National Leave the Office Early Day 2021

National Leave the Office Early Day is “celebrated” on June 2 of each year. If June 2 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, it’s celebrated on the closest weekday. This “holiday” was created several years ago by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE. A fellow productivity specialist, she wanted to encourage overworked professionals to take a break because at that time, Americans were working an average of 49 hours per week – nine hours more than the standard 40-hour work week.

Fast forward to 2021. We’ve survived the upheaval and uncertainty that COVID-19 brought us for a year. During a year of working from home, many people worked more hours than ever. Many of my individual and training clients have expressed that one of their time management pain points of the past year has been constantly working – never really completely disconnecting from work.

When you don’t allow your body, mind and soul to rejuvenate, that leads to less energy, which leads to reacting instead of responding, which leads to making less-than-stellar decisions about where your time will go.

Whether you’re working from home or onsite or a hybrid, you need a mental, physical and emotional break from work.

If you can’t leave the office early on June 2, I encourage you to take a look at your calendar right now to figure out which day in the rest of May or June you can leave the office early.

If you want to take a bigger leap toward recharging, select a full day (or two or three) when you won’t come in at all! That’s right; do more than just leave the office early on a single day. Take a few days off for a vacation or staycation.

Your body and brain will thank you.

If you need a step-by-step guide to leaving work behind for a couple of hours, a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, check out these Escape from Work options in online or book format.