Taking time off is seen as lazy and many people don’t use their allotted paid vacation time.
Can we stop pretending the world revolves around us?
Let’s stop making excuses and use all of our paid time off.
Don’t wait till you retire to take a vacation!
Here’s my article to executives urging them to leave their assistants alone during off ours and vacations.
And here’s my original post on taking all of our time off.
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– John Maxwell
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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<v SPEAKER_1>Welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast, number seven.
00:00:07.140 –> 00:00:10.640
<v SPEAKER_1>Why can’t you play hide and seek with a mountain?
00:00:11.520 –> 00:00:13.280
<v SPEAKER_1>Because it’s always peeking.
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<v SPEAKER_2>The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become irreplaceable, game-changing leader assistants.
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<v SPEAKER_2>This episode’s leadership quote is from John Maxwell.
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<v SPEAKER_2>Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.
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JEREMY: Welcome to episode seven of The Leader Assistant Podcast.
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JEREMY: I am excited to talk about paid time off, aka vacation days.
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JEREMY: Taking time off is seen, unfortunately, today as lazy.
00:00:53.400 –> 00:00:57.880
JEREMY: Many people don’t use their allotted paid vacation time.
00:01:00.380 –> 00:01:05.040
JEREMY: In America, especially, we are notorious for not taking time off.
00:01:06.440 –> 00:01:11.540
JEREMY: And so today I want to encourage you not to wait until you retire to take a vacation.
00:01:11.560 –> 00:01:17.560
JEREMY: I want to remind you and remind myself that the world does not revolve around you.
00:01:18.560 –> 00:01:29.700
JEREMY: So take a vacation, celebrate, encourage others to take vacation, even require our teams to use all of their paid time off.
00:01:31.800 –> 00:01:40.220
JEREMY: As I prepared for my family vacation this year, I thought about how, as I mentioned, Americans are terrible at taking vacations.
00:01:41.500 –> 00:01:46.800
JEREMY: In fact, I recently heard someone say, I get four weeks of paid time off each year, but I only use three or four days.
00:01:47.800 –> 00:01:52.240
JEREMY: It sounds kind of crazy, but yeah, I used to operate in the same way.
00:01:53.280 –> 00:02:02.500
JEREMY: After a few years, though, of not taking my vacations, I burned out and decided enough was enough.
00:02:03.120 –> 00:02:09.940
JEREMY: You can call me lazy, say I’m not a team player, make me feel bad for being offline or going out of town.
00:02:10.260 –> 00:02:11.500
JEREMY: I honestly don’t care.
00:02:11.520 –> 00:02:12.860
JEREMY: I’m taking my vacations.
00:02:14.820 –> 00:02:19.800
JEREMY: Many of us have a hard time taking time off, and I’m like this.
00:02:19.920 –> 00:02:23.120
JEREMY: I admit and I’ll be honest that I’m this way.
00:02:25.440 –> 00:02:29.140
JEREMY: I have a hard time taking off because I feel like there’s too much work to do.
00:02:29.580 –> 00:02:31.760
JEREMY: I tell myself there’s just too much to do.
00:02:32.560 –> 00:02:45.020
JEREMY: There’s, again, the world revolves around me, and there’s so much reliant on me that there’s no way I can take an extended amount of time off.
00:02:46.460 –> 00:02:51.440
JEREMY: Others imagine or can’t imagine what they’d do with themselves if they weren’t at work.
00:02:52.340 –> 00:03:05.580
JEREMY: So some of it is you really don’t have a hobby, you don’t have a plan or an idea of what you might do if you took a vacation, so you just decide to just keep working.
00:03:06.900 –> 00:03:17.080
JEREMY: But some of you are great at taking a vacation, but you make others feel guilty when they leave or when they get to take a break.
00:03:17.660 –> 00:03:25.100
JEREMY: Some of you assistants listening might have a boss who lets you take time off, but when you get back, you really hear about it.
00:03:25.400 –> 00:03:33.700
JEREMY: Or when you’re gone, you get pinged constantly, even though you’re supposed to be offline and on vacation.
00:03:34.400 –> 00:03:40.080
JEREMY: So I’ll share a link in the show notes, leaderassistant.com forward slash seven.
00:03:40.100 –> 00:03:46.400
JEREMY: A blog post I wrote to executives about leaving their assistants alone during off hours.
00:03:46.600 –> 00:03:54.680
JEREMY: But whatever the reason is for you, the assistant, not taking your time off, it’s honestly not a good one.
00:03:55.940 –> 00:04:05.480
JEREMY: Sure, there are seasons where you need to delay your time off or you need to just strategically plan it during an off time.
00:04:06.560 –> 00:04:09.620
JEREMY: But there are a few benefits to taking your allotted time off.
