Head in the clouds

I spent the month of July up at our place in Granby, CO (just outside of Winter Park). My partner Brad has been a longtime fan of taking a month to work somewhere else, not travel and clear your head, but I’d never given it a try. And while I understand that not all jobs allow for this, I suspect that more people could do it (at least for a week or two) if they really wanted to.

Let me be clear that this wasn’t vacation. While I didn’t get on a plane for a month (which in and of itself felt like vacation), I was working full time – completely connected via email and phone. I actually intended to take a week of the month off, but with a number of financings closing and a Thursday full of board calls, my week off turned into about 2 days off instead. Other than those two days I was fully connected.

And the amazing thing about taking some time out of the office was how amazingly productive it was. I was completely caught up on email, totally connected to the happenings of the portfolio and my “to call” list shrunk down to zero. More importantly, I was able to spend a lot more time with my wife Greeley and our three kids (by far the biggest downside of my job is the time that it requires me to be away from my family).

While I recognize that time in the office is important I realized this summer that time out of the office is just as important. I’ll definitely be doing this again. And hopefully my pace of blogging will pick up this fall with some of the ideas bouncing around my head from July…