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The Guilt-Free Guide to Vacationing for Entrepreneurs
It’s that time of year again. We’ve stuffed our bellies full of turkey with all the trimmings, and now the hustle and bustle of the holiday season is upon us.
You might be thinking about how great it would be to take some well-deserved time off from the daily grind. But can you?
Does simply thinking about taking time off make you break out in a cold sweat, worrying about all the work that won’t get done while you’re offline? Do you feel guilty when you’re not working or at least thinking about your business?
Why You Should Stop Trying to Think Outside the Box
“Think outside the box.” It’s basically the mantra of creativity, drilled into the minds of schoolchildren and executives alike.
As a writer under pressure to come up with creative, original content and ideas, I’ve even repeated it to myself — something I’m sure many writers and entrepreneurs can relate to. We’re always striving to stand out from the crowd, and we’ve been told that thinking outside the box is the way to do that.
“Think outside the box” has permeated our approach to creativity and defined the way that we evaluate ideas. But what does it actually mean — and does it really help us with creating original content?
Writing Your Own Manifesto
I’m not into “woo” things. I don’t meditate, I don’t get mind mapping, and I’m not big on “lifestyle design” (although I find value in some of its components).
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, either. The task is arbitrary and pressure-filled, and resolutions are virtually impossible to stick to. If you want to set up yourself for disappointment, just make a list of “goals” that you’re probably not going to achieve/attain.
So, when I ended up somewhat randomly in a “Writing a Manifesto” workshop at a conference, I was skeptical. Like, full-on MythBusters skeptical.
How Arrogance Stops Us From Writing
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you’re a writer, you’re probably not in possession of a good fortune. Instead, you are quite likely to possess some degree of self-doubt, low self-esteem, jealousy of and comparison with other more successful writers, and even self-hatred. (Or, alternatively, need to fend these feelings off with aggressive insistence on your own superiority and achievement.)
Yes, there are apparently healthy and wealthy exceptions to this “starving, tortured artist” stereotype. But the modern epidemic of depression and anxiety, combined with a budding writer’s drive towards honesty and introspection, together produce more than enough messed-up wordsmiths to keep the stereotype going.
Writers are probably no more miserable than the rest of the population; they’re just more honest. A good writer tries to represent reality as they encounter it, as opposed to buying into the pervasive social norm of “fake-it-til-you-make-it” happiness.
But are self-doubt; anxiety; compulsive worrying and comparing; inability to feel genuine joy for the success of others; and terrible struggles with perfectionism, motivation, and procrastination really necessary parts of being a writer? Or have we just normalized them to stop ourselves from feeling so bad…