Michael Hyatt: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael: And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. Today we’re going to dispel the myth that you can’t afford to take time off during the pandemic. We’re going to show you how to have your most rejuvenating vacation ever…yes, even during COVID.

Megan: Sounds like a big promise, but the truth is that a lot of leaders are running on fumes right now. We’ve been dealing with this pandemic, after all, for about five months…uncertainty, and then there was some anxiety, and then hope, and then I think we’ve all kind of settled into a little bit of frustration that won’t seem to go away. For many businesses, the climate is still really uncertain. It can feel impossible to take time off. I’ve heard so many people say that lately. Even if you do, where the heck are you going to go? There’s no place to run. Right? This is a recipe for burnout. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Michael: Yeah, that’s absolutely the truth, and that’s why it’s important to take vacations and even staycations. It’s necessary to provide good self-care, especially now. Today we have four steps to the best staycation ever. Like you said, Megan, that’s a big promise, but we’re going to try to deliver, and we’re going to bring Larry in to help us walk through that conversation. Hey, Larry.

Larry Wilson: Hey, guys. How are you?

Michael: Doing great.

Megan: Great. Glad to have you here.

Larry: Well, it is good to have everybody back together, especially since, Michael, I know you have just come back from your sabbatical experience. So, four weeks away from business. Was it four weeks totally, totally away?

Michael: Totally, totally away. All except for a few minutes. I think I had one brief conversation with Megan, and I talked to our head of customer service for about three minutes about an issue, and that was it.

Megan: Pretty good.

Michael: The rest of the time I wasn’t thinking about work. I wasn’t talking about work. I wasn’t doing any work. I wasn’t reading about work. It was glorious.

Megan: What were you doing?

Michael: Well, that’s a good question. Because it was a staycation, which is unusual… By the way, this was my tenth annual 30-day vacation. I’ve done this for 10 years in a row. This was the 10-year anniversary, so I’ve been doing this for a decade. I’ve gotten better at it over time. When I first started, I didn’t. I did some work on my “sabbatical,” but now I don’t do any at all, so, again, I’ve gotten better at it.

This time, I spent a lot of time with family, with friends, long conversations, drinking some wine, having some meals together. In addition to that, I actually got my certification in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), because I always like to do something along the lines of personal development. I spent several hours going through videos and doing exercises, and that was a lot of fun. It was something I’ve always wanted to do and was able to do it this time.

Then the last weekend, for three days, I took three of my sons-in-law and one boyfriend of another daughter on a fly-fishing trip to east Tennessee. Oh my gosh! That was amazing. We did that for three days and had some great, great conversations. I came back totally rejuvenated, recharged, rested. I did a lot of sleeping, a lot of napping, and I was ready to go.

Megan: Well, of course, no sabbatical would be complete for you without fishing. I feel the same way. So, you got that part in, which is really important.

Michael: My only regret is I wish I’d done more of it, but there’s more fishing in my future.

Megan: That’s right. The cool thing is you weren’t the only person who took off during that time. We actually had four Michael Hyatt & Company employees who also had a four-week sabbatical during that time. If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you probably have heard us talk about the fact that that’s one of the benefits we offer: a one-month sabbatical every three years for our employees.

People really look forward to that, and it was so fun to hear what people enjoyed about their time away. Pretty much everybody stayed put. These were all staycations. In fact, in June and July, we collectively took 187 days off as a company, which is about one full week per person, which is pretty amazing during this time. That’s over 37 weeks collectively. We have about 38 full-time employees.

Best of all, our productivity never missed a beat. Our team is feeling rejuvenated and cared for, and we not only were able to give ourselves time off, but I think coming back from that, we really feel like it’s essential for what we have planned in the fall and beyond. This has been a tough year for all of us at different levels, and I think rejuvenation is needed now more than ever to perform at our highest level.

Michael: I also want to say that those sabbaticals are paid.

Megan: Yes. Good point.

Michael: I often get asked that question when I talk about that. People say, “Oh, well, you give people time off, but do you pay them?” Absolutely we pay them. We don’t want them to think about it or for that to cost them anything.

Megan: We don’t pay for any travel they do, to be clear, but we pay for their regular salaries during that time. Yeah, it’s super fun.

Larry: I’m thinking on going on strike over that travel pay issue.

Megan: That would be next level.

Larry: Michael, Megan, you talk all the time, especially on Lead to Win, about the value of time off. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the news lately that a number of CEOs, especially in the tech sector, have been mandating time off for their employees. With the confinement starting out back in the spring, sort of the long slog we’ve all been in with the pandemic, they had just been fearing burnout, so, actually going around to employees and saying, “Okay. Which week in July are you taking off? And I won’t take no for an answer.” You haven’t quite done that, but it has been close.

