Do you want to take time off for vacation this summer without pulling out your hair thinking, “I don’t want to be posting, marketing, and checking email every day”?
If so, I have 3 tips that I want to share with you that can make you enjoy the most out of your vacation.
I just returned from vacation this week. I went to Florida to visit my sister and her family, and my two little nieces, who are very dear to me. I didn’t want to ruin this vacation by thinking about work, when I should be having a break. I know a lot of you can relate to this.
So here are three tips on how to keep your mind off work while you are on vacation.
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The Tips
I was recently reading a book titled Stressaholic, and it might be an interesting book for you to read. The author talks about setting boundaries and she told a story about a guy that went on his honeymoon.
He was a website designer and when he was on his honeymoon he set up a vacation reply email. It said something like, “I don’t want to sabotage my marriage before it’s gotten off to the right start, so I’m not going to be replying until this date,” etc.
The author of Stressaholic said it was so cool and it was so sweet, I was really hoping he wouldn’t reply back to me before he told me he would as she wanted to hire him for web design work.
She said not long after she sent that email he replied while still on his honeymoon to potentially land a new client, even with the vacation reply email that went out.
So, if you do set up the boundaries, don’t go beyond that. Use them, and make sure they’re in place for a purpose. They are there so you can take a break and not checking in constantly.
Here are a few tips I want to share with you.
Tip #1: Schedule Your Tasks
The first tip is scheduling. As an author who is building your platform, you will be constantly thinking of your interaction with your tribe. You will be thinking that your platform will go silent during the time that you are away.
The solution to this is scheduling.
One thing you can schedule is your blog posts. If you use a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can simply go in and schedule your post for the exact day and time that you want it to go live.
This way you can have fresh, new blog content coming out, even when you’re on the beach or somewhere away from your computer.
Another thing that you can schedule is your social media posts.
I love using Post Planner. My affiliate link is ShelleyHitz.com/PostPlanner, and I am telling anyone and everyone about this tool, because I love it.
I love Post Planner because you can actually schedule recurring posts. This is also very useful especially on Twitter or if you have Quote Images. I have my quote images recur every 2 years.
So once I have 24 months of quote images in there, my words, the quotes I have chosen, will just continue to come out.
However, if you are on a tight budget you can use Hootsuite for free. I have used Hootsuite for years and it is good as well.
Aside from your blog posts and social media posts, you can also schedule your emails.
I strongly recommend that you continue to nurture your email subscriber list.
A member of the Author Audience Academy just told me today that she had been building her list. However, she stopped checking it because she was discouraged that she was not getting any sign ups. When she checked back she was like “oh my goodness Shelley, I actually have 13 subscribers! I need to nurture them. I need to follow up with them! I hadn’t realized they’d signed up!” She was so excited.
So if you have not been emailing your subscribers on a regular basis I definitely recommend it. I have been writing some emails that I scheduled to go out to my email subscriber list while I am on vacation.
When you do scheduling of your posts and emails, you can actually be making sales while you’re on vacation. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Tip #2: Batch Your Tasks (and use a timer)
The second tip is to batch your tasks.
When going on a vacation you want to look at what needs to get done before vacation. However, you should not forget to also look at what 
you need to do when you get back.
Once you see what you need to do, you can then batch those tasks.
I recommend that you sit down, set a timer, and use the Pomodoro Technique of 25 minutes of working and 5 minutes of break while working on batching your tasks.
Batch the tasks that you need to get done before you leave so you can be more productive.
Tip #3: Delegate Your Tasks
The third and last tip that I want to share with you is to delegate your tasks.
There are certain things you can delegate. You can delegate to a team of workers, which is what I do now or you can just delegate it to someone you trust, while you’re away.
Many of you do not have an ongoing team that’s helping you yet. So, you may want to delegate to someone just while you’re away. It could even just be a friend or somebody that you hire from your local area to check in and do whatever tasks you want to delegate while you are away.
As for me, I have a team whom I delegate tasks to while I’m on vacation.
I also have an assistant who monitors my email and lets me know when there is something that needs to be addressed urgently. Otherwise I can just check in my email if I have time, or maybe like once a day or once every other day.
So those are the tips that I can give you, so that you can enjoy the most out of your vacation.
Bonus Tip
One last thing that I want to share with you is to also set up boundaries while you are on vacation.
You can set up an auto reply on your email that says “I won’t be checking email during these times, I will reply back when I return at this time” or anything that implies that you are not going to be able to reply right away.
It is really a great habit to have a time when you can unplug from technology. We all need vacations and we all need times to unplug, otherwise we just are not going to be as effective.
Have you heard of the parable about a man who has to chop a tree and so he cannot stop working until he finally takes the tree down? Yet if that man took a short time to take a break and sharpen his axe, he could have probably done the task quicker, right?
The same goes to us. We must take time to unplug and relax for us to be more effective in our work.
I hope that you will implement some of these tips.
Set up systems and strategies to help you truly have breaks, whether it’s a vacation, little mini breaks each week, or even just a few hours break.
Taking that time away to refresh, restore, and rest is going to help you be more productive in the end.
It is going to help you restore connection with your Creator.
When we have so much noise going around or when we have so many distractions around us, sometimes we can’t hear God’s still voice. We will miss that quiet voice that prompts us to reach out to someone exactly when they need it and to do the thing that will bring the biggest results.
So many times, even in marketing, that still, small voice that I hear from God, the Holy Spirit, helps me to know exactly steps to do next which end up being the most successful.
When we take time away to rest, restore, and recharge, we will end up getting some of our best ideas. So have a notebook ready, capture the ideas when they come but make sure to take that time and to really let your self recharge.
As we recharge our phones when their battery goes dead, let us recharge as well, for we are more valuable than gadgets.
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