00:04:10.520 –> 00:04:15.740
JEREMY: One, you’ll be a better employee because you’ll be rested, you’ll be more productive when you get back.
00:04:16.660 –> 00:04:20.880
JEREMY: Two, you’ll be a better family member, a mom, dad, son, sister, friend.
00:04:21.440 –> 00:04:23.000
JEREMY: You’ll be more pleasant to be around.
00:04:23.380 –> 00:04:24.480
JEREMY: You’ll be a better neighbor.
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JEREMY: Your neighbors will actually see you every once in a while hanging out, enjoying a day off in the yard.
00:04:34.180 –> 00:04:35.140
JEREMY: And you’ll be healthier.
00:04:35.520 –> 00:04:41.340
JEREMY: We’ll just burn out and run ourselves into the ground if we don’t take time off.
00:04:42.720 –> 00:04:53.920
JEREMY: So I really just wanted to encourage you to celebrate, encourage, and even require your team members to use all of their paid time off.
00:04:54.120 –> 00:05:17.200
JEREMY: And if you don’t have any admins that work for you, or if you’re a remote assistant, virtual assistant, just wanted to encourage you to use your time off and be intentional about taking all of the time off and sometimes even more than you’re allotted every year.
00:05:18.100 –> 00:05:20.240
JEREMY: It’s just crucial for us to stay healthy.
00:05:21.500 –> 00:05:34.840
JEREMY: I once heard about Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and how he hadn’t taken a full week off in like 18 years.
00:05:35.380 –> 00:05:45.480
JEREMY: And the only week that he had taken the extended week off that he had taken in that time was due to the fact that he had malaria.
00:05:46.160 –> 00:05:47.060
JEREMY: And I just think that’s crazy.
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JEREMY: I think he obviously feels like the world revolves around him and that he can’t afford to take time off, according to that data in the New York Times article.
00:05:57.820 –> 00:05:59.420
JEREMY: So we can’t be like that.
00:05:59.440 –> 00:06:05.040
JEREMY: I love Tesla cars, and I think SpaceX is amazing, but don’t be like Elon.
00:06:05.440 –> 00:06:07.880
JEREMY: Don’t feel like the world revolves around you.
00:06:08.180 –> 00:06:10.440
JEREMY: Take your time off.
00:06:12.240 –> 00:06:20.760
JEREMY: And the last thing I’ll say is, if your executive or your boss is guilt tripping you, every time you take time off, confront them about that.
00:06:20.780 –> 00:06:21.760
JEREMY: Talk to them about that.
00:06:21.780 –> 00:06:23.080
JEREMY: Bring it up with HR.
00:06:23.520 –> 00:06:35.640
JEREMY: Say, listen, I’m not able to enjoy my time off, or I have a more difficult time having confidence to ask for time off, because every time I do, you say, oh, you’re going to be gone?
00:06:35.660 –> 00:06:36.340
JEREMY: Oh, great.
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JEREMY: What am I going to do?
00:06:38.000 –> 00:06:41.720
JEREMY: Or, oh, I can’t believe you were gone so long.
00:06:42.160 –> 00:06:45.300
JEREMY: Or, please don’t go that, don’t leave me for that long again.
00:06:45.660 –> 00:06:55.980
JEREMY: You know, it’s manipulative, guilt tripping notes like that, that you just can’t put up with and shrug off as not a big deal.
00:06:56.800 –> 00:06:58.440
JEREMY: So anyway, those are my thoughts.
00:06:58.940 –> 00:07:00.880
JEREMY: Take a day off every week at least.
00:07:01.220 –> 00:07:03.420
JEREMY: Hopefully, you can take two days off every week.
00:07:04.260 –> 00:07:06.600
JEREMY: Shut your email off in the evenings.
00:07:07.500 –> 00:07:10.560
JEREMY: But overall, take extended time off.
00:07:11.300 –> 00:07:20.200
JEREMY: Don’t let people make you feel like you’re not contributing or that you’re lazy because you took some time off.
00:07:20.760 –> 00:07:23.040
JEREMY: You got to take care of yourself if you want to be a leader.
00:07:23.400 –> 00:07:30.760
JEREMY: You’ve got to initiate those conversations about getting the time off and being okay with taking the time off.
00:07:31.280 –> 00:07:42.940
JEREMY: And you’ve got to really take care of yourself if you’re really going to take care of your work and serve your executive and be the leader that I know you can be.
00:07:44.180 –> 00:07:47.660
<v SPEAKER_1>Help my dad out and leave a review on iTunes.
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JEREMY: Thanks for listening.
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JEREMY: Check out today’s show notes at leaderassistant.com forward slash seven.
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<v SPEAKER_1>My dad is ticklish.
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<v SPEAKER_1>goburrows.com.
