Throw your phone in the ocean & other thoughts on taking PTO

Welcome back to The Cint Bulletin! A bi-weekly newsletter feeding the world’s curiosity - delivered to your LinkedIn inbox personally by Cint CEO Giles Palmer.

You may have noticed that two weeks ago we actually didn’t have an edition come out.?

That’s because we were enjoying some time off on holiday!?

(And - as August is a very popular month for taking holiday - probably many of you were too!)?

Which perfectly tees up today’s key topics:?

• The importance of taking holidays - personally and professionally
• How to determine the best time to use your PTO
• Navigating leadership of a global workforce where there are distinctly different cultural norms surrounding taking holidays across different geos
• Whose responsibility preventing burnout is: the individual employee or the company where they work?

For today’s edition about talking PTO, I'll try not to make generic happy points around why it is important to take a break and all that sort of stuff. We’re going to dive deeper.?

Why should we go on holiday?

Or, Reading novels, standing on tables, and getting to the root of creativity

I was just sailing around Sicily for two weeks and it was wonderful.?

I went swimming, got sunburnt, had lots of good chats, drank too much rosé, and read a really fabulous book.?

A key piece of taking holidays is the ability to come out of the regulatory framework of a calendar, the to do list, and everything that comes with leading a public company - market announcements every quarter and board meetings, etc. - and just having the time to read and escape.

When I read a novel in particular, I can get completely lost and disappear into this world that the author created.

But even while immersed in this completely alien place, there are often things in the prose that make me pause and have an aha moment where what’s happening on the page relates to what’s happening in the real world off the page.?

This trip I read “Kafka on the Shore” by Murakami, a Japanese author who writes pseudo fiction-fantasy-philosophy.?

I've bookmarked about ten different pages that I want to go back and reread because, for some reason, a quote resonated either with my personal life or my professional life.

When I read - especially with Science Fiction actually - this happens a lot. I will make a join between some science fiction idea or concept with what is going on in my life. I find that moving away from your calendar, your schedule, your task list, and into another place altogether helps you create these joins.?

These joins, for me, are the root of creativity.

It sounds counterintuitive, but in many ways the time away from work - taking that PTO, going on holiday, changing your surroundings and routine - actually ties back into helping you when you’re back at your desk and in the swing of normalcy.?

Before Cint, I ran my own business, so I have an owner mindset when it comes to work.?

I think it's a really good mindset to have in general, no matter what your role is today or what you've done in the past, because when you feel like the business that you're part of is somehow partly owned by you. The more you feel connected to the work that you're doing; the more rewarding that work is.?

I find it very energizing that in taking a break - going completely away and experiencing new places, creating new connections, having conversations with different people, reading some books - you can apply newfound perspectives back into your work.?

When I step outside my day-to-day, I get the opportunity to see the world in a slightly different way. And I see the business in a slightly different way too: There's another possibility that's opened up, another idea that's potentially leading to future paths and branches of innovation, and a newness in that reimagining process. Even at a very small scale, this is remarkably rewarding.?

So, yes, just getting away, spending time with family and friends, swimming, doing stuff that you wouldn't do on a daily basis that you love doing is 100% wonderful. But, on top of that, I love the idea that taking holiday means being able to look at the world and the work you do through a different lens, in a different context.?

I'm in a boardroom right now.?

If I was to get up from this chair, stand on the desk and look at the surroundings from a completely different angle, I would get a different point of view. And it's that, but in your head.

Step into your choice: Pressing ‘pause’ on the never-ending to-do list?

My advice for people mentally struggling to rationalize taking PTO because there's always so many things that need to be done is to just do it.?

I’ve heard people say, “I haven't had a holiday for four years” and I'm astonished! I just think “Why?! Why have you not had a holiday for four years?”?

There are zero reasons - in my mind - why you can't take a holiday within a four year period. That sounds like a choice rather than something that is being done to you.

So that's the place to start: Step into your choice.?

Be your own agent, grab your agency, take control of your own decisions and your own life.?

There’s never going to be a perfect time to take a vacation, so I start by thinking:?

What do I love doing? When and where can I do that thing?

Personally, I love skiing. The ski season is limited, so I'm going to book at least one week in that January to March window pretty much every year. And I'm going to do that reasonably early, like, now-ish (August). Firstly, because I get more choice of where to go. Secondly, because I can look at my calendar to see what I have coming up that would potentially conflict and then pick a week that doesn’t have anything booked in yet and block that time out to go skiing!?

