A Strategy for “Recovery” at the End of the Year

You know the drill. While everyone else takes the end of year off to enjoy their family and to goof off a bit, you’re taking calls at 5am the day after Christmas and trying to close out a good portion of your yearly business in the last few days of the year. It’s tough to play with the big boys, isn’t it?

I find that many of us in this predicament follow this by taking 2 or 3 days off just after the New Year as a bit of consolation, only to slog back into “building up the business again”. In the words of Mr. Incredible “I wish the world would stay cleaned up for a little while… I mean, I just fixed up the place!”.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an executive, a manager, a sales guy, a consultant, or any other of this brave cadre who face the slings and arrows of the yearly business cycle; you’re in desperate needed of having a solid mental reset.

So what to do when you’ve got little time? Make a plan, and make it happen.

This is presuming you’re not actually taking a vacation. If you’re taking a vacation, then learn how to actually take one and leave your laptop at home, switch the SIM from your blackberry into a normal phone, and only check voice mail twice a day at most, and for certain have someone act as your back up for emergencies and have your voicemail direct people to that person. If you’ve got time to take vacation, then suck it up, stop whining, and actually enjoy it. I find it crazy for people who desperately need a vacation to not go to the office, but not take time off either, while depleting their “time off bank” (and you need to think of vacation that way). Enough said on this account…

If you’re like most of us who can’t schedule vacation during these critical few beginning weeks of the year, you’re in luck…. There is something you CAN do to reset, and it’s easier than you think.

You can’t do this half-heartedly. You NEED to make it happen, and not just fit it in. Schedule yourself, make a concerted effort. It also can’t be done in dribs and drabs, you need to take the full experience in order to get the benefit of any of it.

I prefer to actually have my plan in place before Christmas. It helps alleviate the angst of having to do ’something’ but first figuring out what, after Jan 1. I can relax a little, whip out my list, and pick off my not-so-active action items. This list should be “stuff to do”, not a schedule. There should be some plans around how to make them happen, but it shouldn’t be hurried. Then, make them happen, unabashedly.

The sorts of things you really want to do:

1) Cut out of work early each day, 3pm at the latest. Don’t compromise on this.

2) Do things you normally wouldn’t do. Take your kids to a play, a museum, etc. Go play at an arcade, go sit in Starbucks for a whole night with a good book. Take your wife on a date to a relaxed restaurant. Do STUFF.

3) Go to bed at a decent hour. There’s nothing worse than trying to reset and being more exhausted.

4) DON’T take a trip. Stay home, do day trips if you must, but try and not do anything resembling work.

5) Don’t be a neanderthal - this is reset time for you, but it’s not real if you don’t enjoy time with your loved ones. The whole point is returning to normal human life, not the a harried, post industrial rush that we live day to day. You’re supposed to be stopping to smell the roses, not rushing by them to play in the dirt.

Lastly - make sure there is a clean break from your “reset period” back to work. You need this ceremonial moment to “boot up”. It’s good for you. It will set your mental machine back into work mode, and not “pining for yesterday”. It’s also important to not try and “phase yourself back in”… don’t do it. Jump in an swim, but make sure you’ve “poised on the diving board” (you’re ceremony to yourself preparing you for the new thrust of the year).

Resetting is important, especially when you’ve given your all over a prolonged period, while others have gotten their batteries recharged. You need to be ready and able to meet the challenges of the new year, and this resetting period will help you be that, and hopefully willing to do so as well.

And… this works mid-year too, so if you’re pressed for action without time for a real vacation, give it a try.

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