Focused - 10: Indie Vacation

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

We discuss planning and taking vacations as an independent worker. How do you set client expectations? How do you set boundaries with the people you're traveling with? What's the best way to get prepared for taking a trip? Most importantly, we talk about the importance of taking time off and meaning it.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined as always by my fellow host, Mr. David Sparks. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. I am so happy to be an independent worker.

Oh, yeah? You feeling good about it today? Yeah. A friend of mine called last week, been at a firm for something like 20 years, and they laid him off, just said it didn't make sense anymore. So he doesn't know what he's going to do. And I was thinking, boy, there's so much insecurity that comes with being independent, but at the same time, you forget how much insecurity there is being at a big place.

That's right. I mean, that was one of the things I kept in mind when I made my move was the idea that you're never really secure. I mean, I was laying people off, right? So you're never really secure. You just feel secure. You feel that you're secure until the. I mean, I was laying people off, right? So you're never really secure. You just feel secure. You feel, you know, that you're secure until the moment they tap you on the shoulder and say, get out. And being a free agent, you know, every day is a question of,

am I doing the right thing? Am I going to be able to make it or not? But you're not, you know, unless you've got a single client. Actually, I guess we should talk about multiple income streams maybe next time. Yeah, let's do that next episode. Next episode.

But that's not what this is about. But it's the same thing. Unless you've got a single client, you're not ever going to have that moment where somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, your job, your business is over now. You get to see all of the streams and make the decisions. And you may have to make a hard decision and say, this isn't going to work for me. But you make those decisions instead of just sort of sitting there blithely until somebody taps you on the shoulder. Yeah.

Well, we're getting to the end of the year, and we thought it would be fun to talk about indies and vacations. Let's take a vacation. Yeah. A lot of people are traveling at the end of the year. Yeah. And how do you do that? I mean, when you're the boss, vacation is every day, right?

I always joke. Not too long ago on, it was on Veterans Day. So earlier this month, my, I realized, I actually didn't even realize it until a couple hours into my work day that my entire family was home. I knew the kids had the day off. I didn't really realize that Lauren had the day off too. And I had that moment of like, oh, everybody's home and not working. And I said what I say a lot in these situations, which is, my boss is a real jerk.

He makes me work today. Yeah. Well, even just, I mean, well, this is probably another subject, but even weekends, when you go independent, suddenly days don't really matter that much. You can work often. It's true. It's true. So this is the question is, all right, you're an independent worker, you're working all the time, but you're also a human being. And human beings, believe it or not, take vacations. They take breaks. They recharge their batteries. They travel. They do all sorts of things that our society has agreed to a certain degree or other. And like American society has agreed that vacations are only good to a point and other countries have more vacations are good. They're good for the soul. They're good for the mind. They're good for the body. They're a thing that you should be able to do. But if your boss is a jerk who tells you to work every day because you're your own boss, how do you do it?

Yeah, I think we should start with just acknowledging that a vacation is important. You know, one of the reasons you are independent is that you can have that control. I agree. I mean, you know, circumstances can always intercede, right? If you literally can't stop working because that's the only way that you're able to pay your bills is working and you're in a precarious financial situation. If you can't afford to take a trip, to pay for a hotel room, to pay for an airplane trip, then of course you got to do what you got to do. But I think all things being equal, if you've got enough space to give yourself a break and then you should that's that's step one and and

step two i think it's good for your overall productivity to take a break and also you know if you keep your nose to the grindstone all the time, I firmly believe this, like you can do that and then you will look up and your life will have passed you by. Right. I mean, expanding your horizons, traveling, meeting people, going to doing it despite the fact that, you know, as we're going to discuss, that means there's a big hole in your calendar where you're not working or working less and that that can be scary. But you've got to remember, like, why are you doing this? this. It's because you will get so many other benefits out of it as a human being, as a worker, as a husband or a wife, as a parent, all of these things that go into taking time away. Yeah. And I would add, if you're looking at this and saying, well, that's all great, but I just don't have time for a vacation, then I'd say you've got a bigger problem and you need to start working on that.

