Take the Rest of the Month Off

How many times have you been advised to bear down, work harder and focus more when things get tough?

You might consider another option. Quit!

That’s right. Fold the tent. Hang it up. Not for good, but long enough to recharge, rest and to reassess.

If you’re like me, you’re guilty of not recharging long enough and often enough. You might fool yourself into thinking you are going the extra mile and making sacrifices that will pay off in the long run, but you may in fact be doing two bad things. You are being counter productive, and you are shortening your life.

Knowing the latter, I sometimes joke about killing myself in the name of longevity. The ultimate irony, huh?

Let’s look at what happens to you when you work too hard and too long.

Re-create Before The Grave

Your battery runs down, and you deplete reserves to keep yourself going. That stresses your entire system, which in turn can cause every disease from Alzheimer’s to cancer and heart disease.

If that’s not bad enough, you get stale. That leads to counter productivity, which means you are digging an early grave in order to be less efficient.

Time off and vacations are not luxuries. They are an integral part of your wellness and longevity program, and they enable you to get more done in the long run.

Recreation simply means to re-create. Resting let’s you grow, makes you stronger, energizes you, frees your mind for generating breakthrough ideas and lengthens your life. It also improves your love life and strengthens your relationships.

Dan Sullivan, founder of “Strategic Coach” and arguably the most innovative and successful personal coach anywhere, made an interesting observation by studying thousands of entrepreneurs over decades.

He discovered that for every ten days a person takes off, completely disconnected from anything work related, he or she will come up with one game-changing insight on average that will turbo charge their business. Their minds become uncluttered, and ideas manifest themselves. Those who did that five times a year, got an average of five breakthrough ideas, many of which completely changed their lives for the better.

Divorce – Yourself

The secret is “disconnection.” When you take time off, whether it’s a day, a week or a month, completely divorce yourself from your business or your job. That means no business calls, emails or meetings. That means no trade journals, business-related writing or problem solving. It also means not thinking about business. That’s the tough one. But you’ll find the longer and more often you take time off to rest from work, the more natural it becomes.

While you are gone, make sure someone covers for you. Otherwise, you won’t be able to clear your mind, and you’ll be swamped with catching up when you return.

Do it right, and you will feel like a new person. You’ll dive into your work with renewed enthusiasm and energy, and at the end of the year, you will find you have accomplished twice or more as much as you used to. You will also duck a lot of chronic suffering and disease that eventually seem to plague almost everyone else.

This all largely assumes you do what you love and love what you do. If not, take some of your time off to reassess what vocation would make you happier than anything else. It’s never too late to change careers. If you love what you do, that’s another life extender towards longevity.

What other changes or benefits have you experienced from taking time of work!  Be bold and be the first to share!

 

 

David Kekich (Living Healthy to 120: Anti-Aging Breakthroughs) is President/CEO of Maximum Life Foundation that focuses on aging research, a 501(c)(3) corporation dedicated to curing aging-related diseases. For more information, visit: www.MaxLife.org. David contributes to our column Living Healthy to 120: Anti-Aging Breakthroughs. MaxLife is helping to make the anti-aging dream a reality with cutting edge Bio-Engineering research and products.