Today is our last workday before Spring Break.

Yup, you read that correctly, SPRING BREAK.

Tomorrow begins the first of 9 straight days off, and for the first time in a very long time, I have absolutely nothing planned. This presents a great opportunity to work on some of the things I’ve been meaning to work on, but have neglected thus far in 2016.

In the world of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and the time matrix, we refer to this as Quadrant II. It’s the quadrant of productivity, of things that are not urgent, but important. In my case, they are things I haven’t spent enough time with over the last few months.

“Quadrant 2: Not Urgent – Important. These are the things that matter in the long-term but will yield no tangible benefits this week or even this year.  They are things we know we need to get to but probably will push off. ” – Forbes

As we teach at work, when we spend a lot of out outside of Quadrant II, we begin to suffer. We get burned out, we spend time on things that don’t impact the people and things that matter most to us. The things that matter least get all the attention because they crowd out the things that matter most.

“We cannot get buried in the thick of thin things” – Stephen Covey

So the plan this Spring Break is not to get sucked into any grand plans. It’s to spend time catching up with people, to work on things that are most beneficial to my long-term success, and to rebuild the healthy routines that somehow fell apart over the last month or so.

For me:

• This means eating better, except for when I’m having pancakes with my running group.
• It means focusing on my personal finances, because for some reason, I’ve let this slide lately.
• It also means running, and yoga, and working out with the instrument of my torture, kettlebells.
• Reading, writing, and meditating will all likely play a role here as well.
• Family time and friend time too.
• It means making further investment in my personal/professional development.
• And last but not least, it means taking action on my personal/professional goals, because YOLO.

I’m lucky enough to have breaks like this to aim towards when I feel out of balance. It’s a luxury to look at the calendar and know that a mandatory “pit stop” is coming, and with it a grand opportunity to realign around my personal priorities.

As this work week closes, I hope you have the opportunity to carve out time (even if you don’t get spring break off) to do the same.

Peace!

Resources:

• The 7 Habits if Highly Effective People – FranklinCovey
• The Only Thing You Need to Know About the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Forbes

Image credit: By Benjamin Gimmel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88418