One stress factor overwhelms you and drives your professional existence. To take a real vacation you must free yourself from that one stress factor if only for a few days.
Clues to identify your one stress factor. You should find yourself putting items related to this factor at the top of you daily to-do list. You should be constantly searching for ways to be better at this factor. In many ways it should feel like it consumes you from morning to night and sometimes wakes you in the middle of the night. OK, perhaps I’m more obsessive than most but that’s how I figured out what my one stress factor is.
Some more identifying clues. For me, it’s the pressure to always sell enough to keep the business running. That may or may not be your one thing. For example, you might be just starting your own business. You’ve decided to use a blog as your vehicle for marketing the business. Then, getting great content produced might be your one stress factor. Take some time and figure out what yours is.
Take a week off. I believe the concept of time off has changed for the modern entrepreneur. The key is to get away from your one stress factor. I know this because I just spent a week doing it. I still worked each day, just not as many hours and I ignored or perhaps pushed aside the pressure to sell. I convinced my brain that for these seven days selling would not matter.
Focus on the important tasks. I’m an early bird so for me that meant an hour or so in the morning to addresses key business issues via email. Even voice mail from the previous days was responded to via email. Throughout the day while enjoying time with my family I periodically checked email and addressed one or two key time sensitive issues. The rest got deleted or set aside to be addressed the next morning.
My lesson. My one stress factor ties up about 80 to 90% of my typical day. I’m still deciding if that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or just is. I know that by setting it aside I was able to enjoy the last week and not feel like I left my business or clients hanging. One day my head was even clear and empty enough to attack a task I had been putting off for months.
I’ve reengineered or reworked most of what I do over the last year. Time to take a hard look at my most time consuming one stress factor. That starts Monday. Any advice for me going in?
I hadn't really ever considered the concept of one stress factor. I WILL now, interesting back of the brain research, thanks for the post and the homework Jim.
My one thing is everything. A vacation for me would be to have the time to focus on one thing and give it the attention that it needs.
Uh-huh just did a lot of thinking about how free my brain felt this week. Thanks for the additional conversation this afternoon. My work week will look very different starting Monday.
Jon, Well that's kind of the point of the post. In the middle of the week my head was clear enough to focus on one of the things that has been part of my everything for months. Your comment really cleared that up for me, thanks for that.
Jim, I read this last week and didn't comment because I'm not sure I can narrow it down to just one. It feels like my one stress factor is keeping ALL of the balls in the air, which isn't helpful. Keeping my eye on all of our existing business while also pursuing new business…same deal…not one thing. I guess I'm still processing this but wanted to let you know I read the most and it is making me think. Good stuff.
Sue
Argh. Read the POST. Not the most. Methinks my one stress factor is the need to learn to slow down and spell : )
Sue, If it's any help I have all that too. What I figured out was that I stress myself out worrying about the next sale. The one I can make today instead of just running a great business and keeping all the balls in the air. I let that one ball become more important than the others.