At the beginning of this month, I took a vacation. It was my first real vacation since I started my business almost 10 years ago. It was 5 days and 4 nights of fun, sun, and laughter. How have I not done this in 10 years? Crazy!!!!!
You better believe I am already planning the next one.
Taking time away from your work not only benefits you but your business as well.
Clears Your Mind
When you are working in your business you have so many things going through your mind. The marketing, the sales, the client service, what’s for dinner, who’s picking up the kids, today is workout day…and so much more. Sometimes you are thinking about so many things that you end up creating bottlenecks within the business. Your brain can’t process it all at once so certain parts freeze until space is freed up. When you are on vacation your brain is cleared of everything. It goes into relaxation mode. And when you return, you find you have a clean slate to tackle each task one at a time.
Encourages Automation
As a small business owner, you want to ensure that your business continues to operate in your absence. That nothing gets “turned off” so to speak. The best way to do this is to create automation for those things that have been sitting on your to-do list for months. This past holiday season I took a social media fast. For 40 days I did not open social media or post anything to it. But unless you saw the post where I initially said I was on a fast you had no idea. I used an app called Publer to schedule all my posts while I was away. This allowed me to still share content despite being off the grid.
Forces Delegation
Despite all the automation out there, there are likely still some items on your list that should be delegated. Tasks that you think will be faster if you do it; tasks that you want and need to get off your plate but for whatever reason, you haven’t yet. Deadlines don’t go away simply because you are on vacation. To ensure these deadlines are still met, you will likely need to offload some of your responsibilities. There is also the added benefit of being able to offload duties and responsibilities, which at first is temporary but can become permanent.
Business Growth
As a result of the delegation and automation that has occurred from you taking a vacation, you have now freed up your time to focus more on business development and growing your business. I am certain I am not the only business owner who creates things but doesn’t have the time to implement them. With a shorter task list, you now have time to not only create but also implement. Remember time is money.
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
