longer than expected. And I just suggested you might need to triage what you can get done before your time away.
If you reach out to others asking for requests from them, you might be more likely to get things added to your plate.
All of that’s true. But the alternative is simply not knowing what your stakeholders might need while you’re away. And that’s not good for them or for you.
If you take that route, you’re setting yourself up for a series of 11th-hour decisions about what requests to cram in. And you’re also likely to have comparatively tenser discussions around requests that you’d prefer to handle after your time away.
Instead of leaving yourself and your stakeholders open for such problems, be proactive.7 Contact in good time those who might need something from you. Let them know that you’ll be happy to field requests from them before or after your time away. But also communicate clearly how you’ll be unavailable during that time.
By doing so, you’re being courteous to those stakeholders, who frankly might be trying to plan some time away themselves. And your reaching out provides an opportunity to negotiate a mutually satisfactory plan for when you’ll get what to whom.
Considerations for Your Upline
If you work under someone’s supervision, you should your upline constitutes a special class of stakeholders who might be impacted by your being away.
And if your work culture is such that you sometimes get requests from someone in your boss’s upline, you might need to consider including them in your list as well.
Among your stakeholders, your upline is particularly important because they have a special ability to either support or hinder your time away.
So, especially if you’re wanting to be away for longer, it’s best to start having conversations with your upline well in advance.
Whether you’re in an academic, church, or other work situation, talk with your leadership. Clearly communicate when you’re wanting to be away and what you’re wanting to do and not do during that time.
Use these discussions to identify and negotiate around concerns that your leaders may have. As you do so, you may find you need to alter your plans for your time away. If that’s the case, be sure to include your family (if applicable) in deciding what those changes entail.
That said, also don’t be too quick to modify your plans for your time away. Don’t accept “win-lose” agreements that are easy in the moment but less satisfying in the long run. Instead, work at finding a “win-win” solution to any concerns.8
6. Plan for your time away.
Don’t walk into your time away cold. You might not want to plan it in as much detail as you do a normal workweek. That’s perfectly fine.
But your time away is valuable, as are the people you’ll spend it with. So, what you want to do with that time away deserves some careful thought.
Even something as simple as a couple short conversations leading up to your time away can help clarify how you can make the most of it.9 It can also help you avoid the temptation to dilute your time away with things that can wait until you’re back at work.
7. Set an email autoresponder.
When your time away begins, set an out-of-office reply or other automated bounce back on your email or other communication channels. (You might actually want to do this a little in advance of when you need to start disengaging. That way, you won’t have requests come in that you don’t have time to respond to.)
A Couple Examples
In the automated reply, you don’t need to give a lot of detail. But do inform the person who’s contacted you when you’ll be able to get back with them.
If you’re taking a comparatively shorter hiatus, something like the following should work:
Thank you very much for your email. I am currently away and unable to respond to your message until [date you’ll start responding normally again]. Please anticipate a response to your message as appropriate after this time.
Or if you’ll be away for longer, you might consider something like this:
Please resend your message on or after [date you’ll start responding normally again] if it is still relevant and you would like me to respond.
I am out of the office [dates you’re away]. When I return, I will be mass archiving email that has arrived during these dates in order to begin responding to pertinent correspondence again as promptly as possible.
Thank you very much.
If you have exceptions to the “please resend this later” request (see step 3 above), you can add something like “The only exception is ….” For instance, when I was away after our daughter’s birth but still needing to manage a few classes, I had the autoresponse indicate that I would respond to an email if the sender was a student in one of my classes or someone with a time-sensitive request about a student in one of my classes (e.g., needing attendance information).
Considerations for Requesting That Messages Be Resent
This second method of structuring the autoresponse may be a bit abrupt. But it helps remove from you the burden of taking the time to reply to possibly outdated requests after your time away.10
An autoresponse like this one also clearly states what action the person making the request should take to get input from you if that’s still needed after your time away.
When I was away for our youngest daughter’s birth, I used an autoresponse like the second one above. But the request to resend the message appeared lower in the autoresponse, and I hadn’t bolded it.
