Do you ever felt like taking a break?

[Joe S.]

Do you ever felt like taking a break for a number of months? About a year ago I thought I needed to take about a year off, but didn’t. 🤔

Summer is here and it’s like I can’t even go out of town, because I have a number of rehabs going etc. I thought about simply shutting down all marketing and taking a break until the summer ends.

I have children that’s  out of school on summer vacation and quite frankly I feel  burnt out. 

[Patrick Hancock]

@Joe S. That’s a great question. In my humble opinion the greatest challenge in this business is the inability to “disconnect”. I’ve been a real estate broker and investor for the past 18 years and it doesn’t matter if it’s Sunday morning at 6:30AM, Easter Day or Christmas something real estate related comes up or at the very least it’s on your mind. Let’s not even get into discussing the waking up at 3AM every night when the brain starts grinding away in preparation for the day. With most jobs when you “click out” you’re done and can detach. Not with real estate and that’s what causes that burn out feel. Believe it or not taking vacations or trying to take a day off doesn’t help me as I always have my phone because I have two children and need to be available just in case so once again can’t fully detach. What has helped me tremendously manage burn out or as I say to my wife I simply don’t have any available bandwidth right now to talk about painting our own house (she jokes that I pay more attention to our rental properties than our own house which is probably true lol) is to create my own version of a “miracle morning”. Part of that is reading and another part is that I hit the gym on the way to the office. Both produce wonderful results to help calm the mind especially since it’s early (i get up at 5:30AM) and most calls don’t start coming in until after 9AM. Then when I get home from work I’ll play the guitar for about an hour…that’s my consistent hobby to help wind down at the end of the day. Lastly is continuing to work on “Who Not How”. Great book Id recommend reading. Basic point is that you can’t do it all. You can try but results typically won’t be great and trying to do everything yourself is the fastest way to burn out. Good luck my friend!!!

- Pat