Every year, for as long as I can remember as a business owner, Thanksgiving would be one of the holidays I looked forward to most. Don’t get me wrong, I have bigger favorites for faith & personal reasons: Chistmas, Easter, wife & kids’ birthdays, etc. But as a business owner, I love Thanksgiving, because it’s 4 days. Four glorious days and only 4-5 hours, really, are spent eating, fellowshipping with people you haven’t sen in a while. The rest of the time is relaxing with family, no agendas, the office is closed,clients and vendors shut down, and people nap a lot! So every year, scattered throughout the family time and R&R, I found myself getting an incredible amount of “important work” caught up on, and recharging my creative thinking. Not the “hey Geoff, got a minute?” stuff. Not the phone ringing stuff, the answering email stuff, the back-n-forth inter department stuff, the Twitter, Facebook and other communication tool stuff. I’m talking about the stuff you wish you had a couple hours of uninterrupted time to accomplish. The stuff you were called to do, the stuff that moves your organization forward, the stuff that you’re passionate about, the stuff that drove you to do what you do in the first place, the stuff that impacts lives if you can ever get it going, the stuff that matters most but that we are relegated to spending the least amount of time and energy on, after everything else sucks us dry of time, energy and ideas-generating thinking.
So here’s an idea, and trust me, it works. Have Thanksgiving every month. No, not the Turkey, long-lost family & friends & football. The 4-day weekend. Why not? Several months ago, I decided to do it, and my wife gave me a great gift: The freedom to do it. To “get away” overnight once/month. Not a retreat, I call it an “advance”. Started it a few months ago. Nothing fancy, just finding a place where I can get away from the noise, no interruptions, no phone ringing non-stop…A place I can carry a train of thought forward over a period of a couple hours uninterrupted by the ‘noise’. Knowing that those 2 days (1 night away from family), I’d get 2 weeks work of work done, and be a more happy, productive and fun-to-be-with CEO, Dad, husband and friend when I get back, get more wheels in motion that have been stuck in the mud, and regain sanity. If you’re a leader at any level, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
So, it’s your life! Why not do it? Maybe consider, instead of a 4-day weekend to start, take a Wednesday & Thursday, I recommend that. It gives you the peace of mind knowing Friday you can put out any fires (although, trust me, your team will grow and respond to challenges without you), and put into motion some of the new ideas and projects you come up with while you’re gone. Give it a try..you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your family, you owe it to your team. I promise, you’ll never regret it.
