How Much Time Off Do You Really Need to Recharge?

It's now easier than ever to take work with you. Team chats, calendars, work communication seeping into your messaging apps, and AI agents ready to take your command wherever you go - all of them ready to sap your attention and pull you right back into work anytime and anywhere, even on a hike. Having a chat app on your phone while you're on vacation increases the temptation to take a quick peek and then shuffle off right away. Then your eye catches a discussion on a topic that's in your realm or that you have opinions on, and your brain is already fully switched on, frantically typing up a response before you even know it.

None of this is a personal failing. It's structural. Remote and hybrid work removed the one thing that used to force an ending to the day: walking out a door. Now the phone is always in reach, whether you're at your desk or on a beach chair. Nobody taught us to be always-on. The tools did it, one notification at a time.

Still, many companies, founders, leaders, and employees struggle greatly with taking time off. For founders and leaders in particular, the idea of disconnecting from work, which is what taking time off is really about, can feel like a foreign concept. It's hard to consider not working, not hustling, and not keeping up to date with what's happening at work for fear of missing something important. Yet the data proves that unplugging from work is beneficial: people who take vacations and work standard hours are more creative, able to solve more complex problems, and generally more motivated.

So how much time off do you actually need? The answer is more specific than most people expect.

The eight days it takes to switch off

As a rule of thumb, assuming you're fully disconnected, it takes up to eight days to fully switch off, stop thinking of work, and reach peak levels of happiness and well-being. When you check in during those first couple of days away from work, the clock resets. If you need a week to fully switch to vacation mode and you check in on the third day, you now need a total of eleven days to get there. If you're away for two weeks, that leaves you four days to fully enjoy your vacation. That's not a lot.

This is why we advocate that people take at least two two-week vacations per year. It's the second week that matters.

Why we check in anyway

Leaders in particular fear they won't be there when their team needs them. Say there's an important decision that must be made in their absence, or a shift in priorities happens, or the site goes down. That comes from a desire to support the team, which is to be commended. But that desire lets work seep into much-needed time off.

Here's an uncomfortable reality: more often than not, things will be just fine when you're not around. Even in startups, the amount of activity in a two-week period is negligible in the big picture. You may be missing out on a few things, but it's not as much as you'd think (or as your ego hopes). And when leaders fully disconnect and let their team take the reins, they create a space for new leaders to emerge and for people to take on new responsibilities.

There's a second reason the check-in habit matters more for leaders. When you check into work during your time off, you set an example for your team. That example quickly turns into an expectation, regardless of whether you made it explicit. (You probably didn't, which makes it worse.) Your team sees you pop in and participate on your vacation, so they assume they're expected to do the same. Culture isn't determined by what you say - it's what you do. You must care for yourself as you want employees to care for themselves.

What has helped us over the years

Some of these may seem drastic, but that's only because we're all so attuned to taking our work wherever we go. These expectations are set because you care for your team, not because you want to behave like their parents.

1. Set clear expectations for yourself and your team. Let everyone know what norms to adhere to around vacation time. On our teams, a firm no-check-in rule prevents people from responding to emails and chats while they're on vacation. Before someone leaves, they document the status of their current projects and delegate any immediate tasks, which makes it less tempting to check in while they're gone. Real time away requires actual delegation, not just an out-of-office reply.
2. Determine and assign responsibilities. Decide who will make decisions in your absence, and take the time to write down the factors you consider when making decisions so your team can cover for you. Set up one person as an emergency contact, the only person who can reach you in a true crisis - and define what counts as a crisis. That definition creates a barrier that doesn't just set the right expectations. It also makes people think twice about whether they really need to involve you, or whether they can solve the problem on their own.
3. Remove everything work related from your phone. Remove any app you'd normally use to check in on work, disable push notifications for the ones you need to leave on, and disable work calendars and email accounts. Muting isn't enough, because phones are built to nag on our attention constantly, and our brains can't resist the dopamine hit of checking, just for one short moment, whether something new has come up. When the apps are gone, so is the temptation. You'll find that it's amazing and freeing.
4. Call people out who check in when they shouldn't. Kindly, and in private rather than in public. A direct message along the lines of "I noticed you were participating from your work accounts. You're setting an example for your team that it's okay, and maybe even expected, to stay connected when they should be recharging. Please don't check in any further, and enjoy your vacation instead" does more for the culture than any policy document.

If you know you'll check in anyway

Our recommendation stands: don't check in at all, and live the example. But we've both lived the other side of this long enough to know that an all-or-nothing rule you'll break by day two isn't a boundary - it's a setup. If you know you'll still check in, plan for it honestly. Pick one time of day you'll look at your email or chat, name a single emergency channel, and let everything else wait. That's a boundary you can keep.

The same honesty applies to the return. Resist punishing the trip afterward by clearing hundreds of emails overnight. That just teaches your nervous system that leaving has a price - and the whole point of the vacation was to stop paying it.

The difference between these fallbacks and the always-on reflex is intention. Whether you fully disconnect or deliberately plan a daily check-in, what matters is that you do it on purpose, not by default.

Whose responsibility rest really is

In our view of an intentional organization, an employer has an equal responsibility for the health and well-being of their employees as they have for paying them a fair salary. Individuals aren't always able to work in their best interest. Group and power dynamics might keep them from staying healthy and instead may foster burnout. It's the organization that has to remove any barriers that might keep an employee from taking needed time off.

Consider that it's likely cheaper to give your employees proper time off to recharge than it is to hire and train new people to take their place after they've left due to burnout. Work doesn't have to destroy us, and taking real, unplugged time off is one of the places where that stops being a belief and becomes a practice.

---

Reflections

Reflect: When was the last time you fully unplugged from work and took a vacation? Does your team take regular breaks to unplug? What policies and processes exist within your organization to encourage positive behaviors around taking time off?

Assess: When you last took time off, did you fully unplug? How did you set a good example for your team? Are you aware of when your direct employees will next take time off?

Do: Review your team's upcoming vacation plans. If some team members don't have anything scheduled, talk with them and encourage them to plan a vacation.