Gardening Leave: What to Do (Beyond the Garden)

Here's the short answer: on gardening leave, you are paid to stay away from work while your notice period runs out. You still have a contract, so confidentiality, non-compete, and moonlighting rules still apply. What changes is your access. You cannot log in, cannot email clients, cannot say goodbye through the usual channels. The window is small, and the smart moves get made in the first week.

Most people treat gardening leave as an unexpected holiday. They sleep in, tidy the house, and by week two feel bored and quietly anxious. By week four they realise they have not said goodbye to anyone, they cannot remember half the names in their old inbox, and the professional network they spent years building is now behind a locked door.

You do not want to be that person in week four. Here is how to spend the time.

What gardening leave actually is (and what it is not)

Gardening leave is a period during your notice where you stay on payroll but are told not to come in and not to work. It is common in finance, sales, and senior roles where you hold information that shouldn't walk out the door the same day you do. You keep your salary, benefits, and bonus vesting where applicable. You lose access to email, calendar, Slack, CRM, and the office.

You are still employed. That means:

• You cannot start your next job during the leave (check your contract carefully).
• You cannot poach clients or colleagues.
• You cannot share confidential material with your next employer.
• You must remain reachable if the company needs you for handover questions.

The confusing part is the vacuum. There is no boss to check in with, no meetings, no work. This is what most people get wrong: they wait to feel productive again instead of using the quiet on purpose.

The first 48 hours: close the loop before it closes on you

The single most valuable thing to do in the first two days is capture what you are about to lose access to. Not by taking company property (do not do that). By writing down what you can carry in your head.

Sit with a notebook and answer three questions:

• Who did I actually work with in the last twelve months? Not the org chart. The real one. The names that came up in your calendar, in your one-to-ones, on Slack, in project channels.
• Which of them would I want to hear from again in three years? Not everyone. Six to fifteen names is normal.
• Which of them do I NOT have a personal contact for? That is your urgent list.

The problem is that most people cannot remember. The calendar remembers, but by the time your access is cut, the calendar is gone with it. If your last day at the office happened before gardening leave started and your access to the company system is now gone, the goodbye list is already stuck behind a login screen.

This is where the tool helps. It Was Great Working With You takes a calendar export and turns twelve months of meetings into a ranked list of the people you actually worked with, so you can see who to reach out to before the memory fades. If you can still export your work calendar on day one of your leave, do it then. If access has already been cut, ask HR politely for a copy of your last twelve months — most will send it.

Once you have the list, send short two-line messages from your personal email. Nothing formal. Something like: "I'm on gardening leave through the end of March and wanted to say a proper thank you before we lose touch. If it's easier, here's my personal email and phone." Do this before you get bored.

Week 1 to 2: rest, but with a shape to it

Rest is the right instinct. Gardening leave is a rare paid pause between careers and you should not squander it by immediately picking up freelance work or starting your new job under the table (both breach your contract and both are common mistakes).

But formless rest turns to dread by day five. Give the rest a shape:

• One walk a day. Same time, same route if you can. Nervous systems that have been in meetings for seven years need boring repetition to reset.
• One "meaningful non-work" thing per week. A person you have not seen in a year. A day trip. A doctor's appointment you have been putting off. Sleep. This is what the leave is for.
• No new decisions the first ten days. Do not buy a house, sign a coaching contract, or move cities in week one of gardening leave. The brain confuses freedom with a mandate to change everything.

You will feel restless around day seven. That is normal. It does not mean you should immediately start "being productive." It usually means you are ready to do the second thing, which is close relationships properly.

Week 2 to 4: the goodbye list is a real job

This is the phase most people skip and later regret. Treat closing the professional loop as the actual work of the leave.

Pick five to eight people you want a real conversation with, not a two-line email. Send calendar invites from your personal email. Coffee, walk, video call — whatever fits. Twenty minutes each is enough. Bring a specific thank-you (a project, a moment, something they said that changed how you worked). Ask what they would have you keep, if you were them, from the last few years.

For the wider list — the fifteen to forty people who mattered but do not warrant a call — send a short personal note. Not a "please stay in touch" line. Something concrete: "I remember when you helped me untangle the pricing rebuild in October. I'm on gardening leave, my personal email is below, and if you're ever in [city] I owe you a coffee." The specific memory earns the reply. Vague notes get archived.

For close contacts who taught you something, this is also the window to ask for a LinkedIn recommendation while the memory of your work together is still fresh. People who agreed to write one on your last day at the office often stall for months. A calmer window like gardening leave, with a pre-drafted three bullets, gets a much higher hit rate.

Weeks 3 onwards: prepare for the next role, quietly

You cannot start the new job during gardening leave. You can prepare for it.

• Read. The two or three books, reports, or long pieces you have been meaning to get through. The next job will be a firehose; this is the last calm read you will have for a while.
• Talk to a few peers in the new domain. Not to work. To learn. A senior engineer who took a similar leap two years ago. A person you admire in the sector. Ask them what they wish they had known in month one.
• Health admin. Dentist. Optician. Physio. The next job's benefits will kick in eventually but there is no better window for the appointments you have put off.
• Financial admin. Roll the old pension or 401(k) if the plan requires it. Check your final payslip and any bonus vest that lands during the leave. Confirm the last day the equity or RSU schedule is still ticking.

What you should not do: cram a certification, launch a side project you have not thought about before, or take three weeks of extreme cardio to "finally get in shape." Big bets in a decompression window rarely stick.

Common mistakes people make on gardening leave

1. Waiting to hear from the company. They will not call. HR has moved on. The absence of contact is not a signal that something is wrong.

2. Working under the table for the new employer. This is the single fastest way to breach your contract, forfeit your notice pay, and open yourself up to legal action from the old firm. Do not do it, even if the new employer asks you to "just have a look at this deck." The paid leave is worth more than an early start.

3. Vague goodbye messages. "Let's keep in touch!" from a personal email address you have never used before does not land. Anchor every message in a real memory and a real next step. If you find that hard, see what to say instead of "I'll keep in touch".

4. Treating it as a full holiday. Two weeks in the sun is fine. Six weeks on the beach with no goodbye plan and no next-role prep means walking into the new job with a fresh sunburn and a professional network you can no longer reach.

5. Forgetting to write anything down. The specific things you learned in the last role — the pitfalls, the shortcuts, the people to trust — will disappear inside a month once you are in a new context. A twenty-minute brain dump into a doc you will read on your first day back is worth a lot more than it feels.

What to do on the last week of gardening leave

The last week is a soft landing. A few things worth doing:

• Reply to any handover questions from the old firm promptly. They are still paying you.
• Check your final payslip has landed and any RSU or bonus vest cleared correctly.
• Make sure your personal contacts list is saved somewhere you will actually find it in three years.
• Take one day fully offline before the new job starts. No emails, no admin. A meal. A walk. Sleep in.

The goodbye list you built in weeks two and three is what will still be paying you back in five years. Access to old email systems fades. LinkedIn changes. Company Slack retires. But the twenty short personal notes you sent to specific people who shaped your work — those relationships stay.

If you have not yet built that list, It Was Great Working With You is the fastest way to do it while you still have the time.

Further reading: The people you'll forget to say goodbye to when you leave your job.