The work-week-life cycle is feeling a bit “rinse-repeat” at the moment so last week I booked a bit of time off to do something different – a kind of mini “off the clock” day (an idea inspired by Laura Vanderkam) where you take a day out of the routine. Which leads me nicely to the first of my 3 things….
- Take some time out when you can
It is not always easy to carve out time that is a bit “different” but just taking a few hours out of the day to do something away from the routine, actually felt like much longer. I went out to lunch and to the Art of Banksy with my eldest daughter which was really interesting and good to send some time with her.
2. Planning isn’t everything, communication is key!
The irony about my off the clock day is that I had booked it for Mike’s birthday, forgotten to tell him and then by the time I did he already had meetings in that he couldn’t move. Oops. As it turned out he wasn’t very well so it was just as well we hadn’t planned to do a load of things and I ended up spending time with my daughter instead so that was a bonus, plus I had time to make him a cake and organise some birthday love.
3. Endings are new beginnings
I finished a series of coaching sessions with a client this week. I don’t think I am very good at endings as like to leave things open, but I have realised with coaching that closure is important. And reflecting on the series of sessions we had I realised that we had naturally started to move into a different kind of style and method of communicating as we drew nearer the end of the final series of coaching sessions, demonstrating to me, at least, that the client had really developed during coaching and now was ready for a new start. So although I feel sad that we are not coaching, we have agreed to continue in a different capacity and that feels like a natural evolution and ending. I need to remember this as I continue with my coaching practice.