Maybe listen to the other nine episodes. But you should not be in a situation where you say I cannot take a vacation. You should be able to look at the calendar and say, let's say within six months I can take a week off and start working for that. It's not sustainable to work all the time, right? So, I mean, I understand when circumstances are very difficult. Unustainable to work all the time, right? So, I mean, I understand when circumstances are very difficult, but yeah, that's the idea is you'll burn yourself out if you just have literally no time to take a break. Yeah, and I'm not saying you have to take it this week, but in the next six months, you should be able to find a week that you can get away. So, that really leads to the next step is you've decided, okay, a vacation in principle is a good idea. I'm going to plan one as an independent worker. What do you need to do? I'm going on vacation in the first week in January. This is my, I would say, first real family, big family vacation in a little while

since maybe last summer. Not that I haven't done some traveling, but this is one that it's just like we're going to Hawaii with my family and my wife's family, and we are there for the week. And I realized, like I did when I went to Ireland to speak at the UL conference a few weeks ago, and any other time I've been on a conference, you know, conference planning or anything like that, it is project management to get to the vacation because you have to plan what's going to happen that week. What do you have, what do you owe that week that you have to fulfill earlier or can you postpone it? I think in many ways, and this is true for people who are not independent workers too, when you take vacation, the reality is unless you're an hourly employee somewhere who, you know, your job is literally just to be present for those hours, your vacation pushes your work

to either side of the vacation. So the week before a vacation is usually brutally hard, and often the week afterward is brutally hard because you have to make up the work that you didn't do in advance before you left. But you can plan it. You can plan it and you have to plan it if you're an independent worker because you can't just say, I'm taking a week and walk out the door and hope that everybody else in the office picks up for you because there isn't anybody else. Yeah. One of the things you need to do, I think, is set expectations.

In addition to trying to plan out getting the work done before and the work after, if you're bringing work on your vacation, and that's a separate conversation we're going to have in a minute, but if you're bringing it, do not over plan that work. I think you need to look at, it's a vacation, right? You're going to have fun and you're going to spend a bunch of money to go on vacation. So don't plan on knocking down huge projects. Try to plan your own expectations around getting a little work done, but also enjoying your vacation. Yeah, so okay, how do you set about doing this? How do you set about planning your work that you're going to do, getting everybody to understand what, I mean, boy, you talk about client expectations and personal expectations. You also have family expectations, right?

Or your co-traveler expectations. And that's been a huge one for me, which is having my wife especially understand, like, what level of work can she expect from me while we're traveling? And when I was speaking at OOL, I said, okay, that, you know, I'm going to be going to this conference and I've got these interviews I need to do. And these are the things that I have to do that are basically working things. And then there's some socializing things that we can do together. And then there's some time that we can have. And likewise, for my trip to Hawaii, it's going to be the same thing. It's like, I don't know what that amount is, but that's the question of like, I expect that I'm going to have this amount of work that I'm

going to be doing and set her expectations. Yeah. It is a juggling act. In fact, let's just talk for a minute about deciding whether or not you need to work on vacation. We kind of made that assumption, but that's not always true. I think it depends on your business. If your business is writing books, let's say you write novels as an independent worker and you finish and you ship a novel, there's no reason why you can't go on a vacation and just say, I'm not going to do anything for a couple of weeks. And that's great. If you're in a client services-based business, that's not always the case. I know for me, it's just impossible for me to go on a vacation and just tell everybody, well, I'm sorry that, you know, your that part of deliverables too, where I have and you have regular deliverables. And so for my website, I can have Dan, my partner on the website,

fill in for me that week. And maybe I don't worry about the website part, but I also deliver a half a dozen podcasts a week and those need to be delivered. So I need to make sure that those get delivered in advance, pre-scheduled perhaps, or I have to deliver them there. And then there's always the, which anybody who is a manager in a larger organization will also know this. There's always stuff that comes up. There are always fires. And that's your client who calls you and There are always fires. And, and even, and that's your client who calls you and says, I have a terrible problem and you didn't plan for it, but you have to be available for them. And so that's, that's part of the, um, part of the

