Business Shavasana

I don't vacation well. Sad, but true.

Like many small business owners and entrepreneurs I know, vacationing is a common problem. To keep a business running, one needs to be inspired and motivated. So taking a vacation is counterproductive because it means forcing the brain to stop thinking and searching for inspiration. Consequently, it is painfully hard to reignite the inspirational spark after a 7 day vacation. Herein lies the dilemma. I love my work. I don't want to stop doing it, but agree there needs to be a break from routine to allow room for new ideas.

Then we heard about this idea from 37 Signals, that teams can be very productive, even more productive, if they work away from each other. By nature of being in an office with coworkers it is easy to interrupt each other, and these little interrupts ruin deep R.E.M work time.

So we decided to try an experiment here at the company; I would work offsite for a month. Not exactly a vacation, but a change of perspective.

And a curious thing happened. Being outside the office made me realize how easy it is to spend time on unimportant things. So post haste, I stopped doing unimportant things and started doing things that would inspire me. Of course I worked during this time, but rather than fill the "extra" time with mundane activities I searched for new ideas and insights.

I read many business books, allowed myself to step outside the every day, and think about business from an aerial level. It was like a heightened state of awareness. My colleague Matthew (here in the office) called it a Business "Shavasana", referencing a Yoga pose where you are in an alert state of rest; allowing everything you learned to settle, fully relaxed but not asleep. A brilliant metaphor.

Working offsite was a truly great experiment and allowed me to come back to the office inspired and with new ideas. It is our plan in the future to make Business Shavasana part of our work culture. We will share our findings.