Book your pretend flight now

✈️ Today’s tip: Use the “catch a pretend plane” strategy to give yourself a hard stop at work before time off.

Sure, you have a few days off on the horizon, but before you get to them, you have to make it through the shortened week ahead—which, more often than not, is a hectic scramble that leaves you working well past when you’d planned to stop.

To make sure your time off is work-free from the very beginning, borrow a strategy from the time-management expert Laura Vanderkam: “I pretend I have to catch a plane at noon on the day before a holiday break,” she writes. “I’m usually not really flying anywhere, but doing this means I leave the afternoon open. When stuff comes up — and stuff always comes up — that space is available to absorb it.”

Book your (pretend) flight—as in, add it to your work calendar—and then when the time comes, let yourself fully relax.

📚 More from Forge on taking time off:

How to Rescue Your Weekends
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Give Yourself Thanksgiving Week Off
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The Case for a Monthly Life Admin Day
Read more >>

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