Time Off...

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Equals Higher Output At Work

Now I’ll bet that title caught your eye. Yet am I really saying that taking time off work will improve and increase your working output, no matter what job you do?

Well yes, I am. And if you’re still shaking your head in disbelief, then read on and I’ll show you how leisure time can be just as important to the success of your business as your normal working hours are.

We all know that to succeed in setting up and running our own business, we must be prepared to put the hours in. There’s no way round this one – it’s a fact of life. You might eventually be earning enough to employ other people to do most of it for you, but for starters it will probably be just your nose which is pressed firmly to the grindstone.

In this situation, people often react in one of two ways. Firstly, they may put in some of the hours; doing only the minimum amount of work they can get away with each day. This will often result in a moderate amount of success, but surely not the heady heights they might reach if they really set their minds to it.

Secondly, they may decide that crunch time has arrived and use all the hours of the day and night to seek out clients, produce new work, arrange for high profile advertising to reel in new clients, complete their paperwork… and everything else which goes with running your own business.

Now you might think the second example stands more chance of making the business a success, and in some ways you’d be right. Yet it may well be short lived, for no human being can cope with an intensely concentrated workload for very long.

This is why leisure time can play a vital part in your business, even though it may seem to have no direct connection with it at all. Consider this – imagine there are two men, both running identical businesses, and both have a huge mound of paperwork to get done. Both have already put in a busy ten hour day, and their energy – not to mention their patience – is beginning to flag.

Dave decides to bravely battle on, balancing books and completing paperwork well into the small and lonely hours of the morning. At least this way, he thinks, I can fall into bed knowing I don’t have to wake up to it in the morning. Tired and irritable, it takes him several hours, as he keeps miscalculating the figures and mislaying invoices.

Geoff, meanwhile, leaves the paperwork sitting on his desk, and goes out to walk the dog/ have a game of tennis/ eats a family meal. At least this way, he thinks, I can get a good night’s sleep and prepare my mind for it tomorrow. Next morning, feeling fit and refreshed, he returns to his desk and clears the backlog of paperwork in half the time it took Dave to do the same job. Apart from the difference in time, Geoff still feels wide eyed and alert when the job is done. As for Dave, well… you can imagine what he might feel like, and it’s liable to affect his output at least for the rest of the day – if not longer.

So you can see leisure time or the lack of it can have a profound effect on the state of your business. The key to avoiding the worst case scenario is to take a look at how much leisure time you allow yourself, and what your business output is like in relation to it.

If you’re not sure where to start, think about how much sleep you need each night to wake up feeling ready for work. I once read that Margaret Thatcher could get by on something like three hours sleep a night when she was running the country, but whether that is true or not, you shouldn’t be tempted to aim for the absolute minimum amount you need. It’s too easy to think ‘Oh well, a half hour less won’t hurt for once’ – because before you know it, you’re equal with the former Premier on three hours a night. Make sure that if you have to cut your sleep short on occasion, you will still be able to get enough to function on.

Once you have discovered your ideal amount of sleep, think about the remaining hours of each day. There has to be some free time in there somewhere, and it’s up to you to discover whether your business fares better if you work solidly for, say, eight hours with half an hour for lunch, or instead work an hour at a time with fifteen minute breaks in between.

It is said the average human being has a relatively small attention span, so it should follow that for most people the second plan would work best. Frequent breaks for refreshments, fresh air, and perhaps a brisk walk would bring you back to your desk feeling prepared to tackle the next batch of invoices. Keeping a clear head is essential if you want to succeed in business, and it certainly pays to spend some time finding out how you can best achieve this.

If you work from home, you should also make sure you can separate your work from your free time. It’s hard to relax if your paperwork is sitting on the kitchen table while you’re trying to cook the dinner. Try and allocate a specific room for working in, and make it strictly out of bounds when you’re not working. Get used to shutting the door on it as soon as you finish work each day.

So you see your free time – and what you do with it – has just as much effect on your business as your working methods do. It’s up to you to make sure the effect is a good one.

by Allison Whitehead