264. The vacation strategy for people who can’t switch off

If you’re the kind of leader who is “on” all the time — even on vacation — this episode is for you.

In today’s lesson, Sophia Matveeva shares a practical, honest approach to taking time off without pretending you’ll fully unplug. 

Because when you're in charge, not checking work emails is often a pipe dream.

Listen to this episode to learn:

• Why inner peace isn’t realistic for early-stage founders

• How to structure your break without lying to yourself

• The one rule you must follow if you get a great idea mid-vacation

• Why learning to trust your team now will set you up to scale

• How to use downtime to spot blind spots and reset your strategy

Whether you’re heading to the beach or just trying to unplug for a weekend, this is your guide to making rest work for your ambitious brain.

Chapters

00:00 — The founder brain that never stops
01:50 — You don’t need inner peace, you need creativity
04:52 — Structure your vacation like a pro
07:15 — What to do when inspiration strikes on holiday
09:35 — Smart founders use vacations to train their teams 

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Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.544)
I once sent product ideas to my assistant while I was hooked up to an IV in a hospital. And I didn't do this because I had to, I did it because I wanted to. So if you have ever tried to take a vacation and ended up ideating features on a sun lounger, then this episode is for you. Welcome to the Tech for Antiquities podcast. I'm your host, Tech entrepreneur, executive coach at Chicago Booth MBA, Sophia Mathieu.

My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly, share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to have a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you.

Hello smart people, how are you today? If we've never met before, I am Sophia Matveva. I'm a non-technical founder who has built tech businesses from scratch without coding and have helped governments and Fortune 500s upskill for the digital economy. And this show is where non-technical innovators learn how to build tech ventures without drowning in jargon. So if that's your goal, then hit subscribe. And today's lecture is actually not about technology. It is about your brain.

And it's a lecture that I have to give to myself regularly. Basically, if you're watching this, I'm assuming that you are a knowledge worker. So that means that your professional success depends on you being innovative and creative. And especially if you're creating something new, whether that's a company or a new product within a corporate, then your brain, your brain's creativity is basically what drives your success.

If you are in this leadership position, either as a founder or as a head of innovation, I know that you are always thinking about your project, what you're working on. So as I said, when I was in hospital, I was literally on an IV and I was, you know, holding my hand and sending ideas to my assistant, literally after surgery. And that's because I had new ideas. I wanted to do this, not because I had to.

Sophia Matveeva (02:26.646)
If you identify with this level of insanity, then this episode is for you. If you are pretty chill and you're really good at taking time off and not thinking about work when you're not at work, then you can skip this one. I find that a lot of content about taking time off is about finding inner peace. And honestly, I don't think that if you are building a business from scratch in the early stages or creating something new from scratch, that

inner peace is going to be a huge possibility. mean, you'll sometimes have it, but going, but having that as your, as your aim, I don't think is realistic. So you need breaks, not for inner peace, but for your own creativity. Because basically when you're overtired, your brain doesn't come up with good stuff. And when you're overtired, you also tend to be not that pleasant to be around and you might snap at your team. So if you are snapping at your team,

and they end up leaving and you're not coming up with good ideas, this is bad for business, right? So I also understand that if you're watching this after my introduction, you probably can't completely switch off. So today's lesson is a realistic view on what you can do to make sure that your brain gets the rest that you really need, but also, you know, within the reality that, okay, if you're a founder or if you're leading something really innovative and something quite risky,

then you're not going to be switching off realistically all the time. number one, tip number one, think of your brain as a strategic asset and treat it like one. So your business, your venture, whatever you're doing, it runs on your judgment, on your insight and on your creativity. And those things need space to flourish. So think about when you've had back to back zooms all day. So say you've had like four back to back zooms.

After that, are you brimming with lots and lots of creative ideas? Are you going to come up with something completely new after that? No, you need a walk. You need to allow yourself to wander. Also, your competitors are going to be taking some time off. So if you are not, by the time they're back, so I'm recording this in August, so let's say they're off in August, they come back in September. If they take August off and you don't,

Sophia Matveeva (04:52.142)
they will be able to perform better than you in September. think of rest as a competitive advantage. Number two, design your vacation with your reality in mind. Now there's a lot of content out there that says that, you need to switch off completely. And I would love that for you, but I know that for many founders and serious leaders, that's impossible. So.

