Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: vacation

  • Make Your Weekend a Weekend!

    The weekend is upon us. Or is it?

    You may have already left the office. Or have you?

    Just a friendly reminder to make your weekend a weekend.

    I like playing cards with friends and will be doing so later this evening. I let down, relax, and thoroughly enjoy the company and competition.

    What activity or lack of activity helps you relax and let down after a busy week?

    We all need our weekend.

    The mind needs a break. The body needs a break. Our souls need a break.

    When we keep pushing all of the time, our capacity to continue at the same levels of effectiveness diminishes and diminishes.

    Not only do we become less effective in the short term, we deplete and exhaust ourselves in the long term.

    So do yourself a favor this weekend and give yourself a weekend.

    Gather the friends for cards or games. Get out on the golf course or the frisbee golf course. Spend a day at the beach, in the mountains, or at the lake. Curl up with a good book. Try cooking something new. Build something with your hands.

    Whatever you end up doing, please, on behalf of all of us who have to face you on Monday, make your weekend a weekend!

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Who’s It For?

    loving_mondayNothing like a brief vacation with the family to raise deeper questions.

    Life on the blog has been quiet this past week because I am enjoying my family on a California road trip.

    Away from schedules and deadlines and expectations and demands, my heart and mind free up in refreshing ways.

    Present with the people who are most important to me, I am reminded that one of the reasons I work has to do with their well-being. One of the reasons I take a job that is a crazy mix of positives and negatives is their provision.

    Vacations are good for perspective resets.

    Do you need a perspective reset? Are you caught up in a whirlwind of activity and feel like you’re losing sight of what it’s all for?

    Try taking a break.

    Get away for a weekend. Go away for a week! Whether brief or extended, step away. Spend some focused time with the people who are most important to you.

    It will recharge and refocus your work. I’m certainly benefiting from mine!

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Renewable Energy Source… a Vacation

    loving_mondayIt doesn’t seem fair to write about loving Mondays while on vacation.

    On the other hand, it is because of these occasional breaks that I come back to Monday refreshed and renewed enough to keep making a contribution.

    Vacation is not merely is not merely an act of getting away. It is a movement toward.

    Yes, it can seem enough to get away from work. Away from the pressure, the complaining co-workers, the blaming boss, the tight schedules, the scarce resources, etc. Our step feels lighter and unconsciously we’re doing a fist pump on the way out of the building.

    But an additional and important gift we can give ourselves on vacation is to take a step toward something that renews us.

    The key is intention. Being intentional about knowing what refreshes us and taking action to get ourselves into that place.

    Some vacations are more work than rest. Our bodies may cry out for quiet, rest, or no agenda; and instead we might choose to race between tourist attractions. We got away from work, but we didn’t go toward what would renew.

    Task one is to take a regular vacation and get away from work. Task two is to make that vacation something that will replenish and renew our energies.

    Toward what renewable energy source will you be heading on this year’s vacation?

  • Permission Granted to Enjoy Spring Break

    VacationThe kids are on Spring break. I am not.

    But I work for myself. So theoretically I can stop working any time I choose.

    But then life does not happen “theoretically,” does it?

    And so I look through my to-do list, my project list and my contact list, and I think, “I’ll never breath again, much less enjoy Spring break!”

    Those of you who know me, know that I am anything but driven. So finding an excuse for a diversion in not my particular difficulty.

    Allowing myself to enjoy the diversion, though, is.

    So here’s what I’m doing. I’ve planned a few activities with the family over Spring break. They are on the calendar. Anything else can take place around those fixed points of light.

    Instead of Spring break slipping through my fingers, for example, I’ll be visiting colleges with my daughter for several days. It’s been on the calendar. Set aside before anything else had a chance to compete for the time. And, believe me, now that we are getting ready to depart, you wouldn’t believe the number of things competing for the time.

    Let me know what you do to set aside time without being haunted by everything else that you are not doing.