Do you need a timeout?

By: Lori T. Williams, Owner/Managing Attorney of Your Legal Resource, PLLC

Over the years, I’ve heard religious and business leaders talk about the importance of rest and reflection in one’s personal and business life.  It offers an opportunity to set and realign your priorities, spark creativity, and recharge your batteries.

One business professional offered these 3 tips to maintain creativity and balance, while accomplishing your goals: 

1.  Review Weekly:

Look at your schedule and tasks for the upcoming week and make sure it is in alignment with your priorities and goals.  We can easily fill our schedules, but what you spend your time on is critical in both your personal and professional life. See if anything can be delegated to others, or rescheduled, or cancelled if they aren’t important to accomplishing your goals. Look at the week prior and see if you would do anything differently in your meetings, or in the way you handled client matters or personal matters. Note where you may have gotten off track, and what worked well.

2.  Reflect Monthly:  

Plan and take one day or half a day each month to leave the office, the email, the phones, and any other distractions and go to a quiet place where you can think, plan, reflect, and relax.There’s no need to feel guilty about this day, because you’ll still be working.  However, you’ll be offsite, away from distractions so you will be able to accomplish something. This task doesn’t require you to buy a plane ticket. You can do something as simple as sitting on a park bench, or overlooking the water if you are near a lake.

a.  Look at your calendar and financial reports (or checkbook) to see what you accomplished that month and the preceding quarter.

• Did the things you spent most of your time on correlate with where most of your income came from?
  
  
• Are there new opportunities you can explore?
  
  
• Are there things you can delegate or outsource to be more profitable?
  
  
• Are you meeting your sales goals and income projections?
  
  
• Are you also accomplishing what you want in your personal life and generating enough cashflow and savings to meet those goals?
  
  

b.  Look at what you have planned for the upcoming quarter (or plan it if you haven’t already done so), and make sure you are aiming at the right target for the next 90 days and that your tasks, appointments, and financial resources support your goals.

3.  Retreat Annually:  

Take at least one week off each year to get away and have fun, and don’t bring any work with you. It’s not a vacation if you are checking email and voicemail every hour, or more.

I’ve taken these suggestions to heart and integrated most of them into my life.  I found that I need to be very intentional about scheduling reflective time into my week, or it won’t happen.

RESOURCES FOR DAILY REFLECTION/

MEDITATION:

• Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People, by: Stephen R. Covey.  This is a book about living the 7 habits of highly effective people every day.  Each daily message is no longer than one paragraph.  It’s perfect for the person who is too busy to read.

• Too Busy Not to Pray, by Bill Hybels, Lead Pastor of Willow Creek Church in Illinois.  Bill talks about his journey managing time and incorporating meditation and prayer into his busy schedule and global ministry. He offers helpful tips on how, when, and where to pray, as well as the benefits he received from doing so.

• Daily Devotionals:  These are available by many authors for all types of people: moms, dads, men, women, leaders, teens, singles, executives, etc.  You can buy them as books, download on a Kindle, or have them sent to you for free in email format from various sources.  The free email daily devotional I use is from YouVersion.com.

• Journaling:  This was a practice I felt I should be doing, but it took me several years to actually do it regularly and enjoy it.  It’s a great way to process what isn’t working, reflect on the joys and blessings in your life, and see patterns emerge in your life.  Keeping it all in your head will not create any peace.

In addition to scheduling reflective time and planning time for my business and personal life, and doing all the things required to run my business and household, I also schedule blocks of time for things I enjoy doing in my free time. Those “down time” blocks of time are as important as any other appointment in my schedule.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE “DOWN TIME” ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

• Yoga: 3 times a week (plus tennis, pilates, spinning, and muscle max);
  
  
• Church: every Sunday (plus my volunteer work);
  
  
• Reading and/or eating on my patio in the summer;
  
  
• Going for walks;
  
  
• Going to Traverse City for a long weekend in the summer;
  
  
• Scheduling a spa treatment once a month;
  
  
• Reading inspirational material daily and journaling 2-3x per week;
  
  
• Reading businesss building books (one a month on average);

Without some “down time”, today’s business leader can easily “burn out” with packed schedules, urgent demands, and a barrage of information to sift through.  What you say “no” to, is just as important as what you say “yes” to.  Our time is a limited and precious resource.    

It might require some schedule tweaking for you to find the right time of day, or the right day of the month, to pull away and reflect or to have fun, but it’s worth it. Your overall enjoyment and productivity will increase, and your business bottom line should also improve if you have set the right goals.

POINTS TO PONDER AND SHARE:

• What is your biggest time challenge?

• What are you consistently ignoring or not getting done, that you wish you could do?

• What works for you as a rest/relaxation tool?

• How has prayer/meditation/reflective time helped you?

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Lori T. Williams is a 23 year attorney based in Birmingham, MI. She owns a legal referral and legal consulting business called Your Legal Resource, PLLC. She assists individuals and small businesses in need of legal advice or representation by connecting them with the right legal specialist for their situation. She also provides consulting services for attorneys and other professional service providers on how to generate more business through effective branding, marketing, networking, and by creating strategic partnerships. For more information, visit www.bestlegalresource.com.