Importance of holidays

Like anything, academia has a healthy mix of advantages and disadvantages. One of those disadvantages is that the to do list is never-ending (and, usually, of one’s own making). That list can loom over us and make us feel like we always need to be working, whether that be when we’re trying to relax in the evenings/weekends, or when we’re away on holiday. This summer, I took a full 3 weeks of holiday; for the first 2 weeks of those, I was in the middle of a forest without cell or internet service, the easiest (but also most extreme) way to force myself to take a proper break. Not working for 3 weeks did much more for my productivity than if I had used a few hours here and there on holiday to keep on top of my inbox.

My idea of a holiday might not be the same as yours. I had had my eye on a particular portaging route for many years. For those unacquainted, portaging is the act of realizing you need to get your canoe from one lake to the next and that the easiest way to do that is to put it over you head and carry it through the forest. A portaging/canoe route is when you decide to do this (lake/river to forest to lake/river) repeatedly until you forget why you thought it was fun in the first place. The Meanest Link is a 420km canoe route (with a really interesting history) that circumnavigates Algonquin Park, one of my most favourite places on earth. I had wanted to attempt this route for ~10 years, but academia kept getting in the way. The route itself would take ~14 days and the planning (i.e. food/equipment/route/emergency prep) would be extensive. As I went from PhD student to Postdoc to PI, the goal of doing it felt further out of reach.

Being away from the lab for so long felt daunting. I felt guilty not working when members of the lab were working tirelessly towards our collective goals. I worried my colleagues might judge the length of time I was physically absent from the building. But mostly, I worried that a request would come in that needed to be dealt with “asap” and it would go unread. The vast majority of the route is out of cell service, but the 12 hour days of paddling and portaging wouldn’t allow much time to answer emails anyway. My initial idea was to plan a Meanest Link attempt between ending my PhD and starting my Postdoc so that I wouldn’t be beholden to any one/any institution (I cycled across the east coast of Canada instead). Then, I thought I’d do it as my Postdoc contract ended and before I started my own group (the covid pandemic ruined these plans).

But this year, I was sick of waiting. I was embarrassed that I once thought that I would have to be between contracts to do something like this that meant so much to me. On paper, this was the worst year to plan a 2-week portage trip: the lab was growing (6 new starters in the last 8 months), I needed to get a few manuscript drafts off my desk (though don’t we all?), and I had just moved house. It took months of planning, dehydrating food, kit buying, dehydrating, and more planning (and dehydrating). The trip was absolutely amazing; hard work, but the kind that I’m already itching to return back to.

The lab didn’t disintegrate. There were no emergencies. I don’t think many colleagues even noticed I was away. But even more importantly, time away gave me so much clarity. For the first time in years, I felt able to zoom out from the everyday to get a true idea of the purpose of the science that we’re doing and the bigger ethos of the lab. Yes, my to do list was still there and my inbox full, but it was all-of-a-sudden easier to bash through tasks and procrastination was less enticing. It was easier to “eat the frog” and to set priorities that I could stick to.

And that feeling has lasted, 2 months later.

Was this an excuse to shower you with images of the Northern Ontario wilderness that I love so much? Possibly. But I do feel strongly that presenteeism and working when one’s burnt out are the downfalls of modern academia. We need to be creative; we need to think critically about our own results/experiments (and those of others). And we simply can’t have strokes of inspiration when we’re just going through the motions. Time away from the lab makes you a better scientist.

I really hope that I’m preaching to the choir; I hope you’ve read this and felt like it was a waste of your time because you knew it all already. But if not: go book that time off. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive - just get out of your routines and your inbox - let your mind wander. And let it be creative.