How to Relax Without Guilt Over A Holiday
A holiday weekend is coming up here in the US, and I don’t know about you, but I am so excited to enjoy the summer. I’m excited to spend time with friends and family and enjoy lots of hugs. I think we’re all in a deficit of hugs and time with loved ones.
But I’ve noticed that, as entrepreneurs, it can be difficult for us to take time off because we feel guilty that we’re not doing more, or we agonize over the thought that there are still tasks on our to-do lists.
And for so many entrepreneurs, this means that we never truly have the opportunity to simply and completely rest, to turn our brains off, to fully and guiltlessly spend time with ourselves or our loved ones.
I’ve been running my company Revenue Breakthrough for over 15 years, and I remember how hard it was, especially in the beginning, when I would come home for family vacations. I would work while sitting with my family.
I remember one winter holiday in particular—I was trying to clean out my inbox while sitting in the living room right next to our fireplace, trying to get a little warmth and still be with my family.
My mom got so upset that I was working instead of being with her that she totally started yelling at me. I got offended because I didn’t understand why she didn’t understand that I needed to be working.
So I started yelling back, and it became this whole family fight. And I didn’t even know what had started it.
I find that this happens a lot with entrepreneurs: your family doesn’t quite get when you need to work, when you don’t need to work, and why you aren’t paying attention to them.
So as we go into this holiday weekend—especially since this might be one of our first opportunities to see family again after literally not seeing them for a year or two years—I think it’s important to figure out how to hit your off-switch.
How to be fully present with the people that you love. So let’s talk through three tips.
First of all, decide ahead of time when you are going to be working and when you aren’t, and communicate that with your family.
For example, today I took the morning off and took my niece to have breakfast with me at a cafe. I knew I wasn’t going to start working again until three or four o’clock in the afternoon, so I didn’t feel like I should have been doing something.
We had a lovely time. I was able to be fully present with her. And she, too, knew that that was her time with me.
My second tip is to use every 15- and 30-minute increment, especially during a holiday or when friends and family are visiting.
It’s easy to look at the clock and say, “Oh, I only have 15 or 20 minutes, so I can’t really get my work done.” Or to procrastinate for 35 minutes, look up and realize you’ve only got 15 minutes left on the clock, and decide you just can’t get any work done.
We would all love to have the luxury of having five straight hours to do our work. But that is rarely if not ever the case.
Most likely we typically have 30 minutes here, an hour there, 20 minutes here to get our work done—especially if we’re busy with family. So we have to learn to utilize those moments.
Which leads to my third tip: open the seal. This is one of my most effective tricks for getting things done.
This image of opening a seal comes from, for instance, when you open a new peanut butter jar—you unscrew the lid, and then you have to open the seal to get into the peanut butter.
And I find that the most impactful device you can use to get something done when you don’t want to work on it is to get started.
So if you’re doing a slideshow presentation, opening the seal might look like opening the slideshow, saving it, naming it, and doing a rough outline of every slide.
If you’re opening the seal on your newsletter, it might be opening the document, naming it, and starting to write the first paragraph or an outline.
Opening the seal gives you a chance to get things moving. If you only have 15 or 20 minutes to work on something, opening the seal allows the next 15 minutes to go so much more smoothly.
And if your resistance to doing something is super high, opening the seal helps you finally do it, because you’re telling yourself, “Oh, I’m only opening the seal. I’m not actually going to finish this.”
That tricks you into starting it. And nine times out of ten, you end up working more on it and maybe even finishing it.
I hope that these three tips can help you find more time for yourself and your family this weekend.
I also want to invite you to come join us for our Flow Method Day on July 10. If you haven’t heard of the Flow Method, it is my spectacular method for getting three times more work done in half the time.
The Flow Method program is only $27. And when you purchase the program, you now get the bonus of a free Flow Method Day with us.
It’s a time for us—typically over 60 entrepreneurs—to come together and spend a few hours getting work done together. You can check it out here.
I hope to see you there! Enjoy the holiday weekend.
