Maybe it’s because of the competitive business culture or their zealous ambitions, but this is for sure: most entrepreneurs rarely take a break. You want to accomplish as much as you can, meet all the people you can meet, and grow your venture as fast as possible so that you can establish your reputation in the industry.
The stress and tension are parts of the normal business life anyway, so why would you bother with vacations, right? However, you’re not giving yourself a favor with all your “hard work.” You’ll only experience burnout sooner.
If you find yourself in the following situations, it’s time for you to take a break. Otherwise, you’ll be so stressed out that you might just quit altogether.
You can’t think straight
You find it hard to focus. You’ve been reading your employee’s email for the last 15 minutes, and you still have no idea what it is they’re saying. You’re also disoriented most of the time. You interchange employees’ names or their respective projects.
No, the cure isn’t to down three to five cups of coffee. What you’re experiencing is brain fog, which happens when there’s too much cortisol in your body. When you don’t take a break, relax and loosen up, your body will be in constant fight-or-flight mode. This gives you more physical energy than cognitive discernment.
Learn to delegate tasks to your teams. Trust them that they would follow through. From there, take your much-needed rest.
You get irritated all the time
When you don’t break away from stress, it’s guaranteed that it will become more toxic for you. You get annoyed and angered over the littlest of things. At your business partner’s comment on your breakfast food. At your employee’s outfit. Even at your own social media timeline.
The worst part of this is when your irritation inadvertently spills over to your customers, say, in one of your visits to your food kiosk franchise or fashion boutique shop.
So, before a machine breaks down or a delay happens in your marketing campaign, step away from the tension-filled environment already and pacify your brewing irritation. Otherwise, you’ll regret the decisions you’ll make after that.
You keep getting sick
Being exposed to stress for long periods will not just affect your mental and emotional state. It will also inevitably make your physical health suffer. Stress reduces the body’s lymphocytes, white blood cells that help the body fight off infection. This explains why you get colds, flu, and other viral infections in the middle of a stressful project in your business.
This is the final straw to your self-imposed no-break policy. You can’t function well when you’re nursing a headache, so take a break. You never know, you might just get a Eureka moment for your next marketing strategy in your bed.
Yes, hard work in business is paramount to success. But at the same time, you can’t give your 100% if you’re on the way to burnout. Learn to take a break now and then. Learn to say no to work.
