RE-energizing = Cruise control

     Running your career, business, or professional practice in cruise control requires re-energizing. 

     Groups require re-grouping.  Thinking requires re-thinking.  I know these things because I’m a writer, and every writer knows that respectable writing requires re-writing — always, all the time, no exceptions. 

     It’s RE-writing that marketing, advertising, promotion and public relations clients pay for, by the way.  Because ONLY re-writing can produce writing that’s worthy of reading . . . and responding to!  RE-writing is also what sells book manuscripts, and of course, books.  But how can you re-write something that’s not finished to start with? 

     And how can you get yourself started when you have so little time to do so much that—even as you read this, you’re worried about the time it’s taking to read this—you don’t make enough tiome to rejuvenate yourself?  Yes, that was a question.  It reminds me of the student I once tried to enroll in one of my time and stress management courses who said, “Listen, I don’t have any stress, and I certainly don’t have the time to take a course on time management!”  Uhuh.  

     Now, just to be clear, I’m not talking about that “time to smell the roses” stuff you see on Auntie Madeline’s garden plaques, or taking a 3-day weekend warrior trip to the mountains or the shore and return exhausted or hungover, or both. 

     Though if you’re still reading this, you probably don’t think that even little ventures like these, away from your work, your business or your professional practice, are affordable to your brain or your organization (especially given the one-of-a-kind customers, associates, patients, clients you have; and especially given that sales/claims/cases are so far ahead or so far behind) and you’re just being polite right now, patiently waiting for my lecture to end so you can throw a wet dishrag at your computer screen, and stomp off to your waiting piles of paperwork, snorting “bah, humbug!” (an expression you might ordinarily reserve for Christmastime?).

     “No, it’s the quality thing,” you keep saying; “it’s the quality of the time away from work; that’s all I need, just some quality time . . .” 

     Brrrrrrraaaaaatt!  Wrong again.  No, I’m talking about taking a bunch of days—more than a Monday or Friday tacked onto a “quality” weekend—and taking yourself someplace that, to you, might as well be outer space!  Go hide!  Blend into someone else’s scenery. 

     Take the risk of leaving your merry-go-round in someone else’s hands for a week or two.  When you come back, you’ll be able to make the carousel run more efficiently and more comfortably . . . maybe even get it out of running in nonproductive circles!  Imagine how far you can go on a merry-go-straight?  Stop.  Look.  Listen.  And get the hell out of Dodge!         halalpiar