On rest, again
I got interviewed for 10-Minute Ecom Success, because I’m the kind of person who can sum up a total design worldview in precisely 10 minutes. I think this turned out pretty good! My thanks to Marc for having me on the show.
Last year, I took one look at the 10-day weather forecast in Chicago and booked a flight to another continent, because I’m normal and reasonable and do things that are universally correct. You would do this, too. You work in ecommerce; you went through the holidays; you’re tired; the two-week break was not enough. Holiday closure is not vacation, either, not when the whole rest of the world stops and that’s why you give yourself permission to follow suit.
I, somewhat famously, very rarely take vacation, which is a bit the curse of running an independent business, a bit the fact that I like my job, and a bit the fact that I simply forget to, that living here is great, that vacations often involve trips and rest. I still worked a little in Paris. I did some housekeeping over the holidays. I took intermission from content in October & November, faded back a little. But I still worked that whole time; you just couldn’t see it.
And now I am going to disappear in a way that scares me, because from February 21 through March 08, I’m disappearing from everything, disappearing from this hemisphere, disappearing from my inbox, disappearing from my clients & list & loved ones. I haven’t done anything like this for this long since before the pandemic. You could count the number of people who will have access to me during this period on one hand and have fingers left.
In this moment, I think of someone I once knew who ran a large, successful tech company. I watched him grow it from nothing to a headcount in the range of 100 people. They had an unlimited vacation policy, as we must do here at Draft, because I theoretically can take as much vacation as I want, right? In practice, nobody ever took vacation, including the CEO, who burned out. Then he wrote an email that said, roughly, four things:
- The unlimited vacation policy is abolished.
- In its place is a minimum six weeks vacation policy. You have to take six weeks by the anniversary of your start date. If you haven’t taken it all by then, you’ll be shut out of our systems and forced to take time off for the remainder.
- If you violate #2, you’re fired.
- I’m writing this from the tarmac, on a plane to the Bahamas for a month. If anyone emails me during that time, I will not read it, and I will delete my whole inbox upon my return.
Termination threat aside, heard, and also this is really funny. So I’m going to do roughly the same, minus the threats, and I’m going to do a big ol’ brain reset. I’ll come back fresh in March, and I’m sure I’ll be able to serve you better then. In the meantime, one more installment next week.
Thanks for your support of us, for your understanding that I need rest, and for being here, in this place. I’m ready. I’ll be more ready. Will you?