Have you ever taken extended time away from work?
Unfortunately in the non-stop, fast-paced industry of digital marketing, most of you will answer a regretful “Nope!” And the same was true for me, too: I’d barely taken time off since I was 16 — until this year.
But in July, I took 4 weeks off to get married in Italy (!) and spend some time away from work…
And it was truly life-changing.
So I want to share my 5 takeaways from this transformative experience. They can help you in your business life, your personal life, and maybe even encourage you to take some time off yourself.
(Think you can’t afford to take time away from work? Don’t be so sure! More on that later.)
To whoever needs to hear this: It’s okay to take time off.
Before my trip, I was talking to my Australian friend about what I called my upcoming “sabbatical.”
She laughed at me and said, “Molly, 4 weeks is not a sabbatical. Anywhere but America, that’s called a holiday, and we do it yearly”.
That hit me HARD because, because:
- As it turns out, only 75% of Americans actually get any paid time off at all.
- And of those people, the average employee would have to work for 20 years to get 4 weeks of paid vacation!
To the rest of the world, that’s CRAZY.
Most of us chose a digital industry for lifestyle flexibility, right? But while we might get to travel more than most people, does the work actually stop?
Do you turn off Slack and have time to decompress?
Not many can answer yes — myself included. And that’s why I’m so grateful to have taken this trip.
Did some balls get dropped in my absence? Yes. But did it all work out? Absolutely.
Because without a doubt, my being “switched off” for 4 whole weeks benefited not just me and my loved ones, it also benefited the entire team (and the bottom line) at Smart Marketer.
So to whoever needs to hear this: it’s okay — and even a good thing! — to take extended time off.
(If you want to hear more about my trip, I spill all the juicy details in Episode 202 of The Smart Marketer Podcast.)
Okat, now my 5 takeaways from 30 days work-free!
#1 Work to live, don’t live to work.
I’d always heard this, and I thought I was living this way — but it turns out I wasn’t.
Most of my waking hours and my brain energy was going to Smart Marketer. And hey — I love our business, I love our team, and I love the work we do (I hope to do it for the rest of my life), but I realized I wasn’t making the space to actually live.
And by “live” I mean having space where there are no responsibilities.
In our industry, many people live and die by their calendar.
Everything is precisely planned. And if that’s how you want to live, that’s okay. But that’s not how I want to live.
I want this business and my work to be something that helps others, but that also gives me freedom (and money) to take time for myself.
And I’m pretty sure, deep down, most of you feel the same way.
Every moment in life is fleeting. We can’t go back, right? And so this was the first thing that’s now a non-negotiable for Molly:
I will work to live, and I will make time to live.
#2 Slow is Fast.
The second realization I had, and this is a mantra that we speak at Smart Marketer, is that “Slow is fast.”
Before this trip, I didn’t realize how fast I was moving through my day-to-day life.
And in our culture, we tend to consider that a badge of honor:
- How many balls can we juggle?
- How much are we needed?
- How many people are relying on us?
This can make us feel important and needed, but when you live like that, it costs you in multiple ways.
Here’s one big drawback:
When you’re running through a series of meetings and tasks without looking at the bigger picture, you lose clarity. There might be one thing that you could do to cut out 50% of your workload, but you can’t see it because you’re moving so quickly.
When you slow down down enough to figure out the best way to advance your goals, then that’s how we get where we want!
We’re also happier on the journey because we’re not on this hamster wheel. We’re not moving in such a way that we constantly feel exhausted, which I think is something that most humans in 2024 are experiencing.
#3 Presence is key.
Honesty, I thought I was present in my day-to-day life. But turns out I wasn’t, because I wasn’t prioritizing being present.
So, there are 2 simple shifts I’ve made to ensure I do prioritize being present:
- When I’m on a Zoom call now, no matter who it’s with, every tab on my computer is closed. Slack is closed. My phone is on Do Not Disturb, and I give that person 100% of my attention.
It can be easy to think, “Oh, I can listen and talk to this person while also doing other things.”
But no, that’s NOT where genuine connection comes from. To build something great, you have to have a true connection with the people you’re working with (and that’s already tough in a virtual setting).
But if you aren’t truly present with that person, it’s impossible to connect. You can’t truly receive those ideas, be creative, or build something together.
- When I’m in person with someone now, my phone is AWAY. I’m 100% focused on the person or the task at hand.
Not only does this make me feel calmer, but I also feel more fulfilled in my relationships. I do better work because I focus on one thing at a time.
Listen, I know this sounds basic, but I didn’t realize how out of touch I was with actually being present.
#4 Boundaries are mandatory.
I’m not going to lie — this one was huge for me.
As a people pleaser, I’ve always had trouble with boundaries: I want to help everyone and I want to do everything that I can, so it’s been historically challenging for me to say no.
But saying “yes” to everything was breaking me into so many different pieces that I wasn’t giving anything I was doing 100%.
Whether it’s…
- Saying no to someone in the community asking me to help when I’m not able to
- Saying no to a friend asking to get together if I don’t have the energy
- Or saying no to a client who’s asking for something outside of their contract
…I am now putting myself first.
There are whole books on this subject; it’s not an easy lesson to learn. But you don’t want to one day realize that you’ve filled your hours and minutes with other people’s requests.
So sometimes, the most respectful thing you can do is simply say no.
But remember, it doesn’t have to be “no” forever and you don’t have to do it in a mean way — you can do it in the nicest way possible.
But it’s the ability to put yourself first and understand that your commitments already require 100% of you. And if you say yes to everything, it’ll be impossible to give each task your all.
#5 Be proactive versus reactive.
This was already a big goal for Smart Marketer in 2024, but now it feels like a big personal goal as well.
Do you get caught in a reactive cycle?
It’s so easy to get stuck there — responding to problems and challenges and picking up dropped balls — especially as a leader. But being in that state is not of service to anybody.
So now I ask myself: How can I be proactive? How can I spend time dreaming, creating, and strategizing? How can I give my time to creating assets and systems that will solve problems, rather than solving the same problem over and over again?
Some of this just comes down to your ability to make decisions and be aware, but it also comes down to how you block out time in your life.
So I’ve made 2 schedule changes that I’m really excited about:
- Thursdays are now entirely blocked out for me to work on high-level projects that impact the goals we set for this year. No matter how urgent the client’s call is or what’s going on in my life, that is a sacred time that is non-negotiable.
- Tuesdays and Wednesdays are now the days that I do calls with people outside of our business (which takes a lot of my time). And even though I enjoy these calls, the truth is that if I said yes to everything — if I were reacting and didn’t have boundaries — my calendar would be mostly made up of solving other people’s problems.
And that’s not going to get me where I want to go. That won’t make Smart Marketer the strongest and best business it can be.
Do you feel like you can’t take time off?
I know this can feel impossible — that’s how it felt to me, too! — but I promise you it’s not.
I bet that most of you reading this right now actually can take that time off, you just aren’t allowing yourself to.
I was just talking to another entrepreneur who was convinced he couldn’t take a trip like I did, but after 5 minutes of chatting he looked at me and said something like:
“Molly, I’m going to do this in a few months. I’m going to take a month off, and I’m going to set expectations with my clients, because I know that this is the best thing for me, which is, in turn, the best thing for my business and the people that we serve.”
So please give yourself permission to take this time, because it will improve your life, career, and business.
Remember, you don’t even have to go on a trip; you just need to be able to shut the laptop and completely step away from the pinging, the emails, the problems — the whole hamster wheel.
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Thank you for reading all this way!
Remember, you can learn more about my trip to Italy on Episode 202 of The Smart Marketer Podcast