planning too, is, is expectations about what, what reaches the level that I need to deal with it now. And like your, your client that you've talked about who would email you and and then call you and say did you get my email like there's a level of of of interrupt that you need to not get interrupted by and then there's the stuff that you just have to plan there may be some issues that i have to deal with i've always joked that being a lawyer is something like a fireman because you you may be just fine and then suddenly the alarm bells go off and you've got to run. And my personal comfort space with vacation working is I don't bring projects on vacation. Like if I'm writing an acquisition agreement or a partnership or forming a new company or whatever, I don't plan on doing any of that stuff while I'm on vacation. I either get it done before or set expectations for other people to understand it's not going to happen until I return.

And I go on vacation more or less with a clean plate. And with all that said, I still have little fires that come up while I'm gone that I have to deal with. And that's my comfort place for it. But everybody's different. But I think you have to have a real – you have to spend some time thinking about the type of business you have and what's the – what can you get away with for I think the minimum work on vacation. One of the things you wrote in the outline that I love is if you're not on vacation, if you're working. And that's true. And how much money are you spending to be in Hawaii?

I mean you don't want to spend the whole time dealing with the latest Apple press release if you can avoid it. Exactly right. Like the, you are putting the money in and the time in, you're investing in this vacation as a rehabilitative or life experiential kind of thing. And you're cheating yourself if you break away from it to work. And sometimes that's necessary. But, you know, there's a clock ticking. And every hour you spend,

you could figure it out if you want, every hour you spend on location somewhere on a vacation is money. It's money in potentially lost income from your work. It's also money you're spending because you can prorate the flight, the hotel room. You can do all those calculations if you really want to. So you're spending money to be away and then not being away. And in that way, you're cheating yourself and you're wasting that money. And you're cheating your family too. You can't get that hour back later. Yeah.

Because that hour that you get back when you're home, you're at home. But right now, you're in a location somewhere on vacation. Don't cheat yourself out of it. Yeah, one of the things I also like to do, you talked about how you just leave the job and say, okay, guys, take care of a problem if it shows up. I have a couple for the Mac side of my life, Mac Sparky side. I don't really need that. I can handle problems, and I have people that can help me if I get in a jam. But the lawyer stuff is harder because what if one of my clients suddenly gets sued and has to be in court the next day and I'm in Hawaii? So before I leave, I have a little circle of friends

that agree to be kind of my agent here if something goes wrong. And I do the same for them when they go on vacation. And I always check in with them. So I mean, like I said, a lot of this is dependent on the type of business you have. But maybe give some thought when you're planning this out. If you've got a person out there somewhere that can be there for you if your business has that kind of need. Right. And if you are somebody who collaborates with other people, ask yourself the question, does it always need to be me? Right.

Does it always need to be me? Maybe what I do here is have my collaborators step in a little bit, and then I step in for them when they have some time away. And you may already have an arrangement like this with somebody, but that's part of what I do. Some of the stuff I do is more collaborative and some of it less so. And the stuff that's more collaborative, that's generally what happens is instead of me saying, oh boy, I need to record an extra podcast because I'm gone next week.

I'll say, hey, I'm going to be gone next week. Can you pick up the slack on the podcast collaborator? And that's a good kind of, usually it's a nice quid pro quo. Everybody wins. They take a vacation later. But that's worth thinking about too. What can you put off?

What can you do in advance? What can you share with a collaborator? And also what can you set as emergency conditions in case something comes up while you're gone? Is there somebody else who could be the first line of defense before it gets to you? Jason, I just want to make clear, if you need me to post the show when you're in Hawaii, I'll do that.

