How a Vacation and a Tiny Pack of Earplugs Changed My WorK Life

I was a on a beach vacation a few years ago, trying to unplug from my very busy work schedule. I was the epitome of the cliché of the early stage startup executive—I was working too hard and too much and not sleeping at all, trying to manage my work responsibilities and the relentlessness of what felt like “being needed all the time by everyone.” I work fast, but the work came in faster, the emails never stopped, and my Type A self was driven to new levels of stress, high blood pressure, and teeth grinding in my sleep, trying to be responsive and helpful to everyone and everything coming at me every day (and trying to keep my email inbox at zero!) and mostly succeeding but sometimes failing miserably, enough to make me keep trying harder.

So there I was, on vacation trying to insert some equilibrium back into my life, and I was annoyed and cursing under my breath in my beach chair because I was trying to lay quietly in the sun, trying to listen to the waves crashing on the beach, so I could finally relax, and I kept hearing the conversations of the people walking by my chair instead. I have never been the type of person who can tune out other people well, I have been a people-pleaser all my life, and so I am usually attuned to the wants/needs of others before myself (though now this is something I am very actively working on!). But this particular day, I wanted to rest! And kept getting interrupted! And so I grumbled to my spouse under my breath about how annoyed I was that I couldn’t relax with all these people around me talking. And lo and behold, like the king of self-care, he reached into his bag and held up a new packet of earplugs. “Want these?” he said. “I guess.” I said, begrudgingly putting them in, blocking out both the conversations and the sound of the waves almost instantly. Within 10 minutes, I was asleep on my beach chair, napping peacefully in the sun (with copious amounts of high SPF sunscreen on and under a towel and an umbrella, I am a redhead, after all!).

When I woke up rested, I realized what had happened and said to my spouse, “I need earplugs for work.” What I meant—”I need a way to turn off the noise and the relentlessness of being “needed” all the time.” I needed to stop letting the work control me and start controlling the work.

And so, when I got home from vacation, I stared at my email inbox and my calendar and I made two very big changes. 1) I blocked 3 slots on my daily work calendar for email. 45-60 minutes each. One first thing in the morning, one late morning/ early afternoon, one end of day. I started only checking my email during these time slots, instead of having it on a tab open all day (and then responding all day). It turns out by giving emails certain time blocks, I was more focused on them and able to handle them more effectively, efficiently and more easily, and handled them all within those time blocks every day. It also meant that I was able to tune in to my meetings, calls, and work tasks more fully, and with far less distraction without that email tab dinging upwards all the time and distracting me as I tried to respond and pay attention to the meeting at the same time. 2) I started using the true concepts of inbox-zero to maintain control of my inbox. I would delete emails that were unnecessary/spam immediately, I would delegate emails through forwarding that weren’t my direct responsibility, I would defer it to another day or time frame using the SNOOZE EMAIL feature (the ACTUAL BEST THING for Type-A zero inboxers!), or address it/respond/do the task immediately until they were all cleared out. (For real though, use your snooze email button. It allows you to decide which things you have to do/emails you have to address by the end of today, and which ones can wait to act as a reminder to you until just before that meeting next Tuesday, etc. You’ll start to notice that you have email days that are heavier and redirect some of those less-urgent emails to your lighter email days. It’s a version of kicking the can down the road that is professionally helpful—it actually allows you to focus on the present—what is required TODAY by end of day? Do that thing. The rest can wait! I know this is so hard to believe, but try it with some lower-stakes emails and you’ll see how much it can help clear out your email inbox and get things in order and then you can feel more comfortable expanding to other emails!).

By changing these two ways of interacting with my email inbox, I changed my work patterns, and even I was surprised by how effective it was in giving me back my attention and lowering my stress levels. I essentially put “earplugs” on with regard to my email so I couldn’t be distracted by responding to it all day every day, and could focus/take care of what I needed to take care of today. And ended up taking better care of myself in the process.

Lessons of this story: 1) take your vacations, they allow you to step away and think differently about your work, and 2) putting boundaries around your email (or any other repetitive work tasks) will put you more in charge of your work, instead of your work being in charge of you. Try it!