The Quota: September

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Warning: Completely Unplug To Recharge

By W. Grant Eppler

Are you noticing that the buttons on your favorite sport coat, blouse or suit are showing threads? Are small tasks and projects piling up on your desk and at home at an alarming rate? If you take one more customer call, complaint or problem on one of those “bad days,” is there a chance you might lose it and tell a whiney customer to go take a flying leap?
    If so, take a vacation, ’cause summer’s over — and you need some time off.
    With the CY fourth quarter rapidly approaching, have you maximized three-quarters of your vacation time? Your time management skills and productivity are measured; so, too, should be vacation time taken.
    One advertising executive told me recently he was brought up under the rare corporate charter that states; “You must take your vacation.” He was warned that the company doesn’t train employees only to have them experience burnout after six or seven years. “No one gets promoted here unless they take vacation” was company culture. Now, when he interviews others, one of his cues to measuring a person’s career success and positive personal traits is how they answer his vacation question.
    To the contrary, though, most unenlightened companies, from small businesses to major corporations, do not encourage using vacation time properly. I’ve heard many in middle- and upper management make comments such as, “You should take your laptop and cell phone with you on vacation and check your email and voicemail once a day. It’s easy. Just download and write your email out by the pool or whatever.” (My internal response is always, “Yeah, right. Spend an hour out by the pool writing email while my 3-year-old drowns.”)
    This mentality, when combined with the internal drive of the self-motivating, heavily itineraried salesperson, sets up a dangerous pattern for burnout. And burnout, plus what I call the preceding month to burnout, “brown-out,” is wasteful to all.
Continued...

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