Juggling summer days

As we head towards the summer holidays, for those running businesses this can become a time of having to juggle priorities and deciding between working on the business or being with families and friends. There's no doubt that, having made a decision to run your own business and be your own boss, it doesn't always feel like that when work commitments clash with plans to enjoy time away from work.

For me, and probably most business owners, I enjoy the work that I do, so I'm never resentful of it and feel that it's impacting on my free time. I do this by ensuring I plan well ahead and inform clients when I'm not likely to be available. Of course, there are times when the work can begin to build up, meetings get moved around, projects expand and take longer than expected or work starts coming in at a faster rate than expected. Decisions then need to be made as to whether to take on new clients and thinking about what impact that might have on other clients work so as not to impact on the standards they expect.

It is definitely a question of constantly looking ahead, monitoring workloads and being clear about prioritising work, o r delegating work if that’s part of your set-up. It’s all about making time and space to enjoy days away from the business and work, to recharge and see the bigger picture more clearly.

For me, living on an island that is one of the UK's top holiday destinations, means that there are always lot of events throughout the summer months - festivals, sailing regattas, fayres, summer parties and barbeques. My answer is to enjoy holidays and Island life as much as possible and to juggle the working hours to ensure I keep clients happy. That said, sometimes whole blocks of time come out of the diary for a real holiday - no emails, no social media, no work!

We had two fabulous weeks in Majorca in June - nothing but pool, beach, walks, wine and delicious food. Heaven! And no complaints from clients on my return because they were kept informed beforehand and work commitments were well planned. It's not always easy to do this of course if you're running a larger business, but it does work for me!

So, enjoy the summer holidays, however you chose to juggle those priorities.