Faye Smith, MD of Sheffield-based Keep Your Fork PR and Marketing tells unLTD that a two-week holiday is ‘too weak’ – and shares the life-changing joy of a mini retirement.
Have you got one of those Sasco-type annual planners with everyone’s leave on it in garish vinyl strips staring at you from your office wall as you read this?
And there are your holidays marked – a week off at Easter. It’s about as late as it can be this year, so you know it’s going to seem a bl**dy long wait from dark, miserable debt-laden January through to the end of April. Then there’s two weeks in the sun in the kids’ summer school holidays. Roll on the year you won’t be forced to pay triple the price and endure the packed roads and pool-sides to take that well-earned break – sorry, ‘family time’.
Then another four months before a week of ‘enforced togetherness’ at Christmas. And you wouldn’t mind, but by the time you get to these well-earned ‘rests’, you are usually so exhausted by doing all the work in advance (especially if you are self-employed or freelancing), or dreading what you’ll be coming back to, you end up spending the first part of the break being ill and the latter unable to unwind and enjoy. Sound familiar?
Meantime in your daily life, you are spinning all the plates, juggling teen angst, menopause or ‘meno-Porsche’ health issues, TAT (‘Tired All The Time’) syndrome, parents increased needs and more. No wonder Gen X are knackered, on the verge of burn-out and wondering if this is what life’s going to be like until we stagger through post-Brexit Britain to uncertain pensions and late sixties retirement – if we are lucky.
Is there an alternative we whisper over a well-earned Friday G&T? What if those poxy few days spent anxiously checking emails, struggling to switch off before gearing up for re-entry could be re-imagined into something much more significant?
Well, there is an alternative according to multi-million best-selling author of ‘The Four Hour Work Week’, Tim Ferris. Ferris calls it a ‘mini-retirement’… and reader, I took one!
“The mini retirement is not an escape from your life but a re-examination of it. The creation of a blank slate,” claims Ferris. “It’s an anti-vacation where you relocate to one place for one to six months before returning home. It’s not a one-time event, it’s a recurring lifestyle.
“Rather than seeking to see the world through photo opportunities between foreign-but-familiar hotels, we aim to experience it at a speed that lets it change us. This takes time. The effect is not cumulative, and no number of ‘too weak’ sightseeing trips can replace one good walkabout.”
And how long should the ideal ‘mini retirement’ be? “It takes two to three months just to unplug from obsolete routines and become aware of just how much we distract ourselves with constant motion, to disincorporate old habits and rediscover yourself without the reminder of a looming flight,” says Ferris.
Not possible, you cry. Well, here’s my challenge and experience. Difficult yes? Impossible no! Worth it – incalculably. Those eight weeks were undoubtedly the absolute best of my life and have changed me and my business for ever.
In 2011, my children’s father died suddenly at 48, and two years later on the same day, unbelievably my 12- year old daughter Gabi had a rare seizure and died. Unsurprisingly, these deeply traumatic experiences caused me to completely re-evaluate my life.
As a self-employed single parent in a hugely challenging recession, I had been on the treadmill of endless work and supporting two bereaved children for fourteen long years when Gabi died.
I recognised that those first six weeks off work (which were effectively ‘crowd-funded’ through the generous support of my friends, family, church and business community, for which I will be forever grateful), would only be the start of a grief journey. I decided I would live my daughter’s dream and keep my promise to take Gabi to visit her friend Martha whose family had emigrated to Australia eight years before, in her memory. I was also keeping a promise to myself, my one ‘bucket list’ must, to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef- a vow I had made as a nine-year-old watching ‘Life on Earth’.
In January 2016, exhausted, unfit and facing my 50th birthday, I walked onto a plane for the first time ever on my own…and took off for Australia via three days in Singapore for two months solo travelling, putting my business in the hands of my most trusted associates. My son had just left home for university, so we agreed I would fund the trip by selling our family home and moving into rented accommodation, until down-sizing on my return.
I had never been travelling. Never had a Gap Year. Never had an adventure. Now, whether I was camping in remote eco resorts, reflecting with nuns on an Abbey silent retreat, or Air BnB-ing my way round Tasmania, my eight weeks travelling became a time for taking stock, re-orientating, re-envisioning my life and a chance to grieve again for my daughter away from the usual cycles of work and life busy-ness.
This was eight weeks to attend to my mind, body and spirit. From the Southernmost tip of Tasmania with nothing between my boat and the Antarctic, to the tropical coral atolls of the Great Barrier Reef, I had the best eight weeks of my life. Hiking to waterfalls through rainforest at the top of an extinct volcano, being entranced by The Barber of Seville in the world-renowned opera house, exploring aboriginal art in Melbourne’s galleries, floating among short eared terrapins on the world’s largest sand island are just some of the memories I will treasure forever. Snorkelling trailing green turtles, manta rays, sharks and tropical fish in kaleidoscopic colours on the barrier reef was the highlight of my trip and every bit the bucket list moment I had dreamed of.
Returning to chilly Britain at Easter 2016, I had learned to delegate and trust my team to an unprecedented level. Every client had stayed with us, new clients lined up to join us and Keep Your Fork grew 50 per cent the following year as I worked on the business, rather than just in it.
Now I am planning my next mini retirement to New Zealand. And telling everyone I meet what my friend Claire told me I learnt to be so very true: ‘you can do anything if you have a big enough why’. We all know it… but it’s true, nothing changes if nothing changes. Go on – dare greatly and plan that life-changing break.
Faye’s steps to taking a ‘mini retirement’
- Save up or sell stuff! Work out a rough cost for the trip and to cover your own time in your business.
- Cut your outgoings while away. Could you rent out your car and home for those months?
- Train up your team. Get procedures in place and ensure they know exactly what to do in key situations.
- Tell your clients what’s happening and who will look after them. Every client was carefully matched with an expert project manager.
- Brief suppliers from accountants to bank and IT, who they can refer to and what their authority limits are.
- Cover yourself legally, for example insurance and NDA-type contracts.
- Keep connected. I photo-blogged my way round Australia through Facebook so everyone could follow my journey through social media and our newsletter.
- Plan your trip but be flexible. I was blessed to have a ‘skeleton’ of my eight weeks organised by my friend in Australia around which I arranged accommodation and trips.
- Leave time to settle back into the routine and catch up with your team.
