Happy summer everyone. Yes it’s that time of year when we need to put down the tools of our trade and take a breather. As busy self-employed professionals many online assistants find it hard to find the time to take a break. There are many reasons for this lack of taking care of ourselves, the main one being that if we don’t work we don’t get paid. Though this saying is true look at it from the other side, “If you don’t take a break you can’t work when you’re burned out or sick.”

When I first started working as an online assistant a few years ago taking time off was one of the hardest things to do. You’re always looking for the next project, or lining up the next client so that you have a consistent flow of work. While it’s good to have work and clients lined up to keep you going and money coming in we also need to know that a break is a good thing. After the first 6 months of working almost non-stop I realised that taking a break was as good for me and my business as it was for my family and my clients. When you’re tired from working all the time you start to make mistakes, they maybe small but they are still mistakes. Nothing is worse than sending a client a project and it’s not exactly the way it was supposed to be.

Not being up to full strength personally or physically is the main reason why I always advocate for online assistants to take a break, and the summer is one of the best times to do this. The summer time is a natural break time in the year, it’s halfway through the year and it’s the time when many  businesses, universities and clients tend to slow down their own workflow for various reasons. Taking advantage of this natural lull in workflow is a great way to recharge yourself. I you don’t want to take a week or two off working, you can take the weekends off or have long weekends during the summer. Once you notice you’re workflow starting to slow down start organizing yourself to begin taking breaks.

As I mentioned previously taking advantage of the natural lulls in industry workflow is a great indicator for when to take a break from work. I take advantage of the slow times during the holiday seasons like Easter, Summer and Christmas as these times tend to be slow. I also take alternate weekends off work throughout the year. I like working weekends but I don’t like tying up all my weekends with work so a happy medium is to take two weekends off during the month. This can be done by alternating the weekends which works fine with me.

With that said take some time to recharge yourself and enjoy your summer with your family and friends.

Happy summer.