It’s great to be reachable for customers and your team. But sometimes, you need a break. A week without calls gets you energized again.
As an entrepreneur, you never finish your workday. There is always something more you could do. There is always an urgency or, worse, an apparent urgency raised by one of your customers.
That’s neither good nor bad; it’s just a reality. Entrepreneurs cannot clock out at 5 pm and claim it’s against the labor laws to go beyond the call of duty. At the same time, glorifying an always-on attitude will wear down any entrepreneur over time. And if an entrepreneur burns out, that’s just as bad for the business as clocking out at 5 pm regularly.
Where is the middle ground?
As the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I know how it is. I’ve been on the bridge of command for more than 10 years. Nevertheless, I need a break now and then. Here is what I did over the summer this year.
Phase 1: Summer Laziness Work Session
I love the summer laziness. Unlike people who prefer to sizzle in the summer heat on the Mediterranean, I prefer to hide in the cool mountains. Sometimes, with my family. And sometimes, just by myself.
And that’s what I did at the start of the summer break: I hid in the mountains by myself, doing things I should have done a long time ago and working on things that were not due yet.
Occasionally, I talked to those team members who weren’t on leave via video call. That was a healthy mix of working by myself and still interacting with my team. And because everybody was less busy than usual, those calls also left room for personal discussions that normally don’t fit into a fully booked day.
Phase 2: Family Vacation
After my summer laziness work session, I spent a week with my family. Thanks to my mountain work session, I started the family vacation with zero leftovers.
We spent a week without any work disturbances, giving us time and space to discuss all those family topics that are just as important but often get buried in the day-to-day work hustle.
Well, there weren’t zero work disturbances. But I suppressed them.
Some people from my team texted me and asked for a quick call to discuss this or that. Of course, they knew I was on leave, but they had ideas and wanted to sound them with me, giving me time to think about those ideas.
In all instances, I politely declined. I told them that I’d love to hear their ideas and think about them, but not this week. Because I was thinking about all sorts of things during my vacation, but not work or business.
Phase 3: Back at Work, Energized
When we returned home after that week of undisturbed vacation, I felt energized. I looked at my almost empty inbox, reflected on the many family discussions during the vacation, and I felt ready to dive back into work.
Isn’t that what vacation is intended for?
