Are you planning to take some time off over the holiday period? 

December is a crazy month and, for entrepreneurs and small business owners especially, it can be extremely stressful.

Which is why it’s so important to take time off when you can. Every entrepreneur needs that reset in which you can relieve some of the stress and exhaustion that builds up while running your business. Taking time off is important for your mental health, but a lot of small business owners are reluctant to take any time for themselves. 

Taking time off is important for your mental health, but a lot of small business owners are reluctant to take any time for themselves.

Do you usually feel guilty when you take an extended break or feel that everything is going to fall down around you when you’re not there?

We get it. 

When you run your own business, everything falls to you, and it can seem almost impossible to switch off and just enjoy yourself without worrying about what’s going to go wrong, or feeling guilty for not working 24/7. 

But it’s important that you do take time to destress and recharge. 

And whether that’s during the Christmas break or any other time of the year, there are things that you can do to ensure that your time off is as stress-free as possible.  

Here are Six Ways to Make Sure Your Next Holiday Break is a Relaxation Vacation!

1. Plan and Prepare

As entrepreneurs, we all know that running your own business is a lot more involved than the stereotype would suggest. You can’t just decide you want to take a holiday or some time off one day and then leave the next.

It takes planning and preparation.

If you know when you want to go away, weeks or months in advance, you can start blocking out time in your calendar and informing those who need to know about it. This will give you the chance to set in place systems so that you’re not constantly disturbed during your holiday.

The more thoroughly you plan and prepare for your holiday the smoother it’s going to be and the less chance there is that something is going to happen to interrupt your relaxation time.

2. Work Your Holiday Around Your Peak and Slow Seasons

Every business operates differently and its busy and slow seasons will reflect this. You need to plan your time off around this.

A lot of product-based businesses usually have their busy season from November through Christmas, while a lot of client-based businesses tend to slow down during the Christmas period.

So, it’s a good idea to plan your holidays to coincide with your slow season.

You’ll be less stressed out if you know that your holiday is not impacting your peak sale period. Plus it’s less likely that you’ll be disturbed during your break by staff/suppliers/clients with issues during your slow season. 

3. Get Your Partner More Involved

As women, we tend to take on the bulk of the responsibility when it comes to planning Christmas, Easter and all the other big holidays. And this can leave you running around, overly stressed trying to deal with the kids while your partner sits back with a beer, enjoying their time off.

So what we need to do ladies, is get our partners more involved in helping plan and organise things for the holidays.

Many hands make light work as they say, and splitting the work will help you actually relax and enjoy your time off. 

4. Schedule Your Social Media Posts Before Your Holiday

Just because you’re taking a break from the public, that doesn’t mean your business has to.

In fact, pre-scheduling all of your social media posts may be one of the easiest things you can do to reduce your holiday stress.

Pre-scheduling all of your social media posts may be one of the easiest things you can do to reduce your holiday stress.  Click To Tweet

Scheduling social media content is relatively easy and we recommend introducing it to your overall social media strategy. However, if you don’t want to do that you need to at least introduce it while you’re on your holiday break. And you actually have a lot of options when it comes to apps that will do this for you e.g Later, Hootsuite, and Buffer.

If you’d like to know our opinion on the best social media scheduling apps, check out our article 5 of Our Best Social Media Posting and Scheduling Tools of 2021.

A lot of scheduling apps offer free plans so there’s no real downside to using a tool like this. Scheduling your posts will help ease any worries you have about not posting during your break. You’ll have the freedom of not having to think about your social media while still maintaining your brand’s presence online. 

You’ll have the freedom of not having to think about your social media while still maintaining your brand’s presence online.

We’d also recommend scheduling your posts not just for the duration of your holiday, but also for the days leading up to it and the week following your holiday. This will mean that you don’t have to worry about it while doing last-minute preparations for your holiday and also while you’re playing catch up on other work afterwards.

5. Unplug and Switch Off Your Phone

Can you go more than a few hours without checking your social media or email?

Studies have shown that some people check their phone every 6.5 minutes, and over half of mobile users admit to sleeping with their phone by their beds to ensure they don’t miss a call.

We’re all addicted to our phones, but if you want to learn to truly relax on your holiday you need to switch off – at least from the work side of things.

Learning to unplug can be beneficial on so many levels. It can lead to more productivity and focus, less stress, increased self-worth, and more mindfulness. 

So it’s a great idea to set up autoresponders on your emails, texts, and social media while you’re away. Set up professional automatic email responses to inform anyone who sends an incoming email that you’re out of the office and will be back on a certain date.

And if you run a business page on Facebook you can also create similar autoresponders on Facebook messenger to reply with your reopening date to anyone who tries to contact you. 

It’s a great idea to set up autoresponders on your emails, texts, and social media while you’re away. Click To Tweet

There are even apps that also allow you to set auto-responders up on your phone. For iPhone users, it is actually a built-in feature. You can choose to set whose calls go through, and while everyone else will get a personalised autoreply. This is an extremely useful feature and taking the time to set up autoresponders will make sure that your holiday stays undisturbed while ensuring that people know why you’re not responding. 

6. Set Yourself Some Work Time

If you’re the type of person who can’t completely switch off from work without stressing out about what you’re missing, you need to find ways around this.

And you don’t have to change your mindset completely in order to finally take that relaxing break.

You need to set yourself some dedicated work time during your holiday break. This should be no longer than an hour and be dedicated to tasks that are urgent, such as checking your emails and social media and answering client/customer/supplier enquiries that are time-sensitive. 

Set yourself some dedicated work time during your holiday break.

So to be clear, this isn’t time to work on your big goals or tasks, only to keep an eye on things so that you can feel secure in the fact that everything is fine and can wait until after your break. 

You Work Better When You Work Less

Making time to do the things you love and taking time off from work (even if they’re short) is an important part of self-care. If you don’t take time off occasionally, it will start impacting your mental health and productivity and you’ll find yourself burnt out – no matter how much you love your business.

So make sure that you take some time off, enjoy being with your family and friends, and destress, so that you can go back with a more positive, more productive, and refreshed mindset!  

We hope you have an amazingly relaxing holiday – and if you follow these tips we know you will! 

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Check out our other articles in the Fempire Magazine for more marketing and entrepreneurial tips! 

And if you have any tips on how to plan for a relaxing holiday from work, share them with us in the comments xx