Okay. I got you, man. I think we're going to, I think we're going to make it. I think we're going to be able to get this show up while I'm in Hawaii by pre-recording. But that's part of the, trust me, David, I have been calculating out for the last month or two since we made the flight reservations what I'm going to do the first week

in January for every single project, right? That is definitely part of this. The larger issue of working on vacation, though, I want to go back to that a little bit, because as much as we've said positive things about, I think setting the scope of your, of your vacation and your work in inside, it is important. The idea that, uh, if you need to, like you said, if you're a novelist, whatever, you can just be like, okay, I'm taking the week off. Great. But if you, if you have to work at some level, setting the expectations going in for yourself, I just wanted to say that's also important to do that. That you need to be able to say, all right, this is the level that I can expect to work. Because then you're also breaking your promise to yourself if you go over it. And it will help you communicate it to other people too.

I think that's really important. And it will help you communicate it to other people too. I think that's really important. The other thing I want to mention is there's also something that this is kind of wacky, but I want to throw it in there. Sometimes, especially if you're not traveling with family, if you're just traveling on your own and maybe visiting friends, there's a, I kind of want to call it an indie vacation, There's a, I kind of want to call it an indie vacation, but a change of scenery that allows you to continue working on something. Or maybe you've got a special project. It's not quite a vacation.

Or maybe it's coupled with a vacation. You go somewhere and you're in some other city and you're working in cafes or whatever. And then you also do some sightseeing. And that's not quite what I would call a vacation. Because that's kind of like you're working in a different location, a different city. But I do think that that's something that independent people can sometimes do. Somebody we know who is a content creator has talked about going to other cities that are very nearby to work on a new project for a couple of days. And they're really

there to work and not to see the sites, but it's a change of scenery and they have the luxury of being able to do that because they're an independent worker. Yeah. I have like, when I go to the ocean for the day, sometimes I'll bring my laptop and work there. It's like that times 10, you know, I'm going to get a room where you can get room and stay there. But yeah, that is really different from vacation, but it is a great benefit of being an indie worker is you don't answer to the man you can go for if you want to go somewhere else. This episode of the free agents is brought to you by SaneBox. Use SaneBox to clean up your inbox in minutes. Sign up for a two week free trial and get a $20 credit at SaneBox.com slash free agents. When you're trying to run your own shop, one of the things that can crush you is email.

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you can also do with SaneBox. SaneBox has the ability to defer email. For instance, I have a defer box in my legal folder called Monday, and if an email comes in and I want to put it off until the following Monday, I just drag it into that box and it disappears. The following Monday morning, it shows up ready for me to deal with it. You don't have to use just days of the week though. You could say defer it two days or three hours or a month, whatever. There's also a service through SaneBox called SaneReminders. When I blind copy an email to oneweekatsanebox.com, if the person I sent that email to doesn't reply to me in one week, SaneBox sends me a reminder. This is really great, like when I'm sending a client a new retainer agreement or sending a proposal to another lawyer. I no longer have to track whether

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do you tell your clients you're going on vacation? You tell me. You're the lawyer here. I mean, I have already just disclosed where I'm going to be in January, so everybody out there knows. But what do you think? Do you say, I'm going to be out of town, or do you just not bother and put up a veneer of like, you know, if they need me, they'll call and I'll deal with it then and we'll be virtually present even if we're not present. What they'll say, I want them to think I'm all present and all being and always available. And I don't really think I need that. The relationship I have with my clients is very real and honest. And if it comes up, I'll tell them, oh, yeah, I'm going to be on vacation that week. I don't send an announcement to everyone saying, hey, I'm going to be gone for a week, so don't bother me. But if someone calls me and says, oh, I've got this big project I need you to do, and I'd say, that's great, but I'm on vacation next week. So I'll have to do it the following week. And, and that works fine. Um, when I'm on vacation, I guess we'll talk about that in a

