Eric's Estimate

Happy Holidays and a Stressless New Year

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Eric

I have a lot of things on the go. Sometimes I find myself at my wits-end when I’m trying to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in months, family who I’m falling out of touch with and personal projects that I see losing their potential because I’m not on top of them.

At the end of the day I love what I do, I love how flexible it is, and I love that I’ve put myself in a position where I can mostly choose my lifestyle. However it does get stressful sometimes, and sometimes I jump at the idea of having a few days off over the holidays to hammer out some personal projects (ie. websites that aren’t going to make money but would be totally freaking rad).

That’s a huge problem.

With all of the things I have on the go – and I’m sure all of you do as well – it’s really important to just relax a little. I haven’t seen a lot of my family for most of the year, and I’m going to enjoy it. I’m not going to start any new campaigns over the holidays, and I’m just going to RELAX. I already missed the boat on some store type sites for Christmas, but in the new year I will be fresh and ready to hit the ground running on some Valentine’s Day offers.

How am I going to relax?

Well if you’re anything like me then being next to a computer is a huge problem over the holidays. I love to check out how my sites are doing, and how any campaigns I have running are humming along.

Because of this, I need to remove myself from the ability to check stats and confirm everything is running ok. I do have one campaign that I’m not very sure of, and that one is going to be paused over this weekend so I can just forget about it. Sure I might miss out on a bit of money, but the amount of relaxation I will get from not thinking about work will allow me to work 5x as hard the following week.

Living without a computer.

Yes, it’s only going to be 4 days that I’m away from my home office, but it would feel like an eternity if I didn’t have email. That is why even though I won’t be bringing my computer with me to hang with my family, I will always have my cell phone. That way, even if everything goes to shit and something blows up, at least I will get an email about it (“no funds”) or I will notice that my daily income has gone to a big whopping zero (thanks Peerfly Mobile!).

All in all I think if everyone took some well needed time off occasionally they would be able to work much harder and be much more focused. I’m starting to ramble a bit now, but I just want to say happy holidays, relax a little, and then make some f’ing dollars next week!