(Akiit.com) Everyone deserves a break. That includes those with the most severe cases of workaholism. It’s easy for a business owner to keep pushing back the day they finally take a vacation. “Just after this quarter”, “just after this project”, and “just after this deal” are excuses that can continuously roll into one another. But the more you avoid that break you need, the greater your risk of burnout. If you’re afraid of taking a vacation because you’re afraid of leaving the office, or afraid that you can’t disconnect from work, the tips below can help.
Have someone ready to fill your shoes
Leadership in the business is important and if you’re not around, it’s justifiable to worry that things might fall into disorganization. That’s why you cannot be unclear. You have to set up someone with a clear authority in your absence. Make sure you brief them on what your personal objectives are, as well as what you want the team’s focus to be. Set your expectations, tell them what they do and do not have the authority to do, and ensure they have some management experience. If they have to delegate their own work, help them do so, and leave them clear instructions on the processes that are essential when filling your shoes.
Make sure everyone knows
First of all, make sure everyone in the office knows that you’re out of reach. Even if you do set up some means of communicating with the office, you don’t want them using it, it’s only for emergencies or when you want to get in reach. Instead, they should address all issues and requests to your temporary replacement. But make sure that your most important business partners and service providers know in advance, too. You can easily set an email auto-reply to let others know that you’re out of the office, but the most important and frequent contacts in your address book deserve to have some warning.
Keep your finger on the pulse
You have to decide how much you want to be involved with things back in the office, as well. It’s possible to run the business from your smartphone. At least, in part. Accounting apps, note-taking apps, social media management, all these are available on just about any modern portable device. You can use your phone to communicate 
and check emails from the manager you’ve set up in your place, too. You don’t have to have a completely clean break, so if the business is in the middle of an important phase, then set up in advance how much you’re going to communicate and how much you’re going to be involved in running things even when you’re on vacation.
Schedule a hangout
Perhaps you don’t want to be as direct or hands-on as that. Instead of managing some aspects of the job directly, you can keep things in a much more casual tone to make sure you stay informed without having to get overly involved. Scheduling a hangout for fifteen to twenty minutes every day can help you take the pulse of the business without having to keep your finger there. Set a timer to avoid conversations dragging on too long, and have specific topics laid in advance so you can get right to the meat of the meeting. You can keep your distance without worrying about being left in the dark.
Set some rules for yourself
On the flipside of that, make sure that you’re not overstepping the bounds you set for yourself. For instance, even if you’re still handling some aspects of accounting, project management, or otherwise, give yourself specific work hours during the day. You might not spoil your holiday too much if you only take an hour in the morning to sit the hotel, doing a little work. You need to set rules on what you absolutely won’t do. The most important of all is checking your emails. You can give your second-in-command your personal email address or a specific tag that alerts you to their emails, but don’t get bogged down in the time sink of checking your inbox while you’re trying to relax. That’s an easy way to lose several hours of the day.
Keep your mind active
We’ve spoken a lot about how you can stay connected with work, but how about when you need to disconnect? There’s a reason that business owners are so fond of golf vacations. Not only because they can be networking opportunities, but it’s also because they keep your mind focused and active on a task besides work. If you go on golf trips frequently enough, you can even save money by choosing to rent or ship golf clubs depending on where you go. But most importantly, you should find a “vacation hobby”, something that engages you, instead of just thinking about relaxing on the beach. The truth is that many business owners find it difficult to relax without their mind going back to work.
Get away from it all occasionally
An active holiday can help you separate work and vacation time a little more easily. But you will likely still experience some difficulty making that clean break. It might be more infrequent, but sometimes you need a break that takes you completely out of the picture and allows you to disconnect entirely from work. Especially if you’re trying to focus on making a family vacation. When that need arises, then getting out into nature, with a camping or hiking trip, can be one of the best ways to do it. Of course, when you organize a trip like that, it requires even more preparation to ensure that your team is ready to handle things without any guidance at all from you.
It’s up to you how you much you think you need to disconnect or how much you want to be involved in things back in the office. But the tips above can help you organize your time so that you don’t feel like you’re torn between both worlds, never really fulfilling either need.
Staff Writer; Terry Ford