Just the odd day in October, when you can’t face the inbox, the clients, or the office …
This week one of my clients has gone into hiding.
They’ve done some great work this quarter. They’ve also picked up a cold, and the daylight is starting to lessen. So they’re taking a few days off. Not officially off, but hard to reach, and clearly wanting some downtime and space.
On the surface it looks like hiding but I think it’s much older and more normal than that.
We all need that time. As humans, we need to be able to let ourselves rest. We are still, essentially, monkeys in shoes (thanks Tim Minchin!). We’re animals, governed by the cycles of light and dark, cold and warm. As winter starts to approach, somewhere inside us an ancient part is thinking about hibernating. Getting warm and snuggling up in a cave somewhere.
Do you feel that yourself? It’s okay, it’s natural and we can be OK with that.
But when you have a business to run, how do you square that circle? How do you let yourself hibernate, go dark, step off the front line for a while, and still have your business operate?
Why this is harder than it sounds
I write a lot about ‘the default’. And one of its main characteristics is exactly this: there is only one way to be – always-on.
The default says anything less than 100% means you lack ambition. You don’t want success enough. You’re not disciplined enough, or tough enough, to make it.
Living by design says there are other ways to be. You might choose to go full-on and take time off as you need it. You might go full-on through the summer and slower in the winter. You might work really hard, but only on weekdays, and always take the whole weekend off. There are as many designed lives as there are people.
But the default is the one that gets trumpeted. It’s offered to us as the only way to win.
So in many ways this is a lifestyle choice. But it’s one that you can only make once you realise always-on isn’t the only option available.
From there, I think it comes down to three things.
Accepting that you need it
This starts with being honest about yourself. Some people really don’t need this kind of time. I do.
Back when I worked in corporate, I used to take what I called a “stress-management day off”. I could have gone in, but I decided to prioritise myself, stay home, rest. No DIY either, just late breakfast, read, take a walk, cook great food and have an early night.
And I don’t only mean planned holidays either. It might be the odd Wednesday or Thursday in October, when you want to go quiet, you don’t want to be in the office and you don’t want to deal with clients. Those days need planning for too.
Building the systems
You need systems that, at the very least, keep things moving without anything falling over while you’re away. You, or someone, still gets told if there’s a serious problem with client delivery. But the mundane stays out of sight until you’re ready to come back to the world.
A business has to be able to run without you on an ordinary Wednesday. And if yours can’t survive one day without you, that’s worth knowing. It’s rarely a systems problem – it usually means everything still comes through you.
Those systems need designing, setting up and testing before you need them. The time you discover they don’t work shouldn’t be the time you most need the space. That preparation costs time away from the day-to-day work. And there will always be a reason why you can’t spend that time, because something else is more important.
If that voice in your head just gave you a reason why you couldn’t do that, notice that reason: it’s the same one that turns up at the last step.
Actually taking it
This is where business owners find the most difficulty, and where most of my repatterning work takes place.
You might have given yourself permission. You might have built the systems, tested them, and be all ready to go dark. But there will always be one more thing to do first. Or there’s this one thing this week I have to take care of, so I’ll rest next week. Or next month. It’s likely the reason your head voice just gave you.
I found it bad enough in corporate when the deadlines are piling up, but in many ways it’s more of a problem now I’m a business owner because Iknow the stakes – it’s not just some shareholder who’ll make a bit less, it’s my family.
The pressure of the default is so pervasive, and so rarely said out loud, that actually taking the time you’ve made possible for yourself can be the hardest step of all.
So as the evenings draw in, here’s a question for you.
When did you last let yourself go dark? Not a planned holiday necessarily, and not checking your inbox either. A day – or several – when you just take off, hide and let the world revolve without you.
And if the honest answer is “next week”, what would have to be true for it to be this week?
If you want to go deeper on the default and what it costs, it’s all in the book. Living by Design [Not by Default] is on Amazon now.