You have finally closed the laptop. Your out-of-office reply is on, your diary is empty, and the summer break you have been looking forward to has begun.
So why can’t you relax?
Instead of relief, you feel restless. You check your phone. You begin planning activities. Perhaps you tell yourself that you are only monitoring an important project, yet within minutes you are back inside the world you intended to leave behind.
The German term Freizeitstress describes the stress created by free time. When we become accustomed to relentless activity, an empty diary can feel less like freedom and more like a threat.
For leaders, this can be particularly acute. Work provides structure, status, and a steady stream of problems to solve. It offers the reassurance of feeling useful. When those demands temporarily recede, you are left without the activity that normally tells you who you are and why you matter.
Busyness then becomes more than a workload. It becomes a coping strategy.
When rest becomes another performance target
Often influenced by an unconscious fear of free time, many successful professionals approach their holidays exactly as they approach work.
Days are optimized. Experiences are scheduled. Restaurants are researched, exercise must produce measurable results, and every destination comes with a list of things that must be seen.
In this state, even rest becomes something to achieve.
You may be sitting beside a pool while mentally rehearsing your return-to-work priorities. You may be having dinner with your family while watching notifications appear on your phone. You are physically away, but psychologically still at work.
This matters because time away does not automatically create recovery. If you remain alert, available, and mentally occupied, your surroundings may have changed, but your internal state has not.
Leaders sometimes justify this by saying that their role gives them no choice. While there may be some truth in that, external demands are only part of the story. Perfectionism, fear of falling behind, and the need to feel indispensable can keep us connected long after anyone has asked us to be.
The result is that we return from vacation having stopped work, but never having truly rested.
Use your discomfort rather than escaping it
The temptation is to treat this as another problem to solve by imposing a digital detox, booking a wellness retreat, or constructing the perfect relaxation routine.
These things may help. But they can also become further attempts to control the space rather than understand what it is revealing.
So if you’re approaching time off, why not instead allow your summer break to create a pause? Within that pause, ask yourself three questions.
Who am I?
Leadership roles easily become identities. Over time, the job title, responsibility, and recognition can become entangled with your sense of self.
When work recedes, notice what remains. Who are you when you are not making decisions, solving problems, or meeting other people’s expectations?
This does not require a dramatic identity crisis. Start by doing something you enjoy without needing to be good at it. Cook badly. Read something with no professional value. Walk without tracking the distance.
The key here is to reconnect with the parts of yourself that have been crowded out by your working life.
Why am I here?
This question is about purpose, but it does not require a grand purpose statement.
Ask instead what genuinely deserves your finite time and energy. Who matters to you? What contribution do you want to make? What has been repeatedly pushed aside because something more urgent appeared?
A break gives you enough distance to see whether your working life supports what matters or merely consumes your attention.
Once you’ve identified what really matters, try focusing in on this. It could be as simple as choosing one person or activity that deserves more of you and give it your full presence. Put the phone away. Stop trying to combine connection with productivity. For that period, let being there be enough.
How will I live?
Insight becomes useful only when it changes how you live.
Consider what you want to carry back from your break. Perhaps you want to be less reactive, create firmer boundaries, or stop treating every request as equally important.
Make the change small and specific. Remove one recurring meeting. Protect an hour each week for uninterrupted thought. Establish an evening in which you no longer check email. Delegate something that has remained with you because being needed feels reassuring.
The goal is not to design a perfect life during a two-week vacation. It is to make one conscious choice about how you will use your time differently.
Leave some space unfilled
True rest may initially feel uncomfortable. That does not mean you are doing it badly. It may simply mean that your mind is adjusting to the absence of stimulation, urgency, and validation.
Resist the instinct to fill every gap. Protect some unscheduled time and allow yourself to be bored. Notice the impulse to reach for your phone without automatically obeying it.
The most effective leaders do not simply manage their energy so they can return and produce more. They recognize that rest restores perspective, presence, and the ability to choose consciously.
Your summer break is not another performance target, and free space is not something to fear. It is an opportunity to step away from who work requires you to be and reconnect with the person you want to become.
The question is not whether you can stop being busy for a few days.
It is whether, in the space that follows, you are willing to hear what your life is telling you.