So, it was easier to miss, although the information was all there. And on returning to the office, I did have one case where a critical request wasn’t resent to me. I then needed to handle that request quite urgently.
That was still better than spending the time to sift through a month’s worth of mostly irrelevant email. But stressing at the start of the autoresponse the request to resend an email to obtain a response seems to be helpful in ensuring it’s clear what to do when you return if a response is needed from you on something.
I used this same autoresponse with these updates when I was away for a couple weeks more recently. After my time away, a couple folks did follow up, and I was able to address their requests before they became urgent.
8. Keep your commitment to being away.
If you have some exceptions like the example I’ve mentioned, you’ll still need to check in on those while you’re other wise away.
Saying “Yes” Also Means Saying “No”
As you do so, just remember that “inside ‘yes’ is ‘no.'” If you engage more on these fronts than you’d intended, you’ll automatically be saying “no” to engaging with something else.
Be especially wary if part of this “something else” is family with whom you’ve committed to be present during this downtime (e.g., in step 3 above).
Your time away will go faster than you think it will. You don’t want to look back at the end of it and see that you essentially worked from home, from the beach, or wherever and missed the opportunity to disengage for a bit.
Instead, be fully present with the people and activities for whom you’ve set aside this time to disengage. As you do, a tool like Freedom might help protect what you’ve decided to prioritize during your time away.11
What to Do If Things Come Up
If you find your preparations weren’t full enough, try to avoid squeezing school or work activity back in around the margins. And if something comes up claiming it can’t wait, don’t be too ready to agree with that assessment.
You can make the choice to address these pressing items that might come up. Just be aware that saying “yes” to that automatically means saying “no” to those you’d otherwise be giving your time, attention, and presence to during that time.
You shouldn’t underestimate the relational cost of that “no,” especially if it’s a cost that repeats. That said, if you really think something can’t wait, start by talking through it with those who will be affected by your plugging back in.
Negotiate with them how to move forward from where you are (even if that isn’t where you ideally wanted to be). Then, take away from your experience the lessons that will help you better disconnect during your next time to be away.
Conclusion
The scope and content of time away is different for everyone. It might be a half day at home or several weeks at the beach.
But it’s important for us all to create space to live life as fully in non-academic ways as we do in our academic pursuits. Doing so can definitely be challenging, but it’s well worth the effort.
So, with the steps above, hopefully you can plan some good, enjoyable time away in the not-too-distant future. That time away will then allow you to reengage with academic life even more energetically afterward.
Just like other parts of the craft of biblical scholarship, your ability to unplug from academics and focus on other life domains is also something you can hone over time.
As you do it more and with more intention, you’ll notice yourself gradually getting better at being not just whatever your school or work demands require. You’ll also find yourself getting better at really enjoying the time you spend focusing on other life domains too.
Header image provided by Jude Beck. ↩
See Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, 25th anniversary ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 73–101 ↩
For this way of framing the issue, I’m grateful to Michael Hyatt, “Make Progress on Goals in Only 5 Minutes,” Michael Hyatt & Co., 21 September 2020. ↩
Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (New York: Crown Business, 2014), 182; italics original; see also Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). ↩
Cf. McKeown, Essentialism, 181–83. ↩
McKeown, Essentialism, 181–83. ↩
Cf. Covey, Effective People, 73–101. ↩
For discussion of this principle, see Covey, Effective People, 215–46. ↩
For this suggestion, I’m particularly grateful to Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller, “How to Rejuvenate with a Staycation,” Lead to Win, 25 August 2020. ↩
For this excellent suggestion, I’m particularly indebted to Michael Hyatt and Michele Cushatt’s discussion, “How to Vacation Like a Pro: 7 Steps for Recharging with Intention.” Sadly, it appears this discussion is no longer openly available online. ↩
For more about how I use Freedom, see Alexandra Dempsey, “J. David Stark: Creating Systems to Prioritize What Matters Most,” weblog, Freedom Matters, 18 November 2020. ↩
