How many of you have PTO sitting in your bank right now with zero actual plans attached to it?
No judgment. But we're fixing that this week.
Rest doesn't happen by accident. You have to decide to do it and then build the conditions that make it real. If you don't, it's suddenly September, you took one long weekend, and you're heading into fall already depleted.
Here are three things you can do this week to seize the summer:
1. Block the dates before someone else does.
Open your calendar, pick the time — a full week, a few long weekends, whatever works — and put it in before someone else fills those days for you with meetings, projects or appointments.
(And yes, a long weekend counts. You do not need to be under an umbrella on a beach for it to qualify as rest.)
2. Write your OOO like you actually mean it.
Not the version where you say "I'll have limited access to email" and then check it every two hours from the pool.
Set a clear return date. Give people a person to contact for urgent things. And then — this is the part that matters — don't check your inbox.
Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work and a speaker at last year's Pennsylvania Conference for Women, makes a really compelling case for this:
How you signal the value of your own time is directly connected to how seriously your workplace takes it. Your out-of-office is a boundary. Treat it like one.
3. Decide right now what you're actually doing with your time.
Not errands. Not "catch up on the house." Not a project you've been putting off that technically isn't work but kind of is.
What fills you up? What makes you feel like yourself again?
Name it now, so when the time comes you're not just sitting there not knowing how to not work. (A real thing that happens to high achievers, by the way.)
Rest is a skill. And like most skills, it takes a little intention and practice to actually do it well. Block the time. Set the boundary. Plan how you actually want to spend it.
Your well-rested self is genuinely better at every single part of your life. That's not a wellness poster — that's just how humans work.
💬 Where are you going to take time off this summer?