minute, but when I'm on vacation, somebody calls me with a big project. I'm like, okay, well, I could be swimming with turtles right now, or I could be fixing this. So is this really that important? And usually my clients are like, Oh no, no, no, go swim with the turtles. We'll do this next week. So I'm very honest with them, but I don't burden them with it. I don't make, you know, I don't send out a blanket email telling everybody I'm leaving, but usual, not hiding it, but not advertising it so much. I guess if you've got a particularly needy client, I guess it might be something you could do to say, look, I'm going to be out next week. So if you need me, if you really, really need something, let me know. But otherwise, we'll check in when I get back, just to manage their expectations so that they don't call you routinely while you're standing at a waterfall. Right? But that's the only thing that I can sort of think of is if there's somebody

you particularly want to manage to basically say, hey, next week, don't call me unless you really need to. Yeah. As a lawyer, I can say, well, if you get arrested, you can call me. But otherwise, they can probably wait. Okay. The other thing about prepping for this trip, though, if you are going to be planning on doing a little work and hopefully as little work as possible. In fact, I think that's the message I want you to take from this is don't plan to do extra work. Do as little as you can. But let's say you're going on a trip.

You have a client-based, service-based business or something where you know you've got to check in on the shop while you're gone. What do you do in terms of technology? I mean, we're not really a tech show, but there's a couple bits of advice here I think you should probably follow. I don't know. What do you think? I'm curious. I'm going to turn it right back around on you. Okay.

Well, my obsession with vacations is batteries. I want lots and lots of batteries. I never know when I'm going to turn it right back around on you. Okay. Well, my obsession with vacations is batteries. I want lots and lots of batteries. I never know when I'm going to actually have power. You know, most places that you go, unless you're in the woods, will have batteries available. I know. It's an obsession. I don't really have an explanation for it. But I bought all these Anker.

I have one that's like 20,000 milli hours and i like i put that stuff in i just i just don't want to get there that's true something go wrong and not be able to deal with it well charging your devices to charging your devices on the trip and when you get there and having the flexibility to do that because the last thing you want to do is end up with like one charger for all your devices because then they have to get in line yeah the other thing I think is important if you think you're going to be doing work and it's internet-based stuff is are you going to have an internet connection where you're going? Maybe it's through your wireless. If you're going international, call your cell carrier to make sure you've got data.

If you're going somewhere domestic or going to a hotel, make sure they've got decent Wi-Fi. I just try to make sure I've got the internet covered. The internet is a huge thing. And for any of us independent internet type people, it's a huge deal. You need to know if you can, you know, is there Wi-Fi? What's the Wi-Fi? Is there a charge for the Wi-Fi? Like if you go to a hotel, you get a hotel with a great rate and it turns out they want to charge you $15 a day for their Wi-Fi, then that rate isn't so great anymore. And maybe there's something else you can do there. Depending on where you're traveling, you could rent a wireless hotspot or something like that, especially if you're traveling internationally to give you the data you want. There are lots of options, but it's one of those things that I think planning can give you a great advantage for.

My trip to Hawaii, we're renting a house because it's a very large group of people. And when we were going through the process of looking on VRBO and Airbnb for places to rent, that was one thing that I told my mother-in-law when she was looking at a bunch of places is, if it doesn't have internet, I can't stay there. Daddy's got to pay for the shoes. Exactly right. I get that. I need that. I can't not be on because you never know. And I may not need to record. I'm hoping not to record. And I may not need to upload a podcast or anything like that. But I have enough internet-based business that I can't envision a week on, you know, 3G if there is 3G or LTE in that location, which I would question that too. And so that was just on the list of like, there needs to be internet. And I check that now. Yeah. The other thing on my checklist is phone service. I have a

phone service. So a person answers the phone if you call my law firm, and I want to make sure they don't bug me so they know where I'm at and they have a way to get messages to me, but they're not necessarily going to be forwarding calls to me wherever I'm at. And then email is another thing, which kind of, you know,

