Taking a Break from Your Small Business
You’ve got that mad hustle, but you’re starting to feel like you could use a very long nap away from your work life. When running your crafting business is starting to wear you out, consider giving yourself some grace from your work life. It’s not worth putting your health at risk with all the stress. Below are a few tips to help you figure out exactly how and when to take a break from your business.
Separate Your Work Life From Family Life
What I’ve found to be the most helpful is to separate work life from family life. It sounds like a no-brainer, but when you work for yourself it’s easy to blend the two together. You need to create specific work hours where you only focus on your business, and then you set those other precious hours to the side for your family. Close down your laptop, turn your email notifications off, and don’t think about work until tomorrow.
As an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to juggle a lot of things. I really love the description author Nora Roberts gives about juggling priorities in our life. As Nora Roberts states, “the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some are made of glass. And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.”
You have to really step back every day and figure out which balls are going to be glass, and which ones will be plastic. Prioritize what’s the most important in your life, and then everything else will fall into place when the time is right. When you separate your work life from your family life, you’ll be able to better understand which priorities matter the most and you can keep those glass balls from shattering.
Schedule Days Off from Your Crafting Business
Since you are now your own boss, you have to consider giving yourself vacation days so that you work life doesn’t become mundane. At a 9 to 5 job, you are usually awarded vacation days that you can take throughout the year. Don’t forget to give yourself the same treatment. Plan a vacation or two during the year so that you can take a break from your business.
It’s also important to award yourself with more time off during the year such as taking federal holidays off, or giving yourself the first Monday of the month off. The great thing is that you are your own boss so you can determine which days you can take off ahead of time so that you can plan for your business to still operate smoothly. If you have to shut everything down for a day, a weekend or a week, you’ll be able to plan accordingly ahead of time so that your customers know when to hear back from you. Plan for your days off, and then enjoy them!
Take Time Out for Self-Care
Lastly, you should have time for self-care daily. The time you give yourself depends on your schedule, but taking the time for your mental and physical health is important. It can affect your business greatly if you aren’t in the best health. Self-care doesn’t have to mean taking a bubble bath or painting your nails, it can be anything that makes your body and mind happy.
For me, self-care is getting up an hour before my family or taking an hour to myself at night if I can’t get up early. I use this time to journal, draw, do a devotional, read or listen to a podcast. It really depends on my mood. I try to be intentional with this time because I don’t get a whole lot of it to myself.
I also take the time exercise. I’m not at the point where I am doing it daily yet. I aim for trying to exercise at least three times a week so that I am making sure my body stays healthy. I am mostly sedentary when I am working from home, and I know that it’s not the best for my body. Exercise also helps me clear my mind and I love the endorphins that it provides. You don’t have to dread exercise. Instead, pick something you love to do like dancing, walking or riding your bike.
Giving yourself a break from your work life is essential to keeping your business running. If you never take a break form it, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin. Remember to take the time for yourself because you deserve it, your family deserves and so does your crafting business.