I’ve never taken a true vacation in my entire career. Even on the beach, I’m “just checking in” and refreshing my inbox between margaritas, jumping on quick calls that last an hour. Everyone says to unplug, but the guilt hits the second I see a new email notification. It’s like I’ve been conditioned to equate rest with irresponsibility. Is it even possible to truly disconnect in this job? How do you do it?

Yes it is if your group/firm’s culture allows it. Do other associates also respond like you do when on vacation? If so it’s probably a firm problem. If not, it’s a you problem and you need to figure out better boundaries. I lateraled to a firm that allows true unplugging and those who draw hard boundaries will travel abroad for two weeks and literally not take their work laptops. Others, mostly partners, will take two week vacations and say they’re only going to check email once or twice a day. Best practices are 1) arrange coverage for all your matters, 2) be upfront about how disconnected you will be, 3) send reminders leading up to your vacation, and 4) enforce the boundary by leaving work devices where you can’t use them.

I had a friend from law school like that. Surprisingly, his second wife wrote very nice things about him in his obituary.

Just stop doing what you’ve been doing. When a quick call invite comes in say “no”

You are responsible for establishing and enforcing these boundaries. Nobody else will do it for you.

One thing you can do is to plan and prepare for your PTO. Talk to the person or people who are managing your work in advance, let them know when you will be out, and ask them if they want you to find people to cover or if they have someone in mind. Talk to those people, share relevant background info and instructions, and thank them. Then when you're out if you're getting blown up, you can say "I'm out this week but X is covering this matter for me."

If your firm doesn't have a culture of helping each other out so that you can actually take vacation, that should be a red flag. You can try to be a leader in building that, but sometimes it's a clue you should look elsewhere for a job.

Specifically take vacations off the grid. Hard to take a meeting if you're backpacking somewhere remote.

I have the same problem you do. When I go on vacation, I turn my email notifications off and I designate one time each day (usually early in the morning before my family is awake) to check emails, sort them into sub-folders, flag for follow-up, etc. It is a way better system than constantly checking, and if there’s an emergency my staff knows they can text me.

It absolutely is possible BUT I’m sorry to have to say, and I say this with the utmost empathy and kindness (as someone who has beared that kind of guilt), until you deal with the guilt you’ll never truly disconnect. The guilt is usually tied to a deep seated vow or belief - some would call it an agreement. You may have already named the part of it that crests above the surface of those deep waters - rest equates with irresponsibility. Until you dig into that agreement/belief and its source and break the agreement, you’ll struggle with the guilt and be unable to fully break away on vacation.

It won’t be easy - but it is 100% worth doing the work. Sometimes the internal agreements we make result in highly productive, highly praised behaviors and, as a result, we come to the (false) conclusion that the cost (in your case the the guilt and inability to be fully present on vacation) is actually worth it. It isn’t.

The fact that your internal flashlight is turning its light towards m the issue is a great first step.

On vacation, I check a couple times a day but don’t respond to anything non urgent. At a bare minimum, turn your email notifications off. Also try leaving phone in the room for dinners and outings. Works wonders. And definitely set an out of office.

I need to point out that there is no such thing as the "vacation police." Unless you live around the corner from your workplace or they have literally lowjacked your body, just tell them you are going to be without service in the location that makes the most sense and stay off social media. No one at the firm and none of your clients are going to be there for you when you blow a stroke. And neither will your spouse or family if you don't pay attention to them because you will be their ex-spouse or that weird relative that they only see every other holiday for a few hours. Don't be that person...

Other than a couple of random off the grid trips (Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and some extremely remote islands in the Phillipines), I've never been totally disconnected, but I have always managed to take 6-ish weeks off every year, and limit my calls/emails to no more than an hour/day, which I find to be a fair trade-off.

Going in house solved this for me. I set my OOO auto response email and make sure my team is covering me, and that’s it. But I’ve been at companies that respect and encourage PTO.

I feel very compelled to respond to this as it's something I have battled with for all 15 years that I've been practicing. As an associate, it does feel impossible to be truly disconnected (I worked in a firm for 7ish years before going in-house). Gone are the days where you can say you won't have service while you're away--people know they can get you at any time anywhere. But taking vacations that allow for you to unplug is VITAL. I legitimately just took my first vacation last week where I went days without checking my work phone. It was amazing. Some nights while I was away, I would give myself 15 minutes to go through my inbox and I asked my husband to hold me to it. There is nothing in our practice (from my experience) that is life or death. There are people available to cover you while you're out. Things can absolutely wait until you get back. Plan vacations and set expectations for while you're out. Tell your boss when you plan to check email while you're out, but make it once a day in the morning or at night. Nothing is worth giving up your vacation time. You've earned it. It used to be that we wore our 24/7 work grind as a badge of honor, but the world is changing and we need to start letting that go.

I’ve been feeling the same way. They give us “unlimited PTO” but at the end of the month you still have to meet your billable requirement so PTO is never really PTO. I hate this career and want out. I want a job that allows me to actually log off at the end of the day or on the weekend.

Nope. Your social life is over.

I finally got a mostly-off vacation this year. It was more like a wellness retreat that my wife set up - and in hindsight was basically a $15k soft intervention. I told people I was leaving the country and was available via Sat phone for $1/minute if something caught on fire. No one called. I indulged a little work when it was not disruptive and I found WiFi and it seemed valuable to me, but was mostly offline for the first time more than a weekend in 12 years. It was life changing. The energy healer added 20 mins to my session for free because I was so f’ed up. I cried. It was bad. But it was an actual reset.


We have unlimited vacation, so I don’t track my usage, but my wife has about 4 weeks pto, and usually burns half on random days off or around the holidays, so I’d say I maybe otherwise take about 2 weeks/yr off and I’m definitely on call and working for most of that.

Might I recommend my approach? At 5:00 pm the day before a vacation, I close my computer, put my phone on DND and say, “Fu—— this job. Fu—- them clients.” I pretend none of it exists in my vacation time. Then at like 7:00 am the day I am to return to work I say, “Let’s get this bread.” And lock back in. SURE the days leading up to vacation and returning are a little hectic but it is worth it to totally unplug.

Please take your vacation time and disconnect from work. An attorney I worked for attended depositions by phone, court events like pretrials, talked with experts and opposing counsel, etc. and when he came back to the office, he was crabby and stressed when he should have been relaxed and refreshed. Be confident that your coworkers and staff can handle things when you are out of the office.

I guarantee your teams feel the weight of you sitting on the beach drinking margaritas, so you have created the worst of both worlds - you’re gone and don’t get the benefit of feeling like you’re gone. Associates tell me the same line all the time and I’m like you’ve had 5 weekend trips, weddings, a bunch of other unavailable time, and the reason you feel like you haven’t had a “vacation” isn’t my fault.

I was like this, and then I read Kendra Adashi, the plan. I strongly recommend it.

You get a job in-house