| Sunday, 15 June 2025 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
It’s nice to be back in your inbox after a two-week break. I had a lovely vacation and am suitably recharged and re-energised!
I came back after being away from work for 12 days. And yet, I did not feel guilty, backlogged, or anxious because of what may have happened while I was away or all the pending emails and to-dos that would have piled up.
One reason is I’ve got a great bunch of colleagues who held the fort.
A younger me might’ve been a tad insecure. If no one really missed or needed me, then was I really even needed?
But the older me is thrilled. It’s great that I was (hopefully) not missed or needed. As a founder though, is there a higher rung in Maslow’s hierarchy of entrepreneurship than having your colleagues run the entire show? I don’t think so.
Thanks to my wonderful colleagues, I’ve become emboldened in my out-of-office responses too. I no longer provide the exact period of my vacation, but only say when I’ll be back in the office. I tell people that they should email me again once I’m back at work, instead of expecting me to clear and answer all backlogged emails received when I was on vacation. I also tell them to contact a colleague only if they need help with something urgent.
Over the decades, we’ve taken on too much unneeded stress by treating every email addressed to us as our burden to bear.
Vacations and breaks deserve our full and undivided attention. They’re not merely “time when work is not getting done,” but time we invest to have fun, be with family, and explore the world.
It’s not just me saying it, here’s HBR (ha, this is First Principles after all!):
Shift your mindset. First, ditch the myopic view of breaks as time when work is not getting done in favor of one where breaks are time invested into future work and the people who enable it. Instead of counting lost minutes, appreciate the broad returns: employees who perform better after short breaks and, longer term, are less likely to burn out or quit.
[…]
Breaks are not obstacles to greatness. They are part of its foundation. When individuals get the downtime they need, they return sharper, more creative, and more engaged. When teams normalize breaks, they collaborate more effectively and sustain their performance. And when organizations embed recovery into their culture, they unlock long-term resilience, innovation, and retention.
A Guide to Taking Better Breaks at Work by Kira Schabram and Christopher M. Barnes
Anyhoo, while settling back into work after the vacation was breezy, back at home we had to face the tragedy of our fully grown mango tree dying. All its leaves—and I mean every single one—had turned brown and curled up. The mangoes that were ripening on its branches were still there, but they were shriveled and browned.
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