Why it’s important to take time away from your business

Continuing with the subject of summer holidays, this month I am going to focus on why it’s important to take time away from your business.

If you read last month’s blog, ‘How to prepare your business for the summer holidays’, you may have implemented some of the strategies I outlined to help to reduce the overwhelm often felt by business owners during the school holidays.

Will you be working long hours over the summer holidays?

In this article, I am going to talk about why it’s important to take time away from your business and some of the personal and professional benefits of taking a break.

The Importance of Taking Breaks from Your Business

Risking burnout

As a business owner, it is easy to work hard or even harder, with very little in the way of downtime. This is especially true in the early years, when you put everything into the business to make sure that it succeeds.

Building a business is very demanding, physically, mentally and emotionally, as you invest everything you are into your company.

But the awful truth will come home to roost as you become older. You find out that you can’t do everything you once did, and that tiredness can lead to irritability and stress, making business decisions difficult.

However, there is good news, you can slow down. You can take time away from your business. You can learn how to work smarter, not harder (have you read my March blog ‘How to break tasks down’?)

It is possible to delegate tasks to others, to systemise your business and to bring in outside expertise to help you to minimise the mundane tasks, so you can take time away from your business.

Contact Elaine at Spero Solutions to talk about our online business manager service. We can analyse your systems and processes, identify areas for improvement, implement procedures to enable you to have a guilt-free break.

The alternative is to risk burning out or another health crisis, when you will be forced to take time out!

If you have read my blog from January ’24 titled ‘Why a small business annual review is necessary’, you will be familiar with my own burnout experience.

The benefits of taking a break from your business

Below, I outline some of the benefits of taking a break.

1. You return more refreshed and with renewed energy

Running a business is very demanding. It takes intense focus and energy. But working longer hours at a fast pace increases the risk of burnout.

What’s more, it is difficult to make clear decisions when you are fighting in the trenches!

Taking time away from your business can help to recharge your mental and physical energy.

Giving yourself space can bring clarity to muddled and confused thinking and help you to see the bigger picture.

2. Work/life balance

It is essential for your wellbeing and your close relationships that you maintain a healthy work/life balance.

So, if you are struggling to find a reason to justify taking time away from your business, think about your partner, parents, children, close friends. How often do you spend quality time with them?

Time spent with your family will strengthen close relationships and help you to realise why you started your business in the first place. Wasn’t it to be able to spend more quality time with your loved ones and provide a better life for them?An online business manager from Spero Solutions will use their business management skills to bring efficiency to your business, freeing your time to spend with family and friends.

3. Mental and physical wellbeing

Reducing stress is one of the reasons why it’s important to take time away from your business.

Stress can have serious consequences, on both your mental and physical wellbeing, so it is important to take some time to allow your mind and body to rest.

When you are fighting against the fog of stress, your judgement is clouded, and you may not make the best decisions to take your business forward.

Time off will lower stress levels, giving you better focus and clarity when you return.

4. Motivation

If you are constantly stressed and exhausted, you can soon fall out of love with your business.

However, taking time off to recharge your batteries will help you to rediscover the reasons you started your business and rekindle your passion and drive.

5. Gaining perspective

Taking a step back can help you to see your business from a different angle. A fresh perspective offers insights that you just don’t see when you are in the thick of it!

For example, looking in from outside may make you more aware of market fluctuations and gaps without the normal bias you feel when you are working flat out. It will help you to understand your business from a customer’s perspective and shine a light on doing business with your company – something you are normally too involved to see clearly.

Seeing how your business functions without you can highlight pitfalls and where systemisation could be effective in streamlining processes.

6. Delegation

Another reason why its important to take time away from your business is delegation.

Give responsibility to members of your team and empower them to make decisions in your absence. This is crucial for scaling a business and identifying potential leaders, as well as testing the resilience of day-to-day operations.

Your team will grow stronger, developing the confidence to make sure your business runs efficiently and effectively whether you are there or not.

Effective business management is critical for long-term resilience and success and your wellbeing!

7. Vision and long-term planning

When you take a break from running your business, you have more ‘headspace’ to think about long-term plans for the future, and how you are going to get there.

You will be able to reassess the business, analysing what is working and where the shortfalls are, so you can adjust business strategy and/or operations to be more effective for long-term success.

8. Innovation/creativity

If you still need convincing why its important to take time away from your business, exposure to new people and places during a holiday can spark creativity and innovation.

Solutions suddenly spring to mind that you just wouldn’t have thought of when you were stressed and exhausted.

A restful mind can spark creativity as your mental energy returns, offering fresh ideas and a new enthusiasm for problem-solving that you lacked the energy for previously.