Here, I explore history, mythology, and the deeper forces shaping our world — and how men and families can prepare for, and adapt to, these times of great change.
December is a fortnight
Christmas is the only fortnight the world gives a business owner for free. Clients stop emailing. Suppliers close. The phone goes genuinely quiet. It's the one stretch of the year when leaving costs nothing, and plenty of owners still spend it half-working at the kitchen table, laptop warm, family cooling.
So here's a forcing function with a deadline nature set. Book the last two weeks of December off. Now, in early November. Out-of-office drafted, diary blocked, said out loud at home so it's real.
Then work backwards. Every job the closed laptop would expose becomes an item with seven weeks on the clock. Who approves things in your absence, and up to what amount. Where the numbers live and who reads them while you're gone. What the team does with a problem that used to be yours. Write the handover as if the person covering were a stranger, because in a sense they are. It's the business itself.
I learnt this in 2013, writing Friday handovers to myself so that Monday-me could hit the ground running instead of excavating. It felt absurd for two weeks. Then the weekends changed. A business is the same discipline at scale: if it can be handed over, it's real. If it can't, it's a job wearing a company's clothes.
Most owners find the list is shorter than the dread suggested. Ten items, maybe fifteen. Seven weeks is enough.
When the out-of-office is set, reply with one word: booked. I'll be keeping count, and in December I'll check.
David
David Schofield · Purpose In Action
Purpose In Action Coaching & Consulting
Here, I explore history, mythology, and the deeper forces shaping our world — and how men and families can prepare for, and adapt to, these times of great change.
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