Living as a Brit in the UK, the summers can be a little bit hit and miss, and the rest of the year is gray, so it’s good to get out and soak up some sun. August is quite a quiet time in Europe. So, as a European, that's another great month to take a holiday!?

As I’m planning my year, I know well in advance I’m going to be going somewhere to ski between Jan and March, somewhere to swim in August, and then a week at Christmas. I've got 3 of my 5 or 6 weeks already sort of sorted and blocked out in my calendar.?

So that's the first thing:

Own it, figure out what you love, book it.

Turning on the Out-Of-Office (and really being out of office)?

Once you’ve blocked out the time in advance, then look at your teams and your responsibilities, and get more into the weeds of how you organize your workload, your team, your schedule, so that you can comfortably take a week or two consecutively without anything falling apart or you coming back to 800 emails.

There’s nothing worse than going on holiday and then feeling like you have to check your e-mail constantly or be on calls twice a day.?

But, if you plan well ahead of time and have clear communication with your teammates, you can set the holiday up for minimum stress and truly be offline while you’re away!?

PTO policies and the cross-geo cultural divide

Leading a global company, it is evident that there are starkly different attitudes towards taking PTO across different geos.?

Take the US compared to Europe as an example.?

When we think about work-culture in the US vs Europe, I’m convinced that the US workforce as a whole puts in more work hours and works harder.

At my previous company, we had an office in New York and those people were always working the longest hours and were getting the most accomplished. It definitely fit the stereotype of the grind culture associated with big cities in the US: show up early, stay late, keep a competitive edge, be a top performer.?

On top of that, when I entered the workforce, the typical US worker also only was given two weeks holiday a year - 10 days. That would be honestly astonishing in Europe!

Here 25 is average. 20 does happen, but not very much, and 30 is not uncommon. And we're comparing that to just 10 days!?

So it's really quite different. From a European perspective, we look at the American way - especially that 10 day, 2 week vacation allowance - and think that's just crazy:?

When do you ever take any time off? When do you ever spend your time with your family? When do you do the things that fill your cup and reset your mind away from the office? How do you maintain a quality of life?

Ten days off is simply way too few.?

However, then there’s this other thing that’s come up more recently which is ‘unlimited time off’.

I struggle with that concept because what does that really mean? Just do your job and then you can take the rest of the time off? Is your job really that boxed that you can write down exactly what your job is and know when it's done? Or what if it’s never ‘done’, then do you never take time off??

We just talked about how there’s never a perfect time to take vacation, so I find the concept of unlimited time off to be very bizarre and unregulated. Especially when leading a global taskforce where the cultural norms around taking vacation time are so varied.?

But that’s just my personal opinion, I'd love to see what people say in the comments!!

Looking at it from a global workforce lens, I think it’s tougher for Americans working in a global company where your European colleagues suddenly disappear for three weeks over the summer than the other way around.?

(In general, I think facing the European work culture is more challenging for Americans than the other way around too…)

And there’s not much that can be done about that as a global leader other than make sure we have standard holidays across the company, and leave it up to the individual employees to determine what works best for them - to lean into their choice and make it.

If people don’t take their PTO, they’ll get paid out for it at the end of the year or when they leave, so in general it all hopefully works out in the end.?

A new cross-generation divide

Going beyond the differences in work-life balance and vacation culture globally, there’s a new mindset shift that is forming a divide between generations of workers.?

I’ve noticed what seems like push-back against some of the norms of grind culture that has led to a sense of entitlement around time off and a general desire to work less.?

It will be interesting to see how this trend continues - or if it continues - and the impact it will have on the future of work-culture, PTO policies, the definition of work-life balance, etc on a global scale.

Throw your phone in the ocean!

(Okay, no, don’t really do that… but do put it down)?

My last thought on taking time off before wrapping the day is whenever and wherever you’re going offline, really be offline. Put down the phone.?

I’ve got kids who are in their early twenties and they're just glued to their phones. All the time.

But being on holiday is such a great opportunity to try and get away from all that.?

You don't need to be on email. You don't need to be online. You don't need to be on top of your work. You definitely don’t need to be on social media.

Mobile phones just get in the way of people actually being with each other.?

They get in the way of truly checking out of the day-to-day and being present in a new space.?

They get in the way of that creative thinking taking time out can release.

Book that vacation. Put the phone down. Read a good book. Go swimming (don't get sunburnt). Come back refreshed and ready to keep going!?

See you back here in two weeks,

- Giles