Why You Need to Get the Heck Out of Dodge

Whether it’s sipping cocktails on a beach or cheering on your favorite NFLers, recharging your batteries is good for you — and your business.
Why You Need to Get the Heck Out of Dodge
Do you take regular vacations to recharge your batteries?

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It’s one of the biggest paradoxes of entrepreneurship: The thing that should be so easy and so enticing — taking a little vacation, even if just once a year — ends up being one of the most difficult challenges. It’s not hard to understand why. 

Your business is your baby, and your primary focus throughout the majority of your waking hours (and perhaps in your sleep, as well). Leaving it and relinquishing control can be stressful, and it can cause anxiety even in the most laid-back of business owners. 

Recharge your batteries

With that said, relinquishing control — or at least stepping back from the day-to-day fracas of business ownership — is essential. Some entrepreneurs never take vacations or even real breaks because they see it as a kind of laziness, or perhaps a sign of weakness — but this is backwards thinking. 

In actuality, study after study confirms that the brain performs better — and the body is able to work harder and faster — when you take a break every now and then, recharging your batteries. A vacation is not an indulgence, then, but a key strategy — a way to come back to work with fresh energy and a fresh perspective.

A change of scenery

The concept of fresh perspective is important, too. The entrepreneur needs to be engaged with new ideas and creative solutions — to always have inspiration handy when a problem arises — and that’s a pretty tricky thing. Creativity and inspiration aren’t faucets that you can turn off and on, but getting out of the office and away from your regular daily environment can go a long way toward bringing you new ideas. 

It’s not just the change of scenery that brings fresh ideas, either. On your vacation you’ll talk to different people than you typically encounter; you may even get to spend some time reading a book, watching movies, or something else that you have little time for during the regular grind. All of these can be sources for outside-the-box thinking.

Team vacations

Note also that your vacation doesn’t just affect you, but your entire team. When you take a vacation — assuming you truly are taking a break from your work, putting away the laptop and the smartphone for at least a few hours a day — it leaves a leadership void; someone has to do your normal tasks, which means some of your team members will have to step up and put in some extra work. This can be good for their professional development; it can build greater team unity; and it can even help you spot potential successors or talents you could one day promote. 

At the same time, going on vacation effectively forces you to get serious about delegation — a skill many entrepreneurs struggle with. A vacation is good for everyone’s professional skills development, then — including your own.

None of this necessarily makes it easier for you to take that vacation, of course — but hopefully it illustrates why taking a vacation is so vital to your business.

Do you take regular vacations to recharge your batteries? Why or why not? We want to know!

About the Author

Amanda E. Clark is the president and editor-in-chief of Grammar Chic Inc., a full-service professional writing company. She is a published ghostwriter and editor, and currently under contract with literary agencies in Malibu, Calif., and Dublin, Ireland.

Since founding Grammar Chic in 2008, Clark, along with her team of skilled professional writers, has offered expertise to clients in the creative, business and academic fields.

The company accepts a wide range of projects and often engages in content and social media marketing, drafts resumes, press releases, Web content, marketing materials and ghostwritten creative pieces. Contact Clark at www.grammarchic.net.



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