I guess this is a little weird. Our sponsor this week, SaneBox, they have a SaneVacation folder I use. So I guess this is editorial, but a little weird because they're also a sponsor. But they have a way I can just drop email into a certain folder and then I don't see it until I get back, which is kind of nice. So I'm really careful about filtering email while on vacation. I don't want to deal with the daily grind. I just want to deal with emergencies. Yeah, that's great. I have never experienced something like that. You have your

person set up. By the way, your carriers for cellular service and data, your carrier almost certainly has a coverage map. So if you're going somewhere, can look i'm actually looking now at where we're staying on uh on kawaii and it claims to be lte so i'll be the judge of that but that's a again i'm going to supply some skepticism but i think that that's a i think that's a good sign so so that's i do think that you know that that's you're you got to bring your toolkit. If you're going to work, you got to bring the tools for your job with you. I would say don't overdo it. Try to plan, but leave yourself with enough flexibility some of my own personality on our listeners, maybe over planners, maybe overly focused on this stuff because they're listening to a podcast about being an independent worker. And so I will say this, which is like I said to David about his batteries, like you could bring batteries with you, but they may sell batteries. If you're like,

like rechargeable batteries or disposable batteries. You could bring lots of stuff with you that they probably sell in your destination if you absolutely need it. And I'll go further and say if you're staying at a hotel, it may very well have a business center with a printer and a computer you could use if you're absolutely desperate. There are cafes that have Wi-Fi. There are lots of places that you could go to do fallback in case of an emergency. So when you're packing, when you're planning, give yourself some flexibility, but don't overdo it to the point where you're bringing your entire office on your back. Because unless you are going out into the woods or someplace where there are no stores or things aren't available, you probably have the ability to pull that ripcord if you need it. And better to not overdo it. Yeah, agreed. Because I had that. I just recently, I stayed in a hotel and they had this whole big business center.

And I was like, why did I even bring this thing that I brought in my backpack? Because it's right here. And I just felt dumb. Well, I know one reason why you would bring it. Because you don't want to work in the business center. It's true. That kind of gets to putting you on the ground in Hawaii or wherever you're going. I think there's some good tips for how you get work done.

We're taking the assumption you're doing as little work as possible. It's your vacation. But there's some good ideas for how you do the work on vacation. For me, it's always been about kind of separating the work from the vacation. Maybe it's like a mental thing, but whenever we go on a trip, I find a cafe or I find a balcony somewhere in the hotel we're at, or I just find some place that's separate from our room and our family. And I will get up quite often in the morning. That's the best time for me because, family and I will get up quite often in the morning. That's the best time for me because,

you know, I got a family full of sleepers. And so if I get up for a couple hours and I go deal with whatever all that stuff is, the emergencies in that separate workspace, I find it a lot easier to get back into vacation mode when I get back to the room. That's a great idea. It depends on how you do it and what's available wherever you are. But I think that's a great idea to find a way, find a context, even if it is in a physical space, even if you can't do that, some sort of context. and your workspace from the rest of the trip. And that's good for you mentally. And it's good for your, your, um, your co-trippers, your family or whoever that, uh, they know when you're doing that, that that's, that's what you're doing and that, you know, you will get out of it when you can. Um, it also sets some boundaries, right? Like I'm not going to work here because this isn't the place where I work and this isn't the time where I work. And so I'm going to let that go and I'll come back to my work time and workplace tomorrow or later today or whatever. I think that's good.

Working on vacation is really hard. I mean, it's very hard. It's one of the hardest things that I have done even before I was an independent worker is that I need to find a half an hour to write a story on a vacation. And it's like that half hour, it's just the worst. It's just, it's so hard to do it. So set yourself up for success by creating a little mini routine, a little vacation routine and, and, and giving yourself permission in that space, in that time to do that. I think that's all really good. If you can, if you can manage it. The, um, I want to follow up with talking about why you're on vacation to begin with. But one other point I would add is when you're doing that planning,

I like to schedule for the day I come back, the rest of the world thinks I'm still on vacation to the extent they know I'm on vacation. I just say, you know, if I'm coming back on Tuesday, I say, well, I'll be back on Wednesday. And I like to have a day where there's no phones and it's like, I'm kind of on pretend vacation. And that's when I can kind of go through and look at what happened, all the non-emergency stuff that I pushed off while I was gone. Just give me a day to kind of triage all that. And that has served me very well. That's nice. I always like to come back on a Saturday instead of a Sunday because having a day to decompress, and that's a little different because that's not getting caught up on work as much as decompressing, but it's the same principle. Having a little extra time before you have to get back into it is not a bad idea.

