Setting boundaries for time off

Hello, everybody. I am recording all this at the start of July, so I’ve already recorded several episodes, so I think this episode might be either going out at the end of July or the start of August. Either way, I am going to try and take August off. So, I have a little boy, some of you might know, and trying to juggle it all during the summer holidays is incredibly stressful. So, I’m going to try and take some stress off by taking all this off, which I have been trying to do for the last few years. It worked really well last year, so like some of the ways I do that is by doing things like this, batching stuff ahead of time. So, after this, I’ll be doing my newsletters. I have a wonderful team now who help me on the social media front as well. So, we’ll be batching some of that. I will still be doing some work in August, just a little bit here and there. But as much as possible, I will be batching ahead. But I thought it might be useful to share some boundaries that I put in place to cope with taking time off. I’m not very good at it. I’m really bad about taking holidays, actually, I really struggle because I’m not very good out of routine, so I’m not great at taking holidays. So, when I do take August off, we do still have some kind of routine in place, which me and my son sit down and we create one together. But anyway, right, let’s go back to holiday boundaries. So, the first thing you need to do is let the client know, way ahead of time, when you’re hoping to take time off. I would also add in some reminders and if you have access to their calendar, or you can send them a calendar invite, block out that time, so they know you’re not going to be available. Send them reminders and don’t send them a reminder the day before letting them know you’ll be done. Send it a week before so they don’t just send you something last minute. And yeah, if they say like the day before, or the night before, oh, I need this been doing. Unfortunately, that’s gonna have to wait. So, now the client knows, send them reminders, set your out of office and in that out of office, I personally would put in things like, other resources that might be able to be useful for them at the time, so like a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’. So, if you’re looking to sign up as a client, here are my details. If you want to book a call, here’s the link. And also make sure you’ve blocked out that time in your calendar reminder tool or whatever tool you use to book in meetings, block it out. That’s so easily done and forgotten, or not done and forgotten rather. So that’s really useful to do that, having somewhere where they can access information until you’re back. Also, add into your email signature your hours over the summer holidays, just to remind people, it just makes it a little bit easier. And this one’s going to be a bit of a controversial one. But if you really, really struggle to switch off on holiday, and you actually find it more stressful giving up or not working completely. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to allow yourself a tiny bit of time each day to do it. So, I know personally, I feel less stressed if I can have half an hour to deal with my emails in the morning or in the evening through the summer holidays, or through August in particular for me, because I’m not then dreading the end of the summer holidays thinking how much has been stacked up. I’m still not dealing with emails in terms of client emails and things like that. But I’m aware of what’s happening, I’m over it, but it’s not dominating the rest of my day. And actually work for me is a bit of an anchor. So, it makes me feel sane and safe and if I don’t have that, that can be quite challenging. So even just having a little bit of it each day, can be really helpful. If that’s not you, and you can stop work and clock off, fantastic. If you can clock off social media, brilliant. I can’t do that. And if you struggle with that, this is your permission slip to allow yourself a little bit of time, even if you block out that time and make sure you’re very strict with family or friends or whoever you’re spending time with. You let them know that you will not be doing it for any more than this amount of time. It will just be a little bit easier and little less stressful for you. But you’ve got to work out what works for you. Are you a switch everything off, clock off completely? Or does half an hour a day make you feel a lot less stressed on holiday? I’d love to know how you get on. So come on over to the Facebook group or join us on Instagram. All the details are either in the outro or in the show notes. I think I might still have some podcast episodes coming in August. So, I’ve got a couple of interviews actually that still need to come out. So, I think you will still be tied over with some audio. Otherwise, there are way over 100 episodes to go back through if you want to. Have a lovely week everyone and chat to you in the next episode.