Take A Break (You Need It)

Ever feel like you're falling forward and can't catch yourself?

Here's why that happens and how to stop it.

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Transcript

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This is the Marketing Director Daily, and I'm Tim Parkin. As I'm recording this, it is Tuesday, and I canceled all my meetings for the day. And I think you might need to do the same. Today, as I'm recording this, it's my birthday, but that's not really why I canceled my meetings. I did it because of one of the five foundations that every marketing director needs. And that is work-life balance. You know, most of us are what I describe as falling forwards. It's that feeling when you are walking and you trip and you try to catch yourself and you end up just stumbling further along. You're still falling, you're still tripping, but you just haven't fallen yet. You keep going and you keep tripping and you keep tripping forward. And this is, I think, how most of us operate every day and every week is we're constantly falling forward. You're overwhelmed by the demands and you're trying to juggle everything, you're wearing every hat, and it's impossible to get everything done. And so you just keep falling forward, tripping and falling forwards and stumbling and never catching yourself and having stability, having stillness. And I think that we need to change this because if you don't, it's going to keep happening. And the only way to stop this is to interrupt it, is to give yourself a break. And I don't know about you, but I tend to work a lot. And I can't help it because I love what I do genuinely, but we can't keep going full speed without a break. We need a hard stop. Sometimes your batteries just need to recharge. And I would ask you to think about when is the last time you've taken a break, you've stepped back, you've been able to let go, disconnect, or take a deep breath. And if you're like most marketing directors, it probably hasn't been recently. It's probably been a while. And this is exhausting, it's overwhelming. I think the analogy of a battery is a really good one. My car is a Honda fit. And if you don't know what that looks like, it's a tiny hatchback. And that's funny because I'm six foot three. And so I can barely fit into this thing, but it has a tiny battery. And so the battery has died on me several times over the 14 years I've had it. And it's always frustrating when the battery dies. And over the years, the battery has died maybe two, if not three times. And whenever that happens, everything comes to a screeching halt. I literally can't drive the car. I have to get it taken in for service and get a new battery put in. And you and I can't let our batteries get to that point. We need to pause, we need to step back, and we need to let our batteries recharge. And so it's really important that you're intentional about this. As I said, the only way to fix this is to be proactive, is to be intentional and is to interrupt the cycle. If you don't, the demands will keep coming. If you don't, the work will never end. And so you need to plan this. And what I do now, and I've done it for the rest of the year, is I schedule in advance two days off every month. And I put them in my calendar. And the reason I do this is that way I'm committed to forcing myself to take a break, to disconnect, to reset. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: productivity isn't about doing more. It's about having the energy to focus on the right things. As you know, leading marketing can be stressful and it can be overwhelming, but you have to remember to give yourself a break. No one else is going to give you the break that you need. You have to give it to yourself. And so maybe it's time that you take a day off. Or maybe it's time for you to cancel all of your meetings. I don't know what it is for you, but I know that you need to do something. And so, right now, I would encourage you to go to your calendar and to look ahead in the next two or three weeks and pick a day and block off that day. Maybe the whole day, maybe half a day. You can still do work, but just block it off so you have no meetings. Or even better, take the day off. You've earned it. You deserve it, and you need it. Give yourself the opportunity to recharge your battery, to take a break, and to finally catch yourself from falling forward.