A New Perspective: Holidays

By Trevor Throness  |  December 17th

For years I didn’t take my family on a proper holiday.  We would take a long weekend here and there, but I had myriad excuses for staying home:  Work was too busy, there was too much going on at the moment, money could be used better elsewhere.

The truth was that there was (is) some kind of brokenness in me; an addiction to the action of being involved in work.

One day on my way out of a client’s office I stopped to chat with the office administrator, and somehow my non-holiday family togetherness strategy tumbled out.  She looked at me as if I was from Mars, and then gave me some much-needed advice (thanks Tina!).

She told me about the great memories that she and her husband had built with their kids during family holidays.  She advised me to change my ways.  I took her advice, and for the past several years our family has spent two weeks together during the summer. More on that in a moment, but first a word to my fellow holiday-hating addicts:

1. Creativity happens when you create margin in your life. If you’re too busy driving to stop for gas, you will never have the head space to get really creative. Jack Welch famously remarked that he only had 3 strategy changes during his time running G.E. and he thought of all of them while on holiday.
2. You’re better and sharper when you take time to ‘trickle charge’ by relaxing for a few days without interruption. You can’t ‘jump start’ your mind by taking a few hours away from work.
3. Leaders who can’t take time away because the wheels will fall off the organization are confessing to the world their lack of delegation, coaching and mentoring skills.

Today my oldest daughter has moved out, and my second son can’t come with us on holidays because he’s got a job. And I am so grateful that we decided to invest the time to be together for a good chunk of time every year, because those years won’t ever come back again.

Don’t feel guilty about going away – I’m leaving today!