It's Time to Take a Break
Posted On: 2007-04-06
Here in Australia it's Good Friday, a holiday that still has a lot of significance here in this country. In fact most businesses, retail outlets and all the pubs and bars are closed here on Good Friday and even though we work on an international level we try to cut our work back not only today but all over the Easter weekend.
So this morning we actually slept in. It was almost 7am before we surfaced and then we headed for our favorite café right on the beachfront to have breakfast. When we got there we found that we weren't the only ones having breakfast - about 20 feet off the beach a pod of dolphins were enjoying an early morning snack too.
That was such a magical time and it's one we would have missed if we had stayed at home glued to our computers. Of course we could have been doing that because there is plenty of work to done but sometimes you just need to have a break.
Sometimes you really do need to step away from your computer, forget about the battle to make money for a while and get in touch with what people in the real world are doing. If you don't do that you run the very real risk of burning out, destroying your health and destroying your personal relationships too.
I know that you're probably saying that you simply can't afford time away from the computer, you have to keep working to make money and taking time off is going to turn your slowly increasing cash flow into a total cash drought. But everyone needs time away from whatever it is that they're doing.
Recently Steve's daughter spent a week with us because she needed a break from her Unix job. She's on contract so time off for her is completely unpaid but she knew she needed a break. When she arrived she was tired and worn out but by the time she headed back to work she was refreshed and able to handle another long stint of 12 hour days. Her cash flow might have stopped for a week but it will now go on much longer than it might otherwise have done.
And that's what you need to think of rather than thinking in terms of your cash flow drying up. You need to think of taking time off as just another way of maintaining your cash flow. Sure there might be a little stutter just because you've taken a day or two off but taking that time off will ensure that your cash flow goes on well into the future. That simply won't happen if you have worked so hard for so long that you burn out or your health fails.
If I can't convince you to take a day or two off on health and personal grounds then let's look at it from a different perspective. When you stay shut away with your computer day after day and week after week you begin to lose touch with the outside world. Sure you may keep up with the breaking news and you may chat with friends and others in the industry via message boards and ICQ.
You might even talk to people on the phone but you're still going to lose touch with the outside world. Losing touch with the outside world can destroy your ability to make money because you will still working with what was current the last time you saw the real world.
The real world moves on, what interests people, what attracts people and what encourages them to buy is continually changing. Unless you're out there with the people you're trying to sell to you won't notice those changes. Your advertising efforts will stop being current, you'll be talking to them in terms that have lost meaning for your audience and your sales will begin to fall.
That's another reason why you need to step away from your computer and get out there among the real people. You need to experience what they experience; you need to see what is attracting them and how they are reacting to current marketing practices. Sure, you can read all the latest data but you're not going to be able to fully understand that data - or apply it to your marketing efforts - unless you've experienced it for yourself.
So this Easter weekend step away from the computer and get out there and experience the world. Justify it to yourself as taking much needed time off. Justify it to yourself as investigating current marketing trends. Justify it to yourself in any way you want but just get out there and do it!
Whatever your justification you'll find that you come back to your computers feeling refreshed and with your batteries recharged and that will help you increase your income.