And the most important thing I think this whole show is, you know, this is a vacation. Yeah. Just because you're indie doesn't mean you're not allowed to have vacation. Try and have vacation. You gave yourself permission. I mean, I feel sometimes it's the conflict between present self and past self that is a lot of what I do in terms of agreeing to do things. And then later I have to do them and I curse my past self. But I live up to the

agreements that my past self gave. Well, this is a good example where your past self said, you need to take a break and your present self needs to listen, right? Like it's done. The deal is done. You're taking the trip. Don't squander it. Think, like I said, you don't need to do the calculations, but there is a meter for every minute, every second that you're on vacation. A meter is running with the cost of it. And I don't say that to say don't take a vacation. I say that to make it worth it. Make the most of it.

Don't do unnecessary things to waste your vacation time that you could just do when you get home. And the bottom line for me, and this is where we're into the feelings now, David, it's like, if all you do is work on your vacation, why'd you go on vacation? Like, why even do it? That's not the point. The people that you're going with, the sites you're seeing, the people you're visiting, whatever the motivator is around the vacation, that's why you did it. For that and to give yourself a mental

break. And if you don't spend time with those people, don't see those sites and don't give yourself a break, then you have failed to live up to the vacation. Your vacation is kind of a project. It's like a project where you don't work, but it's still a project and you still need to fulfill it and you fail if you don't take full advantage of it. Yeah. And the biggest mistake I've made in the past is in those weeks leading up to the vacation when somebody calls with some non super urgent project, but you want to make a good impression. You want to do it fast and efficiently for them. And it's so tempting to say, yeah, I will, I will deliver that by some date where I know I'm going to end up having to do some of that work on the vacation. And, and I just And I've made that mistake so many times that I think I've

finally learned the lesson now. But you've got to walk in my shoes. Don't make the same mistakes I have. When you get to wherever you're going, don't have those commitments. Try and have as few as possible because you want to enjoy yourself. Yeah. All right. Well, I think it's time for us to take a vacation. Nope, it's not. We'll plan our next vacation. But yeah, I think this was great and people should do it. A week-long vacation in Hawaii is not for everybody, but whether it's a couple of days away, whether it's a long weekend, no matter what it is, giving yourself a break is a good idea. a good idea. If you don't believe it, talk to a friend or family member and ask them what they think. And they will tell you, yeah, you should do it. You should take a break. It's a good time to do it. Your boss is never going to tap you on the shoulder and say, boy, the shoulder, so much tapping. Your boss is never going to come to you and say, you should take a break because you're your boss. You have to do it for yourself.

And you should do it. And I think you will be a better worker for it. I really do believe that, that travel and just mental breaks give you perspective and let your brain process things way in the background that may never otherwise get processed if everything's always happening in the foreground. I used to like to talk about taking a walk in the woods. And I meant that metaphorically, but sometimes it's literal. It's like sometimes it's good to get away, even if it's for an afternoon, but certainly for a few days and not be doing the usual thing. I think in the end, the net result will be positive for

your business and for your personal life. So, you know, go on vacation, everybody. Do it. Agreed. All right. Well, that is this edition of Free Agents. We'll be back in two weeks with more. You can find us on relay.fm slash freeagents. And there's a contact link there if you want to send us an email. You can also tweet at us at freeagentsfm. FM. And those are places that you can get to us. We love to get your feedback. We do occasional feedback shows like we did last time. There will be more in the future. But until the next Fortnite, thanks for

listening. Goodbye, David. Bye, Jason. Thank you.