Strategic Discipline Blog

Have you ever found that when you go on vacation you come up with great ideas for your business?  Seemingly impossible challenges suddenly become simply resolvable when you are away from work?  It’s not surprising.  Michael Gelb, Author of “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci” wrote, “Where are you when you get your best ideas?  Almost no one claims to get their best ideas at work.” 

In his Treatise on Painting, Leonardo da Vinci quoted, “The great geniuses, sometimes accomplish more when they work less.  It is a very good plan every now and then to go away and have a little relaxation….When you come back to the work your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose the power of judgment.”

Turns out there is something to this.  Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr wrote a book “The Power of Full Engagement,” which I highly recommend,  that disputes the value of time management in today’s business world.  In essence, they discovered that what makes us perform better is not better use of time, but better use of energy.  Jim Loehr, also the author of Stress for Success, started working with athletes, specifically tennis players. His breakthrough was when he discovered that the best tennis players were not winning because of what they did during the point as much as how they recovered between the points. 

One of the aspects of their work that reinforced my beliefs and the work we did in the E-Myth was the power of a mission statement.  The source of our energy comes from living a life of purpose.  Next time you’re interviewing for a position in your company ask the person if they have a personal mission statement.  The ones that do come to work with a higher sense of energy.  Certainly, they will if their mission ties to your Core Values. 

So what’s this got to do with vacations?  Vacations are time to recover!  You must take time to rest and recover.  If you work all the time and never take any recovery periods your mind becomes numb.  You miss opportunities because you’re simply stuck in the ditch of doing it, doing it, doing it. 

Consider this your permission to take a vacation.  You don’t need my permission, you need your own.  If you need to get over the guilt from taking off, then take the book “The Power of Full Engagement” along.  It’ll make you feel better about taking “me” time.  And you just may come up with a breakthrough for your business.

Blogs will be on hiatus for about two weeks as I take time to recover.  Thanks for reading my blogs!