Do you need a break?

For those few of you who might have noticed, the number of blog postings on this site over the last two months has been significantly down.  This was on purpose as I realized that I needed a sabbatical of sorts from writing.

After my crazy experience of working through Hurricane Irene (see here) I was a little burned out.  I could tell because the writing ideas that had come easily (well relatively easily) to me before, were now few and far between.  There was not that burning desire of “Wow – I need to share this with people.”  In fact, it was just the opposite, whenever I came up with an idea, it was, “Who cares?”  I was burnt out on it.  It was adding stress to my life (more than what I felt was necessary) and was becoming an “issue.”

So I cut back.

Not completely, but enough that I felt like I was taking a break.  I did not post every week.  The posts that I did do were short and mostly updates.  I tweated less.

I did not take a complete sabbatical.  I still worked.  I did my day to day things.  I jumped into creating some new workshops.  I worked on developing some new business ideas with a friend.  I sold a bunch of projects for this fall/winter.

But I didn’t write.

And it felt like I had some time off.  I felt like I had a break.  Which is what I needed.

And I found out a few things.

1. The world did not end (I knew that would be the case, but still, one never really knows)

2. My readership dipped, but when I did post something, it popped back up right away

3. I want to write stuff again (now that I’ve had some reflection time

You should try it

Most of us don’t have the opportunity to take a real sabbatical.  However, I bet that each of us could find one or two things that we could take a sabbatical from.  For me it was writing this blog and keeping up on the social media stuff.  By taking a conscious break from it, I feel more motivated to do it now.

What is your mini-sabbatical going to be?  What do you need a mini-break from?  Is it new product development?  Leadership meetings?  Working on next years annual conference?   New sales?  Worrying?

And remember, the world won’t end…even if you think it might.

For your mini-sabbatical

1. you need to reduce your thinking on the topic/issue (not completely give it up)

2. You should give yourself a set amount of time to take off (I did it for two months, but I could see it working in as little as two weeks)

3. Keep a journal or log of ideas that come to you regarding your mini-sabbatical area – but don’t work on those ideas (this is to help with your motivation later)

4.  Do things so that you don’t fret too much about what you’re not doing (I did not look at the number of viewers to the blog because I knew that it would probably distress me)

5.  Remember, the min-sabbatical is supposed to rejuvenate you – if you feel it adding more stress, you need to change something about it (either how you are doing it or the fact that you are doing it at all)

Leave a note and share your ideas on this.  Let us know how it goes.