You don't need a reason to play hooky

Programming note! We’re skipping this Friday’s INS/OUTS for the holidays. See you next week and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, you can find the National Mustard Museum. You walk into the museum’s gift shop, which is probably 20% knickknacks and 80% jars of mustard — most of which they’ll offer to let you taste. Head downstairs to find the museum itself: a collection of mustards from across time and the globe; mustard paraphernalia (basically anything that advertised or even mentioned the condiment); and a small screening room where they play some mustard video that I didn’t pay attention to, the television flanked by a terrifying mannequin named Percy and an equally haunting empty (maybe??) French’s mustard bottle costume.

I had no idea this museum existed until I was googling “things to do in Madison, Wisconsin,” the day before a friend and I drove there. We were both swamped with work, but each December for the last few years we’ve taken a day trip — something low stakes and nearby. From a time management perspective, there was every reason to skip this year’s trip. From a having-fun perspective, it was necessary and crucial that we spend the day sampling mustard and cheese.

In the great literature of work-life balance, nearly all endorsements for stepping away from your job fall into two camps. First are the midday breaks: These are the moments we’re told to leave our desks for a walk around the block, a brief yoga routine, or maybe just to pet the dog and make a cup of tea. The goal is to give your skull sponge a beat to wring out, lest it become sopping wet and useless. But as this buzzword-crammed sentence from a Harvard Business Review article on small breaks suggests, it’s all in the name of work productivity: “Taking regular breaks is an essential part of managing our energy to maintain sufficient capacity — not only to be productive, but also to prevent burnout, as well as be able to maintain healthy self-regulation of our emotions and behaviors so we can have positive interactions with others.”

Second, we have mental health days. These are often taken by people who use phrases like “adulting” and “I just can’t anymore.” I kid!! But in any case, mental health days are a response to burnout (didn’t take enough laps around the neighborhood, did you??), and are meant to get you back into the capitalism saddle post-haste! I hope you spent your mental health day buying a foot bath on Amazon, which you can place under your desk for multitasking self care and Zoom meetings.

Playing hooky, on the other hand, is neither a stress response nor a productivity hack. Playing hooky is knowing damn well that you have responsibilities, but you’d just rather do something much more fun.

We spend a lot of time validating why we do awesome things: I ate the cookie because I finished a big project. I called it a day at 3 p.m. because I worked late the last two days. I bought a new shirt because I haven’t shopped for myself in months. DID YOU KNOW that you can also have a little treat — a snack, pair of socks, day off, etc. — just because a little treat is very cool?

I found a Reddit thread from earlier this year where the original poster was feeling guilty about taking a day off. My favorite response (after “You don’t get paid enough to feel guilt.”) was, “The reason I ended up quitting my job in a school last year was somebody telling us ‘remember you are all replaceable in your job, but you are never replaceable for yourself.’ This is a tiring job, and it can get to you. Resting is never a bad decision. Never.”

Please never forget that you don’t get your time back, and that your job probably doesn’t think you’re as important as we’d like to believe we are (run FAST from any company that refers to its employees as family; they will lay you off without a second thought). The friend I went to Wisconsin with was once asked by his mom if he regretted staying out late and being tired at work, to which he replied that he would remember a great night out — but he would never look back on his life and remember feeling refreshed at the office.

My only perimeter around playing hooky is that I opt for days where I don’t have to reschedule anything — nothing important, at least. I’m not trying to inconvenience anyone just because I realized it was a perfect day to eat a hotdog at the beach.

If it helps you to think of all the mental health and productivity benefits of playing hooky, by all means! (Here’s a good Radiolab piece on the topic from 2012.) But sometimes it’s just nice to do things for the sake of doing them. And remember the best piece of advice about taking some time away, per The Onion: