For the majority of my adult life I have bounced between working myself to the bone, with intermittent breaks for fitness and movies (I love movies). If I spent more than a couple hours without doing some sort of tactical work I would feel restless, and almost guilty. So when a family vacation sneaks it’s way into my schedule, it would actually be stressful to my day-to-day flow rather than relieving.
As I lay here after a day of boating, fishing and socializing in Florida, this still has not changed.
Sure, I am away from the office and my team at Good Monster is killing it; but that certainly doesn’t mean I’m not working. It’s just a very different kind of working: the best kind of working.
It’s the kind of working that pulls me out of the day-to-day operations and puts my mind in a mostly undistracted state. This is the exact state-of-mind in which I develop the best strategies for my businesses, and for my life.
I would estimate that 80-90% of the time I am planning, analyzing and thinking about ways to better my businesses, and better myself. And I don’t think I am the only one on this.
My guess is that many leaders have this same battle in their brains when balancing so called work-life balance. It’s hard to turn off the part of your brain that has brought you success and feeds yours family; but you don’t have to.
[bctt tweet=”Entrepreneurs don’t vacation, they brainstorm.” username=”johnnytimbo”]But if I were you, I would embrace the time away. Do it for your family first, but do it for your success second. Take the time away from your daily grind, to perform a little mental grind:
Develop new products or service ideas.
Start a new workout routine.
Plan new hires to make your business more efficient.
Reach out to new potential partners.
Spend time thinking of your customers biggest pain points.
As long as you act on your new found perspective when you get back to the routine, you will be better for it.
