I texted Caitlyn a week ago and said, “Hey boo, is there anyway we can work it out so I can take a week off. This girl needs some serious rest.” Coming from a human that literally sucks at asking for help, she responded back quickly with a resounding, “You got it.”
Let me be frank with you, my friends. I do a lot of things, I am always on the go, my to-do list is never done. It isn’t because I take on too much, it’s because I am always thinking, scheming and dreaming about what’s next. My brain has a million tabs open and I always seem to be excited about at least a few of them.
Rest for me usually looks like working on a different project (and taking a few days away from another.) Running a multifaceted mini-empire means there are a million roles, tasks, and things to get done, which means there’s always space for me to be working at some capacity.
So as we started talking about what rest could look like for me, I realized, I don’t necessarily need a week off – heck, I don’t even know if I could Netflix binge for a solid day straight (seriously!) I just needed to pull myself out of the things that were bogging down my mental capacity for a few days and give myself a little space.
I told Caitlyn to change the email password and not let me in until I was really ready to hop in. Email has been something I’ve really struggled with the past few years and bringing Caitlyn on in April changed all that for me. She started reviewing my inbox before my eyes got on it, stepping in and responding where she could, and rating the places that needed my response on an urgency level.
Do things still slip between the cracks? Sure.
But do people actually get a response? Yes.
Is my stress level significantly reduced? 1,000x YES.
Getting around 100 emails/day that require responses (especially when I am traveling like crazy) is incredibly hard to keep up with. It was the think that always made me feel like I was drowning and letting people down. So when I thought about what I needed rest from, it was the pressure of the inbox, what did we do? I told Caitlyn to change the password for a few days and then let me back in when I was rested and ready.
Sometimes rest doesn’t look like bubble baths and week long Fixer Upper binges, sometimes it looks like pulling yourself out of aspects of your business to give you mental space and clarity to focus on the things that are firing you up. Sometimes it’s better for people to hear back from someone (even if that someone isn’t you) than getting no response at all, and sometimes we just need to lock ourselves out of the demands so we can get back to what we love.