Do You Have Vacation Resistance? — Medical Minds Consulting

I just returned from a lovely visit to my stepdaughter and her family. They are all back to school now that their summer has ended (they start school early in Louisiana, something I will never get used to). Growing up on the east coast, everyone knows summer ends after labor day!

With the end of summer comes the end of the high travel and vacation season. But some people don’t take a vacation in the summer, or hardly at all. This is not good for your long-term health and well-being. I’ve heard many reasons for this and will try to address them with some ideas for solutions.

“I don’t have time to plan and it seems pointless to just stay at home not working.”

First of all, as I discussed two weeks ago, time spent intentionally not working can be restorative by allowing your brain to focus on things that are important to you and bring value and meaning into your life. Being connected to your values has well-being benefits beyond the moment. If you end up taking a staycation, you can still benefit by taking that time to work on a home project or decluttering. This takes those tasks off your endless mental to-do list.

There are many ways to do a vacation without a lot of planning.

Join a tour that’s already planned out somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. Travel with friends who enjoy or have time to plan. Find a resort that has an all-inclusive package. Then you only have to plan the travel to get there. Everything else is taken care of (and that’s a relaxing feeling!).

You can ask friends or colleagues for their recommendations. There are also online tools, like TripAdvisor.com that can help you narrow your search by region, country, or activity.

“It’s too difficult when I get back, there’s so much work to catch up on. I feel like any benefit is totally chewed up before lunch the first day back.”

I used to try to maximize my vacation time, leaving the instant I could Saturday, or maybe even Friday, and then return home Sunday afternoon or evening, hardly ready to go back to work in the morning. I thought that by maximizing my “vacation” time I would get the most out of it. But I realized over time that this left me not quite ready to start my work week, with no time to unpack, do laundry, or do grocery shopping. If this happens to you, you can take a day on the front end if you need it to pack, and get back Saturday instead, so you have time to catch up on emails/office messages/chart stuff, not to mention your actual life.

“My patients/practice can’t manage without me.”

They actually can.

If your patients can’t manage without you, they need more education and more educational materials. (And you would benefit from better boundaries.)

By preventing your staff from managing without you, you may be keeping them from a learning opportunity. If you absolutely feel that you cannot trust your staff or covering partners, that’s an entirely different problem.

While it’s true that no one would do it exactly the way you would, that doesn’t mean they won’t be taken care of by a competent covering physician. And you might learn something useful by following what they do. You can always discuss ahead of time if you have special preferences, routine practices, or a particular patient who needs certain care while you’re away.

Also, you could think of planning for vacation as a nice timeout. It’s an opportunity to imagine or research what you will be doing on vacation. Brainstorm for activities and look into the ones that appeal to you. This way, you get a mini-vacation before your vacation (and a mini vacation after when you reflect on your experiences and photos.)

No one else in my group takes their full vacation allowance, how will it look if I do?

Hopefully, it will look like you’re setting a new, more healthy standard by prioritizing yourself, your family, and your life. What if everyone else wants more vacation but shares your concern? You could help them by being the first.

Vacation isn’t “just time to be lazy”. It’s time to enrich your life in different ways that will contribute to deeper, more meaningful experiences.

What ways have you used to create space for vacation?