It usually takes me the better part of a week to wind down when on leave. Like most people who spend the majority of their waking hours devoted to their career, it’s tough for me to switch off.
I take my iPhone on holidays for communication purposes and my wish list of books is loaded onto my iPad. Restricting usage to only those purposes takes more willpower than I have.
So if I am only booked in for a seven day break, as I will be from tomorrow, I need to follow a wind-down strategy. This is roughly how I do it.
- Commit to only checking emails at 9am and 5pm each day. Clearly never checking emails when on leave would be preferable. However, that’s just not an option with the job that I do, given my industry. So instead of trying to go cold turkey and invariably failing, I take a structured approach.
- Get into a great book as early as the plane flight. Once I commit to a book I can’t put it down. And there is little more soothing than relaxing into a brilliant story for hours on end. I usually get through a couple of books on a week’s holiday. I make it my mission to read the winner of the Man Booker Prize each year, and as I still haven’t read the 2012 winner Hilary Mantel’s Bringing Up The Bodies, I will be downloading that into my iBook library today.
- Avoid twitter in the morning. The very first thing I do each morning before getting out of bed is check twitter for news that broke while I was sleeping. It kick-starts the adrenalin and often results in a number of emails. That’s the last thing I need if I want to relax at a slow pace on a holiday. But it takes discipline to say no. So I find that charging my phone overnight out of reach generally helps.
- Sleep in. This is easier said than done. My body clock forces open my eyes at the same time each morning. Like Pavlov’s Dog, I have been trained to do the same thing over and over. By the end of a break, the habit is often broken but by then it’s too late and I have to wind back up and into the same crazy routine. Isn’t repetition the first sign of madness?
- Get some air. Anxiety restricts the airflow. When your neck and back muscles are tense and constricted it’s difficult to breathe deeply and slowly. A long walk generally helps clear the mind and it’s also a great way to increase fitness levels and general health. But I find walking boring as a rule. Like classic Woody Allen in one of his movies I start to worry about the time I am wasting with a random walk – unless I’m plugged into the music selection on my iPhone. Music has added soothing benefits so it’s win-win. I start with Coldplay’s Yellow and then shuffle my way through the likes of Fleetwood Mac, John Mayer and Powderfinger. I often get lost in great songs and the result can be a very long and relaxing walk.
What do you do to wind down?