"Sometimes you need to rest." Letter from the editor-in-chief of Lifehacker

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Tips for those who want to plan everything competently.

Lifehacker has a Telegram channel "", where my team and I talk about our work. I recently shared a guide on how to properly go on vacation for an editor. And then I realized that the advice is useful not only for those who work with text. Save to bookmarks. So how do you organize this?

1. Accept that sometimes you need to rest

The hardest part of going on vacation is when you are passionate about what you do and are in charge of an important project. What if I leave and everything falls apart? Plan your business wisely and there will be no nightmare. But it will definitely happen if you don't rest, burn out and hate your job. Do not do like this.

2. Notify the manager in advance, if you have one, or customers

In adequate companies, the bosses are usually aware that people sometimes want to rest, and painlessly let employees go. But this is not always the case: once I was told a story about a girl who hadn’t vacationed for a year because her boss asked her to find a replacement on the side on her own. What? Yes! It is better to leave such a company not on vacation, but forever. Check with your manager what you need to take a vacation, what payments you are entitled to and how best to organize work in your absence. If you are your own boss, warn customers and everyone who may depend on the results of your work in advance about a temporary break.

3. Write down all your tasks

Anything not urgent can wait for your return. The urgent business and daily routine should be distributed among the rest of the employees. Ideally, you need to do this with your supervisor. Perhaps, somewhere you need to make small preparations so that your absence goes unnoticed for colleagues, and some tasks can be paused altogether - be sure to discuss all the options. It is better to postpone the launch of new projects for which you are especially worried.

4. Warn other colleagues and assign responsibilities

If possible, do not shift everything to one person, otherwise two weeks of your vacation will become hell for him. Check if everyone understands what to do.

5. On the shore, agree if you can be disturbed if something does not go according to plan

Please note that due to constant twitching, you may not rest at all. But sometimes it's easier to know that if something happens, they will call you, and since they don't call, everything is in order. The compromise is to agree that you will only read messages from one of your colleagues or receive calls at a strictly defined time.

6. Set up your email

It will be great if in an automatic message you indicate how long you will be away and who you can contact while you are not there. You can also make a post on social networks in which you leave your colleagues' contacts for communication. So not a single business letter will fly away into the void.

7. Do not try to complete all tasks on the last working day

Accept that you will not have time to do everything at once (that is why it is important to prepare for a vacation in advance). If at the last moment you realized that you are not doing something important, try postponing the deadline or think about who you can delegate the task to.

8. Relax

It's not for me to teach you how to do this. Just try to spend your vacation in a way that you miss work.