I think we all make the excuse of not having time – I know I spoke about this before when it comes to blogging and the fact a lot of people say they don’t have time for it.
But I think one of the things a lot of us do as business owners is that we think that we need to be working non stop on our business – we don’t seem to think we should take time off. After all don’t truly successful people work 24/7!
Now I am not here to preach and say you need to take X amount of time off each week and do this, that and the other – because I don’t know your personal situation.
Maybe you need to work lots of hours to pay the bills, feed your kids, support your partner. And that’s fine.
What I want to talk about today is why we don’t take time off.
#1. Fear
I think sometimes we are afraid of what will happen if we are not working. Will someone need something and I am not here? What if I get a big sale and I am not there to deal with it?
What if no-one misses me? Yes, it’s true – we do fear not being needed. Imagine for a second you took a day off and no-one noticed – would that bother you? For some of us yes it might do.
Fear is a real thing that holds us back. It’s comfortable to be working away all day at your normal pace, through your to do list of tasks – there is no risk.
But what if we picked up the pace, turned off Facebook and got everything done a lot quicker – how would that feel?
Maybe you like to go dancing during your time off!#2. Guilt
You can feel guilty for lots of reasons – buying that new top you didn’t really need, getting your hair done just because you felt like it, not tidying up and instead watching your favourite TV show.
But when it comes to work we can often feel guilty taking time off from work. Maybe you have staff and you feel guilty leaving them to do the work, maybe you feel guilty that your friends and family are working and you can afford the time off, or maybe you just feel guilty because that’s what we do!
Yes, that’s right – we can be guilty of feeling guilty because we think we should do. Rather than celebrating the hard work we have put in and the right we have earned to take time off and relax.
#3. You don’t know what to do
Owning your own business can be a bit consuming if we allow it to be. You can be sitting in your PJ’s at 2pm working away and not realise the entire morning has gone and you’ve not had a shower and are sitting next to a cold cup of tea. (oops is that just me!!)
Or maybe you are on auto pilot as you go about your morning routine as a Pet Sitter, Dog Walker or Groomer. It just becomes what you do and you don’t challenge the norm.
So when someone says take a day off you actually don’t know what to do with yourself. Where would you go, what would you do?
It sounds really silly – but unless you make a list of things you could do then you’ll do nothing – because it’s like you have forgot how to take time off and enjoy yourself.
When you work for someone else you take your public holidays, your vacation time and you plan your year around those things. You have your summer vacation and then you take weekends away throughout the year.
You are normally off on the weekends, so you work towards those each week and plan events with your family.
But when you work for yourself you can almost forget to make that time for yourself and you forget what you used to do on those days off.
What Should You Do?
There are loads of things you could do to take time out for yourself.
- Accept you need time off! Stand up and say “I’m a business owner and it’s ok to take time off!”
- Hire staff
- Get office help
- Book time with yourself – yes like a customer books an appointment!
- Make a bucket list of things you want to do and start doing some of them
- Find a group of like minded people to hang out with and be inspired by
