I usually send this to the CEOs and leaders I work with on the first day of their vacation. Whether you are on top of the French Alps skiing, lying on a Spanish beach, or road-tripping across Nevada, intentional reflection will help you return to your work refreshed and grounded.
Here are the three simple questions I ask:
What are you most proud to have accomplished since your last vacation? This can be your mindset, your habits, your relationships, or your business results. Consider your whole life, not just your work life.
What has brought you the greatest satisfaction and joy since your last vacation? Get very specific: ask yourself why it brought you satisfaction, not just what brought you satisfaction.
What have you learned about yourself since your last vacation? I intentionally frame this as “since your last vacation” so that the focus is on recent experience, not old stories and news. It is also a great forcing function to note the frequency with which you take vacations.
As a side note, I would love everyone around the world to embrace the European method of vacation, as it boosts productivity. Unlike some countries, the majority of Europeans take a vacation to actually take a vacation, not work from another location, explaining on every call or in every email that you are on vacation but just checking in, or monitoring email. I challenge each of you to make this crucial statement to your team today:
“Vacation Definition: no emails, meetings, or any work.”
Your team, and their friends and families, will thank you for it.
A further way to embrace the European vacation way is understanding and embracing the fortnight concept. I am not referring to the computer game, but the European name for fourteen consecutive days. It is common to take a fortnight’s holiday, fourteen consecutive days away from work. Any European reading this may consider that I am laboring this point, but it is for good reason, because it is such an alien concept that sometimes you have to hear the idea more than once!
Even with the recently popular so-called Unlimited Vacation policies, still in the US the time people take away from work is not enough.
So add to your playbook prioritizing, taking, and role-modeling for your team the art of taking a long vacation where you do not work.
Enjoy your summer!
You can find this and other executive tools
for how you communicate and lead with purpose in my latest book Words That Work:
Communicate Your Purpose, Profit, and Performance, Kogan Page 2022.
Dedicated to growing your business,
Val
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