Today is the last weekday of my 5-week holiday. I had some very ambitious plans for the holiday (that’s why I took the holiday to begin with!). Some said my plans were overly ambitious and that if this is what my plan looked like, I might as well include “solving world hunger” on the list.
Were they right?
My answer is: “I don’t know.”
How many goals did I achieve?
None!
In fact, I would go so far as to say that I didn’t achieve anything in my holiday. You may have even noticed that I only wrote FOUR posts during my holiday (of FIVE WEEKS), while I was writing an average of one post PER DAY for almost a month before that!
Do I feel bad that my time was wasted without accomplishing anything? Kinda, but not really…
Why?
Because I just experienced the effects of a poor approach to getting things done and can now recognize the reasons for why I was unable to accomplish much. This doesn’t make me feel guilty or annoyed. In fact, I find it inspirational.
I took the holiday to find out if I can work productively at home for when I quit my job. The answer is clearly that I couldn’t. Not because it’s impossible, but because I didn’t approach it correctly, and can now pin-point where I went wrong. This is why I can’t answer the question of whether my plans were realistic or not. Had I done everything I could and in the right way, I would then be able to say whether they were overly ambitious or not.
I will hopefully be sharing some of these lessons with you so you can avoid my mistakes and worry about some other mistakes you will make 😛
4 replies on “Evaluating My Holiday”
Hi Haider,
I just posted about this very thing! I hate commenters who say that, but in this case I think you might benefit from my article. I tried working at home and the first result was an absolute waste of time. But after implementing a few changes, it is going great! I think setting goals first thing in the morning and trying to develop some kind of routine are the best two peices of advice I heard and used. I still have a 9-5 job but I am getting so much work done on my personal projects each saturday and weeknights compared to before.
I wish you well, and hope that you find a routine that works for you!
Dear Jessica,
Thank you for pointing me to your blog. I love it when commenters provide me with content I can benefit from 🙂
Different people have different constraints that limit their ability to get the results they want. My main constraint over the holiday was that I didn’t allocate time for different projects or communicate my schedule with those around me. So people were distracting me while I worked, or I felt guilty working on my site when I had people waiting for me to get work done for them.
I think it’s very important to have “work time” that others know about and that delimits work to that time only, so it doesn’t spill over and dominate your life. Usually when that happens it’s only the thought of work and guilt for not doing it is what haunts you…
I wish you all the best with your novel (and Jed’s chilli farm)!
Hi Haider,
Like Jessica and yourself I’ve had a similar experience…although I’m not currently looking to quit my job…I’m in my fifth week of holidays of various forms (no work, home with family; work, no kids; no work, kids only, partner at work – if that makes sense!). I had plenty of small projects I wanted to accomplish in this time and got very little done!
Dare I say it but if you look at this time using the label ‘holiday’ then chances are you will treat it as such and, well, I tend to relax as much as possible at this time of year, when I have the bulk of my holidays and …no matter how much I plan to do, I know it’s my holiday and most of it will remain to be done after I go back to work and the kids are back at school…
This is the first time I’ve come across you blog…looks iinteresting…I enjoyed your post on Zen Habits about half-habits…I have to start back the routines for the year tomorrow so this was helpful with all the things I am wanting to work on…oh and this last week I’ve started replacing some of my coffee with green tea…so well-timed all round!
Thanks.
@Barbara: I totally agree about the “holiday” label. With me, it’s not so much as how I labeled it, but how my family labeled it. Since I was on “holiday” in their eyes, it’s only natural to assume that I was playing on the computer! 😛
All the best with all your projects 😀