Is it time yet? If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably already felt the need to take a break. Vacation…vacate your mind…even a “staycation” is better than no rest at all. Whether you kick your feet up on a sandy beach, spend a few days hiking part of the Appalachian Trail, or read a new “favorite book” by the pool at home, there’s no doubt that we all need time to recharge our batteries so we can be better…better at work, better at home…just better humans being.
Physical Health
Want to die young? Then keep working too many hours for too many years. Seriously! Millions of people die every year from illnesses that can be specifically tied to working too many hours. (Forbes) How many is too many? The answer will be different for everyone, but 50 to 55 sounds like a good cap to us.
Most entrepreneurs we know would find a 55 hour work week to be a bit of a break. We are a bunch of workaholics, to be sure. But if you want to live long enough to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you need to find the balance between work, personal, and leisure time.
Mental Health
When you consider pressures from family members and friends, daily dealings with traffic, and runaway inflation, most of us simply don’t need more stress in our lives. But business owners and employees alike pile it on at work.
And if you spend too much time stressing about work, it ends up manifesting with physical effects like insomnia…which ends up slowing your mental and physical reflexes even more. It’s a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
Productivity
You keep your “nose to the grindstone,” push through the physical health consequences, and ignore the mental deterioration, but eventually it all wears on you. Even the most dedicated worker will start having trouble with the most mundane and repetitive tasks that they’ve done successfully for years.
The urge is to keep the course, especially as business owners. To repeat myself, we feel like we have to “do something”…all the time. But when you are on the verge of burning out, continuing to push is just going to speed up the time when you crash, burn, and don’t achieve anything.
Creativity
Finally, in our business, we have definitely noticed that as we get closer to that line, it’s more difficult to generate great products. Don’t get me wrong…we’re good at what we do under the most difficult circumstances, but we don’t want to be “good”…we want to be “great!”
Continuing to come up with original and meaningful ideas requires “water in the well”…sometimes you have to take a break just to let the well fill back up.
Solution
How do we fix the temptation to work every day? It really isn’t easy. Especially for business owners…we did this thing because we are natural-born workaholics to begin with! Here are a few things to try, though:
- Find someone to help. It could be a friend, a spouse, a therapist…at the end of the day it really just requires someone to shoot straight at you and hold you accountable. This “someone” needs to be able to let their own work go, leading by example for what you need to accomplish. And they need to be willing to help you with the letting go…probably best to ask first.
- Schedule a day a week to do nothing. Almost all the world’s major religions have some sort of “day of rest” built into them. Even if you don’t subscribe to any of them, the idea of having one day off is an excellent one. When I say “schedule” this day for nothing, I do mean just that…maybe make a general plan to sit by the pool, go hiking, take in a movie with a friend…but be very intentional about not scheduling ANY work-related activities. And do it every week, preferably on the same day.
- Leave town. Let’s be honest and say it up front: if you own a business, you simply will NOT be able to take a week off from all duties associated with your business. But most people can do vital work activities from a different venue. Get a change of scenery. Manage the employees while lying on a tropical beach. Write a blog while sitting in an airport. Update your business plan as you watch the sunset from the porch of a cabin in the mountains. Changing your perspective and limiting the amount of time you spend on “work stuff” while you’re on vacation can be liberating. And if you simply can’t skip town for a few days (just look at those gas prices!!!), a Staycation could be just the thing…as long as you’re taking the time you need to rest and health your mind instead of going to the office or meeting with prospective clients.
The ultimate goal is to be able to keep doing what you need to do, but to do it better…and for a longer timeframe. The human body and mind were not made to keep moving constantly. You owe it to yourself and to those who love you to make time to recharge your batteries, mentally and physically, so you can be better at work and at home.