The Vacation That Didn't Help
You came back more tired than before
“Did you have a chance to reflect on what we talked about before you left?”
“I really didn’t have the time.”
Ten days away. Family trip to a place he and his wife had been planning to visit for months.
No time to think.
He wasn’t lying. His mind never left the office. Checking messages between meals. Monitoring Slack while his kids were in the pool. Staying on top of the project timeline while sitting at dinner with his wife.
His family felt it. He knew they felt it. Nobody said anything.
When he returned, he was more depleted than when he left. The vacation hadn’t restored anything.
The Pattern Nobody Names
I see this constantly with executives. They take time off but never actually leave.
Physically away. Mentally tethered.
They tell themselves they’re just “staying connected.” Being responsible. Making sure the team has what they need.
But underneath that story is something else: they don’t know how to exist without being needed.
In my late 20s, I never took vacation. My company had a policy where you could cash out unused days. And I needed the money more than the time off.
When you’re young, strapped for cash, uncertain where life will take you, that trade feels obvious. Cash is tangible. Rest is luxury.
Later, when I did start taking vacations, I brought my Blackberry everywhere. Stayed in touch with my team, my bosses, the deals moving through the pipeline.
I called it professionalism. Dedication. Staying on top of things.
Looking back, I see it differently now.
I was terrified of being irrelevant. Of things running smoothly without me. Of discovering I wasn’t as essential as I needed to believe.
What’s Really Happening
When you can’t disconnect on vacation, the problem isn’t your workload.
The problem is your identity.
Work has become the primary way you know who you are and what you’re worth.
Your title. Your responsibilities. Your indispensability.
Strip those away, even for a week, and you’re left with a question you’re not ready to face: Who am I when I’m not performing this role?
So you don’t strip them away. You stay connected. You check in. You make yourself available.
Not because the work actually needs you. Most of it doesn’t.
Because you need the work. You need to be needed.
The vacation becomes theater. You’re physically present with your family while mentally rehearsing work scenarios. Half there, half elsewhere.
Your kids can tell. Your spouse can tell. You can tell.
But admitting it would mean confronting the real problem: you’ve lost the ability to be present when you’re not being productive.
The Cultural Amplifier
I see this pattern across all executives. But it shows up with particular intensity when cultural expectations compound professional pressure.
If you’re the first in your family to reach senior leadership, your success carries more than just your own ambition. It represents generations of sacrifice. Dreams deferred. Opportunities your parents never had.
Taking time off, truly disconnecting, can feel like betraying that legacy. Like wasting what others worked impossibly hard to give you.
I see this constantly with executives who hail from India. (Heck, I was and am one too!)
The professional pressure is intense enough. But layered on top is the generational weight. The unspoken expectation that you’ll never falter, never question, never admit uncertainty.
So even on vacation, you stay connected. You prove to your family you care about them while simultaneously proving to your work you’re still committed.
Both receive half of you. Neither gets your full presence.
And when you return, you’re more exhausted than when you left. Because you just spent ten days performing for two different audiences while never actually taking a break.
Why Rest Doesn’t Restore
Real rest isn’t about changing your location.
It’s about changing what your mind is attending to.
You can sit on a beach in Bali and still be mentally reviewing the Q3 strategy. Still running through project scenarios. Still monitoring whether everything’s holding together without you.
That’s not rest. That’s anxiety with palm trees.
Real rest requires something most executives have trained themselves not to do: let go completely.
Not just of devices. Of the identity that requires constant validation through professional performance.
And that’s terrifying.
Because if you’re not the person who keeps everything running, who are you?
If things function fine without you for a week, what does that say about your importance?
If your team doesn’t actually need you checking in daily, what’s your real value?
These questions feel dangerous. So you avoid them by never fully disconnecting.
What Gets Lost
When you can’t be present on vacation, you’re not just losing rest.
You’re losing the chance to actually connect with the people you claim matter most.
Your kids don’t need you to take them somewhere expensive. They need you to actually be there when you’re there.
Your spouse doesn’t need a perfect itinerary. They need you to stop mentally solving work problems during dinner.
Your own spirit doesn’t need a change of scenery. It needs you to stop performing long enough to remember who you are underneath the professional persona.
But you can’t give any of that if you’re not actually present.
And the cost compounds over time.
Your kids grow up. Your relationship with your spouse becomes transactional. You become increasingly disconnected from yourself.
All while maintaining the appearance of success. All while telling yourself the sacrifice is worth it.
The Real Work
I’m not going to tell you to set better boundaries or be more mindful.
You’ve heard that advice. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t address the real problem.
The real problem: you’ve built an identity that requires constant external validation through professional performance.
And until you address that, no vacation will help.
The work isn’t learning to disconnect from your phone.
It’s developing the capacity to exist without performing.
To sit with your family without mentally reviewing project timelines.
To take a walk without strategizing your next move.
To be somewhere for more than an hour without checking whether you’re needed.
That capacity doesn’t come from trying harder to relax. It comes from confronting why you can’t.
Why being unproductive for even a few hours feels like death.
Why your worth is so entangled with your work that removing one threatens the other.
Why you’d rather stay exhausted than face who you are when you’re not being useful.
What Happens Next
If you just took time off and came back more tired, pay attention.
The problem isn’t that the vacation was too short or poorly timed.
The problem is that you’ve lost the ability to be present anywhere, including your own life.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll share more about presence, identity, and what it actually takes to reclaim your attention from the constant need to prove your worth.
If you want that depth, join my private email list.
Raju Panjwani
Former Morgan Stanley MD | 5X Entrepreneur | Executive Coach | Tsunami Survivor
Resources:
“The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
“Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman
“How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell
Where to find me: LinkedIn | Website
Forwarded by a friend? Join my private email list
Have thoughts? Please Comment! Or DM me on LinkedIn.