Personal Productivity
Holidays: Should I slow down... or accelerate?
AUTHOR: Francisco Sáez
Now that you are on vacation or about to start (if you have already finished your holidays, I am late, but still read on and use the advice on your next ones), surely you will have plenty of spare time that you will try to spend, within your means and according to your circumstances, doing things you really enjoy. Actually, you should try to do things you like throughout the year, and you should work on something you like as well, so that every minute of your life counts… but this is not the subject of this post.
The subject of this post is kind of: Are you going to lie down on a towel in the beach every day (meaning doing nothing at all) 1 or are you going to do something interesting? For the record, I love to do nothing at all from time to time and I staunchly defend that good rest is essential to be productive, achieve your goals and be happy along the way, as you can see here.
But I also like to travel, go to concerts, play sports, enjoy a good meal with my family, read, research, learn new things, program, design websites, hang out with my friends… Yeah, I have luck, because what I do for work and what I do for fun is quite similar. Is it luck or did I bring it on myself? Hmm… that is not the subject of this post either.
“Yeah, but holidays are for relaxing, right?”. Yes and no. One thing is resting and another wasting your precious time by decree law. I do not want to waste my time. I feel good when I rest because I need it, but I don’t feel so good when resting is an obligation. And I feel great when I am tired after doing things I love. That kind of fatigue is different and I appreciate it.
To me, being productive is more like a lifestyle than using a number of techniques to perform better at work. I always try to use my time, even on vacation. If you think about it, I am sure there are a lot of things you could not do the rest of the year due to lack of time. And now that you have the time, you are not thinking about them.
And that was the reason for my post: Remind you that the best moments of your life are not those in which you are resting relaxed (although they are so cool)… the best ones, those which you will remember in the future, will occur when you, voluntarily, want to force your mind and your body to make more difficult, valuable, and meaningful things.
So enjoy your holidays… and rest!
1 Far be it from me to make you feel bad because you are enjoying a wonderful day at the beach with your family. So enjoy it the most… and read on, since that is not the point.
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