HR, the office and your own time

“Enjoy your vacation! Just... keep an eye on Slack”

I haven't taken a real vacation in over a year because there's never a good time.

What's really going on

• "There's never a good time" is rarely true. Usually it's guilt, fear of looking replaceable, or real anxiety about the pile waiting when you get back.
• Most work stress happens off the clock, through rumination (replaying unfinished tasks and worries), not at your desk. Skipping vacation doesn't remove that stress. It just removes the one thing that reliably interrupts it.
• There's a real health cost to never switching off. Studies cited by health researchers link years of skipped vacation to noticeably higher rates of heart problems.
• The guilt is worse in caring or mission-driven jobs (medicine, care work and similar), where "someone has to cover for me" feels like a moral failure instead of a normal handoff. The research is consistent, though: skipping recovery makes you less effective, not more reliable.

What to say

"I'd like to take [dates] off. I'll hand [specific items] over to [name/team] before I go, and I won't be reachable except for a real emergency. Anything you'd like me to wrap up first?"

Change the words so they sound like you, but keep the tone.