By cheeky request, a reader of this blog asked about my vacation schedule for 2007. I guess he'd read an article about making sure one learns from people whose lifestyle they admire. Makes sense not to follow the advice of someone who works themself to the bone, I say!
"Andrea, if you're teaching us to do more with less time, why don't you show us how much time you take off so we can see?"
Here is the schedule I set for the year as of December 2006. It includes time off as well as travel time.
January 1-7 | OFF
January 11-13 | Speaking Engagement, British Columbia
February 1- March 4 | Creative Hiatus with 1 week OFF (Select Client work by appointment only.)
April 19-21 | Speaking Engagement, Philadelphia Area Coaches Association
April 22-25 | OFF
May 3-9 | Speaking Engagements, Chicago, Madison, etc.
May 10-11 | OFF
June 1-4 | OFF
July 1-September 4 | Summer Hours (Select Client work by appointment only.)
October 5-8 | OFF
October 31-November 3 | Conference, Long Beach, California (Tentative)
November 4-13 | OFF
December 15-January 2(tbd) | OFF
Summarizing...
I have 13 days of booked travel for business with 4 days that are tentative. That's a max total of 17 days of booked travel for 2007. Plenty.
I have 43 days of booked vacation time off. That's a little bit more than 6 weeks, about right to offset the intensity of my work days.
And I have a full month of planned creative hiatus which means for me a limit of 5-10 hours per week of select appointments. This kind of time is actually my favorite - I love vacation time off too, but my work and creativity are so much part of me that I enjoy my days more when I can putter around, choose to do what I like when I like - that includes creating stuff and not feeling like i 'have' to go 'enjoy my vacation.' Sounds funny, but it's true.
Finally I have 2 months of summer hours, which is the same sort of time as creative hiatus, except I have a concrete creative goal for hiatus and not for summer hours.
I like to take summer hours to take advantage of the sunshine and be outside more. Which is a good time to mention that yes, in the winter season I do tend to work longer hours on work days...that's how I work best, but my total work time per week still sits at about 30 hours.
Questions? How about you? What works, what doesn't? Where's the gap between the amount of business you want to be doing and the amount you work?