In last week’s blog, we talked about how the holidays are one of the only times of year that entrepreneurs allow themselves to take time off.
This year, I’ve taken 12 trips, including a week for Thanksgiving. This kind of life is possible as an entrepreneur and I highly encourage it if you love to travel.
When I made a (spontaneous) decision to go to Jamaica in January, I started to feel guilt that I didn’t realize and started subconsciously recreating my holiday from there, booking myself for the entire week.
But when I started looking at my calendar and saw how full my Christmas week was, something wasn’t feeling good to me. Any time I had off during the year, I had been traveling and not taking it easy.
This wasn’t working for me. I wanted a stay-cation for Christmas!
I had to check with myself: I didn’t quit my job to create my schedule from a place of “I have to do it this way or I should.”
Because of that, I enrolled my lovely clients in some changes and created a new Christmas week for myself: That Saturday through Wednesday, I’m completely taking off and I’m just working at the end of the week.
That felt like a really good win-win that I totally missed before due to all the subconscious guilt.
This was the perfect scheduling lesson for me as I go into 2018.
And you can do this too. Here’s how to get started.
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Look at 2018 from a high level. A lot of times we’re not clear on our goals because a) we don’t think it’s possible and b) we don’t know how to create it that way. If you’re an entrepreneur, you may not know how to work with the ebb and flow of making money, which will make saying yes to taking time off a challenge. Get some support here so you don’t self-sabotage the schedule you want! You’ll want to work with your clients to create a schedule that will empower both of you. Often, it seems like only one or the other wins in that area and someone gives up a boundary. This is the first place to start.
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Create work/life balance on the road if you love to travel. For me, work/life balance as an entrepreneur is about being able to take your work with you. If you’d like to work in a different city, you can do that! For example, I go to Minneapolis every three months to see my my two-and-a-half-year-old twin niece and nephew. That’s something to remember too: For some of these trips, you can get some balance on that trip itself, balancing work and, in my case, running around with adorable twins.
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Set your best plans in stone. My friend Amanda and I are confirming plans to visit the Grand Canyon. We’ve never been and are super excited about it. To be sure we actually go instead of only talk about it, i.e. a great conversation that sounds good but never materializes into reality, we’re making it a priority. That means not spending money and time on other plans that take away from our shared trip. (Or, creating more abundance to say yes to all of it!) Spontaneity is fun, but sometimes it doesn’t allow us to do the stuff that really matters if we don’t re-invent our plan.
Instead of going into 2018 beating the crap out of ourselves about our schedules, let’s practice making it work for us in a way that really feels good.
