How to take a break without taking your business with you
There is a particular kind of optimism involved in setting an out-of-office message when you run a business.
Laptop closed. Notifications silenced. Holiday mode activated.
At least, that’s the plan.
For business owners and leaders, taking time away can be something of a double-edged sword. You know you need the break. You may have spent months looking forward to it. But stepping away from a business you have built, grown or are responsible for is not always as straightforward as booking a flight and packing a suitcase.
There are clients to think about. Leads that might come in. Decisions that need making. Work that needs progressing. And then there is the thought lurking somewhere in the background: What am I going to come back to?
Taking a proper break matters. The challenge is creating a business that allows you to do it.
Why switching off can be so difficult
When you are employed by a large organisation, there is usually someone else to pick things up while you are away. For founders, freelancers and small business leaders, the line between you and the business can be much more blurry.
However, taking a break isn’t an indulgence. It’s part of working sustainably.
The CIPD highlights regular breaks and annual leave as important for supporting health, wellbeing, motivation and productivity. Its research has also identified the rise of ‘leaveism’, where people use their annual leave to continue working rather than properly switching off.
And that matters. The CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing at Work research found that almost a quarter of UK employees reported feeling exhausted, while one in five felt under excessive pressure at work.
Of course, knowing that you should switch off doesn’t necessarily make it easy to do. Particularly when you’re the person ultimately responsible for the business.
There can be a nagging sense that being unavailable means missing an opportunity. Or that taking your eye off the business for a week will somehow undo the progress you have made.
Technology has made it alarmingly easy to compromise. You’re not really working. You’re just checking your emails over breakfast. Replying to just that one message beside the pool. Taking a quick call while everyone else gets ready for dinner.
Before long, your holiday has become work with a better view.
So how do you give yourself the best chance of actually taking a break?
1. Decide what genuinely needs you
Before you go away, ask yourself a useful question:
What could happen while I am away that genuinely needs my involvement?
Not what you would prefer to deal with yourself. Not what you normally deal with. What actually cannot wait?
The list may be considerably shorter than you expect.
Decide what constitutes an emergency, who can make decisions in your absence and what can simply wait until you return. If you work alone, consider whether there is a trusted associate or partner you could call on if something genuinely urgent happens.
Creating that distinction can make it much easier to leave everything else alone.
2. Give people clear expectations
Ambiguity creates pressure.
If clients don’t know whether you’re available, you may feel you ought to respond. If colleagues don’t know what they can decide without you, they’re more likely to contact you.
Tell people when you’re going away, when you’ll be back and what will happen while you are unavailable.
Set your out-of-office message. Update your voicemail if necessary. Brief your team. Give important clients notice.
And resist the temptation to say, “I’ll still be checking emails.”
You have just given everyone, including yourself, permission to interrupt your holiday.
3. Protect the first day back
Sometimes it is not the holiday itself that causes anxiety. It’s the thought of the return.
A diary packed with meetings on your first morning back is unlikely to help.
If possible, keep some space free. Give yourself time to work through emails, establish what has happened, identify what genuinely needs attention and reset your priorities.
You do not have to solve everything by 10am on your first day back.
4. Use your holiday as a test of the business
There is another way to look at time away.
It can tell you something useful about your business.
If everything stops because you stop, what could you change?
Perhaps you need better processes. Maybe more tasks could be automated or delegated. Perhaps you need additional expertise around you, a stronger network or simply a different way of organising your working day.
For growing businesses in particular, moving from “everything depends on me” to “the business can operate without me for a while” is an important step.
A holiday can expose the bottlenecks you are too busy to notice when you are in the middle of them.
5. Give yourself permission to think differently
There is a reason good ideas often arrive when you are walking, travelling, sitting on a beach or doing something completely unrelated to work.
Distance changes perspective.
Taking time away is not lost productivity. Rest, new experiences and time to think can all help you return with greater clarity about what matters and, sometimes, what doesn’t.
You might come back with a new idea. You might realise something needs to change. Or you might simply return with more energy to tackle what is already in front of you.
All three are valuable.
Build a business that gives you room to breathe
At Launchpad, we work with founders, entrepreneurs and growing businesses at every stage of that journey.
And sometimes the support a business needs is not another productivity hack. It is the right environment and infrastructure around it.
A virtual office can help maintain a professional presence when you are working remotely or travelling. Flexible coworking gives you somewhere to return to when you need to get back into focus mode. An office means you can walk out the door and leave work where work belongs.
Being part of a business community means you are surrounded by people facing many of the same challenges, with opportunities to make connections, share experiences and find expertise when you need it.
Sometimes moving a business forward means knowing when to keep pushing.
And sometimes it means knowing when to put your out-of-office on, get on the plane and trust that the business will still be there when you land.
