5 Tips That Allow You to Take a Weekly Vacation

This is vacation season and many of you can clearly remember the anxiety and required activity as you prepare to leave for a week or two. I always am fascinated by how much I can get done in the last few days before a trip. My planning gets much more focused. My work tempo accelerates dramatically. My ability to run triage on what is really important while I subordinate the stuff that I like to do and usually occupies most of my time. During this hyper-phase I just get more done because I have a deadline, a goal, and I value not having to worry about my obligations when I on holiday.

So the big question is why don’t we do this more often like once per week?

I believe that we can if we follow these guidelines:

1. Every Friday afternoon begins a new vacation. Plan your week so that have your work done by Friday at 2 pm or you can’t take the weekend off. Even better is to plan something you love to do for Saturday morning and you can’t reward yourself unless you get your work done.

2. Late Sunday afternoon spend an hour writing out a list of the “must-dos” by the end of the week. Keep it realistic and actionable.

3. Schedule those tasks into your calendar. Each task gets a realistic time block and you must get those tasks done each day.

4. Keep another list of the items that didn’t make your weekly list. This helps you start next week’s planning and allows you to park the less significant items. You will feel much better and you won’t lose ideas.

5. Enlist an accountability partner. Proclaim to your spouse or friend what you are committing to getting done and the “prize” when you accomplish it. I highly recommend hiring a professional Business Coach, like me, to help stay organized and productive.

Enjoy your weekly vacation!

Coach Dave