What is a Holiday: vacation: leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure; “we get two weeks of vacation every summer”; “we took a short holiday in Puerto Rico”
a day on which work is suspended by law or custom; “no mail is delivered on federal holidays”; “it’s a good thing that New Year’s was a holiday because everyone
“A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.”
John B. Priestly
When you’ve been working long and hard at your home business for a while, you might feel like you’ve earned yourself a little break. There are home business owners out there who haven’t taken a real holiday since they started their business — including some who started their business as long as five years ago!
After all, how can you ever just desert your business and your customers and go bronze yourself on the beach? How can you avoid being on call 24/7 throughout your holiday? Well, everyone deserves some time to themselves at least once a year, if they want to keep being productive and avoid stress. Here’s what to do.
A quick and simple way to let people know that you’ve gone away is to change your answerphone message. This allows you to still hear what people have to say when you get back, and stops them from wondering why you never seem to answer your phone.
A good format for the message is as follows: ‘Hi, this is [your name] at [company name]. I’m sorry I’m not in the office right now, but I will be back on [give a date]. If you leave a message, I will be sure to get back to you’.
Of course, when you go on holiday, you’re relying on people being willing to wait for you. That means you can’t really take the kids to Disneyworld for two weeks, or spend a month staying with a friend abroad — it’s just too long to be away from your business for.
Similar to an answerphone message, but less commonly used, is the email autoresponder. Again, you don’t want people to wonder why their emails are going unanswered, so your best bet is to set up your email program to automatically reply to any email you get with a message saying that you’ve gone away.
Of course, when you go on holiday, you’re relying on people being willing to wait for you. That means you can’t really take the kids to Disneyworld for two weeks, or spend a month staying with a friend abroad — it’s just too long to be away from your business for.
You should regard a weekend away as ideal (it avoids the whole problem for the most part), and a week as the maximum you can allow yourself. Don’t let people make you feel bad about only taking one-week holidays: after all, you could always have more than one each year.
Of Course this famous quote from Amanda Bradley is still the best:”Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!”
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