A week of compulsory leave - SimpliFlying’s new workplace experiment

Compulsory leaves. Two words you do not expect to hear from your CEO. But you see SimpliFlying is different. So when a few weeks back our CEO Shashank Nigam announced that we would be required to take a ‘compulsory 1-week leave’ after every seven working weeks ( 5 days working, and bank holidays leave additional ), we were pleasantly surprised but we took it right up.

This idea had been floating around our company for a long time. Ever since we watched this TED talk in one of our retreats, we wondered if companies mistake activity for action and over work for productivity. So to answer these questions we got going with our experiment and I was the first to take the week leave 24th of April to the 1st of May.

The bored phase

We all imagine sleeping for long hours watching movies all day long during vacations. But let’s face it it becomes annoying after the first day, especially if you like your work as much as I do. After sleeping for hours more than necessary and doing things that turn out to be completely useless, one turns over to the next phase the introspection phase. I am a bit restless generally, so this phase came rather early for me.

The Introspection

Many times we are so engrossed in our daily work that we forget the big picture. Be it the big picture of our life or the big picture of our profession. As William Davies put it -

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare

So on Day 2-3 that is exact what I ended up doing. It involved reading a few of my favourite writers like Ruskin Bond, Daniel Kahneman, watching the school of life and just relaxing. I have to admit these two days did not change my perspective completely (no, this isn’t the corporate Eat.Pray.Love), but what it did is nudge me gently towards a direction that is compatible with my moral values and my long term goals. It included having a more forgiving outlook towards the work-life balance, inspired by this video. Moreover, at the end of these two days, I found myself more relaxed. Not just physically but also mentally. The relaxing peaked when I ended up going up to the mountains ( I am from the Himalayas) and reading one of my favourite local authors, Ruskin Bond while sitting in a cafe with this view.

The reading phase.

One thing that came out of the introspection mentioned above was that I wanted to read more, particularly literature in Indian languages. Two books that had been on my to-read list for a long time--  ‘Writer on the Hill’ by Ruskin Bond, and a Hindi book that was written by a dear cousin of mine titled ‘Stithi gambhir lekin niyantran mein’ ( The situation is serious but under control, a pun on a stereotypical statement given out by Indian bureaucrats in case of any unrest). While one dealt with the pleasures of the idyllic life in the mountains ( Writer on the Hill) the other was a funny take on the state of Indian bureaucracy, its corruption and the daily struggles of the common man.

Reading writer on the hill was a particularly touching experience. My parents had lived in the hill station where most of the book is set in for several years, so each short story from the book was followed by a real-life anecdote by my father, an avid storyteller. For example, the story about the ghost of a woman who was killed by a bunch of langurs (a kind of monkey) in the book, resulted in my mother recounting several close encounters she had with these creatures when they broke into the house to steal some food. Interestingly, every conversation ended with lamenting the destruction of forests and ecology in the mountains. A single tree had more soul than all the buildings in the city, they said. Some food for thought that.

The SimpliFlying phase.

On Saturday and Sunday, my thoughts went back to my work at SimpliFlying. Though I did not spend hours on thinking about work, I did think deeply and with a lot of clarity about it. Since this week off came right after a hectic week in Singapore, I had a lot to chew on and the week off had helped me do that with calmness. I was able to chalk out my focus areas for the next two months. Earlier this was done on a hurried Friday afternoon. But what this break helped me do is to think about my goals with a much wider perspective with much more time in my hand.

Final thoughts

The greatest value of this policy, which I discovered, is that it allows people to take a step back and evaluate their work regularly. Things that would be reserved for long year-end breaks gets done quicker, get done now. We have chances to evaluate our current work and life and improve faster and more often than before as professionals and as individuals.

I am looking forward to my next week off. Not because I need rest, but because I realise what a boon it is for productivity and general well-being. I will also be better prepared for the next time. I am already preparing a list of books I would like to read and have signed up for a three-day meditation course, called Vipassana, run by a charitable organisation in my town. It challenges the participants to leave behind cell phones, laptops and to remain completely mute for three days as you meditate for up to 10 hours a day, cutting all worldly links ( you stay and sleep in their dormitories).  I have heard only positive things about it so will be attending to further develop the idea of ‘me’. I will not be structuring and planning my time too much since that takes away the sheer joy of a vacation for me. And lord knows I wouldn’t want that.