Hello from my day off!
I may or may not be typing this from the comfort of my bed, empty La Croix cans lined up on my bedside table. My toddler is at school, my spouse is at his office. The house is quiet, and I can work on my little newsletter in peace.
This may be my ideal vacation day.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between work, vacation, and what work we find ourselves doing on vacation, because I recently published a piece for NPR about just that. I focused specifically on doctors, because that’s what I do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most Americans in all lines of work struggle to take real time off of work.
I’d be honored if you give it a read and let me know what you think.
I’ve always been interested in the topic of how and how often we truly separate ourselves from work, and it was a ton of fun talking to other doctors about their philosophies about PTO. In addition to the folks I formally interviewed for the piece, I talked to dozens of friends and colleagues off the cuff. People have feelings about this topic.
One common theme? Work like what I’m doing right now – pecking away at the keyboard for you wonderful readers – often sneaks into vacation time.
Many of the physicians I interviewed had similar stories. They found themselves revising research manuscripts on vacation time, or publishing Tweetorials. The work that they aren’t necessarily paid for is what sneaks into vacation time, the work they do for free just because they like it.
Is this so bad? I clearly don’t think so; I’m doing it right now. This writing feels somewhere between a hobby and work; it’s most certainly not what I’m paid to do by my employer. Although I’m lucky to be paid for much of my writing for major news outlets, it’s not how I make a living.
What feels special about writing is that I get to do it on my own terms. Nobody is telling me I have to. I just want to write, I always have. That’s what makes me feel okay using my vacation time for writing projects. In fact, I have to, else I’d never have time. Part of what I take vacation for is to get writing done.
I have always thought that my writing feels a little different from a hobby, like, say, cooking or gardening, and I think it’s worth digging in to how I feel when I spend my PTO writing versus cooking or gardening.
It doesn’t exactly feel like work in the same way that seeing 25 patients in a row does. But it doesn’t exactly feel relaxing. I have skin in the game with writing, I have ego. When I work on my tiny rooftop garden, I want it to flourish, sure, but I don’t feel like my sense of self is wrapped up in it if some of my flowers die.
This phenomenon is something I recognized in many of the physicians I interviewed for the NPR piece who described work of this nature taking up their vacation time: it was often medicine-adjacent stuff that crept into vacation, work related to their doctor identities even if it wasn’t anything they were told to do or paid to do. Writing takes on that role for me, since I mostly write about topics related to my practice of medicine.
Editing a paper, crafting a clever social media post, appearing on CNN. (Those were all things that doctors I spoke to did during their “time off.”) Don’t all those tasks feel a little qualitatively different than, say, spending your vacation day reading a romance novel by the pool? Or even something “productive” but not related to professional life in any way – like baking a loaf of Challah, or crocheting a scarf?
What’s going on that so many of us – including your trusty narrator here – spend our time away from paid work tending to our professional identities, our professional egos? Couldn’t I just do the work I’m paid to do, wouldn’t that be enough?
This work-adjacent work – the unpaid stuff that my boss doesn’t tell me to do yet feels related, at its core, to my paid role as a physician – brings meaning to my life. The writing I do helps me find a sense of purpose in my work as a doctor, which sometimes feels painfully slow and incremental.
Still, I think truly disconnecting from both paid work and unpaid ego work is very important. I am lucky to have pretty generous vacation time, by American standards, and I use plenty of it for completely work-free pursuits. It is so important to my perception of myself as a full, complete human with an identity beyond my role as a physician.
But without some of my vacation time spent writing, I’d never get anything done.
What’s your philosophy about vacation time? Do you find ways to totally disconnect from your paid work? What about unpaid work?
PS: Thanks to my amazing colleagues for covering my electronic medical record inbox when I’m out. I’ll get you back!!