Take a holiday…

At this time of year a lot of us are actually taking holidays or thinking about a sitting on a beach in some faraway destination. In France the whole country heads for Le Midi for an entire month and, in many ways, why not?

Working in business in today’s difficult economic climate where we’re all obsessed with time, I propose that every now and then it does you good to deliberately waste a bit of it! In the age of “brush-by” meetings and “leaning in” to stay in focus and on-track with a punishing schedule, we can be forgiven for forgetting what the benefits of laziness might be.

Enforced laziness has a unique value that should not be underestimated, according to Schumpeter of the Economist magazine. Ronald Reagan famously believed in not overdoing things – “It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?” Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, praised the virtues of “masterful inactivity” and Asquith employed a policy of “wait and see” when he was in power. In the world of work, Jim Collins, famous author of Good to Great, exhorts us to create a stop-doing list to complement our to-do list.

I guess the point really is that occasionally we all need to get off the tread mill to figure out if there is a better way of doing things. In my view, that’s more necessary than ever today as we are plagued by phenomena such as email where our ability to manage the task is compromised by the constant need to respond within seconds. We are sucked into the vortex as we earnestly lean in to hear the “conversation” and before we know it we’re agreeing to the terms of an unknown email assailant who has just pushed his or her way to the top of our agenda.

Email is only one facet of the way we do business today but it’s a good indicator of where we are. According to a recent survey, 80% of us continue to work after we’ve left the office, 69% can’t go to bed without routinely checking the email in-box and 38% check their emails whilst at the dinner table!

So, if you’re lucky enough to be taking a holiday this year, my advice would be to truly enjoy it.
Big chunks of uninterrupted time are like gold dust – lean back a bit, enjoy the silence or the view or whatever’s available and the next time you need to lean-in you might find it’s not so difficult from your position of relaxed readiness!