Like many workaholic creative entrepreneurs, I rarely took meaningful breaks from running my busy studio. I had every intention of doing so, but my self-talk usually went something like this:
“As soon as this huge project is finished, I’m taking a much-needed vacation!”
Then weeks later after said project was finished:
“Ugh! That project was all-consuming. I need a few days just to get caught up on a bunch of business stuff…”
Then another week later:
“Yikes! We’ve been so busy, we stopped selling. We need some projects ASAP!”
So back onto the spinning hamster wheel I climbed… instead of taking that much-needed vacation.
A few years later, my mentor, Dan Sullivan, totally turned my thinking upside down when he said:
“Joel, your problem is that you view free time as a reward. You should instead view free time as preparation.”
This blew my mind.
Then I tried it. I scheduled regular vacations before big crunch times (like a pitch, sales trip, speaking opportunity, project, etc.) and as a result… I started showing up to those opportunities totally rejuvenated and prepared.
Which makes total sense. After all, your best opportunities deserve your very best, right?
So what’s stopping you? Drop me a note.
Cheers,
Joel
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