What you need to do is you need to be intentional instead. So instead of lying to yourself and saying, you're not going to check your email, like you will, just say to yourself, okay, I am going to have, I'm going to set these parameters. Maybe I set, change my, I check my inbox once at 9 PM and once at 5 PM. Maybe only once at 5 PM and you don't check in between. Also give yourself a timeframe. So you say to yourself, okay, I'm only going to give.

my emails and Slack messages half an hour at a time. maybe in the morning, once for half an hour in the morning, once for half an hour in the afternoon. And this kind of structure, it helps you rest better because once you start worrying, I don't know, say at 2 PM, you start worrying, you're like, oh my God, I am on the beach. I'm having a nice time. Then you can think, okay, I can have a nice time. I'm going to check everything at 5 PM. I can enjoy myself now. Also,

What's going to happen for many of you, because I know this happens to me and to my students a lot, is once your brain starts resting a bit, you will start coming up with new ideas. And this is glorious. This is wonderful. But do not act on these new ideas. If you get some inspiration, which if you are doing what I told you, you will, do not open Slack. Do not message your team. Do not start assigning new tasks. Do not just

ping your developers and say, just get this done quickly. No, because that opens up a massive can of worms and then your vacation is no longer a vacation. Instead, what you do is you have an idea and you write it down. If you have an iPhone, there is a notes pad. I'm assuming that is the same thing on Android. Write it down in the notes pad and then just let those ideas simmer. So when you come back to work properly, look at those ideas.

Sophia Matveeva (07:14.926)
Some of them are going to evolve and get even better. with some of them, you look at them, you'll be like, actually, that wasn't that good anyway. So this is creative triage. You're protecting your team and you're protecting your brain. You'll have ideas, but do not act on them until you come back. And my fourth tip for you is you have to learn to trust your team in order for you to go and have a vacation. And this is hard. This is really, really hard. But don't, if you start thinking,

that, okay, I need to learn to trust my team so I can have sangria on the beach. Maybe you'll feel guilty and you won't do it. So don't think of it that way. That's, I mean, I'm just giving you my mindset hacks for work for me and what I've shared with my students. So what I find works is if you tell yourself that the act of preparing for my absence makes me a better leader in the long term.

So let's say you're managing a small startup or maybe you're managing a new innovation project. So you've got a small team. you're not managing massive, massive divisions. So at that point you are delegating, but maybe not that well, not that much. The aim is for you to grow, right? For the company to grow or for whatever project you're doing to become, you know, massive division of a corporate, right? So the aim is to grow the team.

So once your team grows and you have lots of people and actually different teams and, you know, team heads reporting to you, you're not going to be able to micromanage every single person. Your job then is going to be assigning tasks, setting deadlines and delegating. And that is quite a hard thing to learn. So if you start learning to do it early, if you start learning to do it with a team of three,

or the team of five, by the time you have a team of 25 or even 100, you've been working yourself up to that. And this is where preparing for your vacation actually prepares you to be a really, really good leader. Because switching off requires smart delegation, it requires trust, and it means that you cannot micromanage. So how do you actually learn to do this? So number one is define what is urgent.

Sophia Matveeva (09:34.926)
So define what's urgent first for yourself and then tell your team, if these things come up, you know, if our biggest customer calls and says that they're unhappy and they want to cancel our contract. Yes, call me. But if it's anything below that, then it's not urgent. Give your team autonomy. So tell them what decisions, what's the framework for decisions that they're allowed to make and what they're not allowed to make. Also.

Learn to not expect real-time responses. Because if you're checking your messages maybe at 9 a.m. and at 5 p.m., then maybe they're doing something else at that particular half an hour slot. Don't expect real-time responses. And just remember, you know, are you operating a nuclear submarine? Are you performing surgery? Right? If not, then you really don't need real-time responses. So my final and fifth tip for you.

Use your downtime to zoom out and get a bird's eye view. Okay. So what you want to do is take the vacation as a, as an opportunity to reflect. ideally what would happen is by the time you get back from your vacation, you've had adequate rest and then you come back with new ideas, but also new perspective. You know, who am I this year? Who do I want to be? What kind of innovator do I want to be? What?

new professional skill sets do I want to learn? This level of deep reflection is going to come naturally only after you've rested. So don't try to force yourself to reflect on the big picture when you just start your vacation, because when you first start your vacation, you're going to be tired, you're going to be overwhelmed, you're probably going to be quite excited about where you got to, you know, just enjoy yourself. I mean, you do actually only live once as far as we know, right? But once you start kind of defrosting a little bit,

And once you get closer to coming back to work, you can ask yourself things like, what am I no longer excited about and why? What assumptions do I have about my user that actually don't seem to be correct? What instincts do I have about my market, my team, my product? What is my subconscious telling me? What are my instincts telling me? That maybe I've been ignoring. And instinct is really, really important.

Sophia Matveeva (12:00.676)
And I find that when we are in a very structured timetabled environment, hearing your instincts can be really, really difficult. And this is another reason why actually taking a vacation, allowing your brain to kind of rest means that all this stuff in your subconscious bubbles through and you end up having better ideas and seeing things that were kind of down there, but you couldn't have seen them without giving your brain the space to rest. To wrap up, just remember,

Think of your vacation as a competitive advantage, not an indulgence. Because your competitors are taking time off and coming back smarter and stronger. So you don't want to be tired and left behind, right? So for you, I hope you get to enjoy the summer and come back fully rested. And if you're going anywhere fun this summer, please let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I have been to the south of France. I said go everywhere. Yeah, and it has been fabulous.

And as usual, if you found this episode useful, then press like on YouTube or leave the show a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. And on that note, have a wonderful day, relax and I shall be back with you next week. Ciao!