Megan: It has been close. In fact, at the very beginning of the pandemic, we actually asked people to postpone time off. For about six weeks, maybe eight (I can’t quite remember exactly), we had kind of a PTO freeze for a minute, but what we quickly realized was that if we were going to play the long game in a really challenging year psychologically, emotionally, and everything else, people were going to have to be rejuvenated.

What I actually did was I went to my HR director, and I said, “Hey, give me a report of what every person on the team has taken in terms of PTO year to date,” and we just prioritized people who had taken the least. If you remember, the pandemic hit right around spring break, so some people went on a vacation right before, and some people didn’t get to take that vacation and hadn’t taken hardly any vacation yet in the year. We just systematically worked through that, and I feel like we’re at a really good place now, but it was very intentional on our part.

Larry: I was fortunate to be one of the early spring breakers and got to watch a little spring training baseball.

Megan: That’s right. You did.

Larry: I may have been the last person to see a live baseball game in 2020.

Megan: Yeah. You barely made it back.

Michael: I’m sorry to say, I had to cancel mine, so when it came to my sabbatical, that was the first time off I had taken all year, which is very, very unusual for me. Boy, did I need it. And if I’m feeling the need for it, I know my teammates are feeling the need for it. I think a lot of business owners, a lot of leaders think, “I can’t afford to take a vacation,” but that’s really a mindset issue.

You have to get to the place where you say, “I can’t afford not to. I’m going to be more creative, more focused, and more productive if I give myself ample time for rest and rejuvenation.” As for the idea that staycations are boring, guys, that’s a limiting belief. You can get the rejuvenation you need. You just have to be creative, and we’re going to show you how in this podcast episode.

Larry: So, today we’re saying that every leader can enjoy a rejuvenating vacation even during the pandemic, even if it’s a staycation, by following four simple steps. Let’s get to them. Step one: state the outcome you are looking for.

Michael: This is a variation of Stephen Covey’s mantra to begin with the end in mind. I’ve hijacked this or appropriated it to myself in the book I wrote with Daniel Harkavy, Living Forward, when it comes to your life plan. You know, fast-forward to the end of your life, say how you want it to be, and then reverse engineer it so that you create the life you want. Same thing when it comes to your business. In my book The Vision Driven Leader, I advocate for the same thing. Talk about what you want the business to look like three to five years from now.

The same thing is true when it comes to your staycation or your vacation. Everything begins with intentionality. So, first, describe your ideal staycation. What do you want to be true at the end of this vacation? How do you want to feel emotionally, physically, relationally? Describe the kinds of activities you’re looking forward to. For example, we have a tool called the Vacation Optimizer. Think of it in this context as the staycation optimizer. Here’s what I said, and this is what I literally wrote down. It’s amazing how when you write things down you get greater clarity.

I said, writing it as if it were in the past tense… In fact, I was explaining to Gail how to do this. I said, “Look. When you come back from our sabbatical, people are going to ask you how it was.” We both know, because we’ve done this years in a row now, that, basically, what they want is a one-paragraph summary, and then they want to get on with it. They don’t want to see the slides. They don’t want to see the photos. They just want a summary. So, if you were going to give that summary, what would it be? Here’s what I said, just a short paragraph.

I said, “I really got caught up on my rest. I slept at least eight hours every night and took a nap every day. I got certified in NLP, something I’ve been wanting to do forever. I got rid of a bunch of tech equipment and organized what I had left. I finished upgrading the video studio in my house. I took my sons-in-law fishing on the Clinch River in Knoxville. All in all, it was a fabulous sabbatical.” I encourage you to do this too. We have this in the Vacation Optimizer. Try to summarize what you want out of your vacation in three words. My three words were rest, learning, and play.

Larry: Guys listening, if you want that Vacation Optimizer, grab your free copy at leadto.win/vacation.

Megan: I think what you’re talking about is really important, Dad, because everybody has had a terrible experience of a staycation. We can probably count right off the top of our heads all of the ways it could go wrong. So being intentional on the front end… I mean, this is true for any kind of vacation, but especially a staycation, because there’s so much pull to get right in the drift either of work or of chores and kind of get to the end of it and feel like you didn’t get what you needed out of the vacation, which is a terrible feeling.

Michael: That’s right. I think that’s why you have to be clear on the front end what you’re going to allow and what you’re not going to allow. I was just thinking as I was reading it some people may think that me organizing my tech equipment, or whatever, getting rid of it… How could that be a staycation activity? Well, this is not going to be true for everybody, but organizing and getting rid of clutter is a rejuvenating activity for me, and that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed doing that. Some of it I delegated, but it was great to have that done and to get through that during my staycation.

Megan: I really enjoy that, but oftentimes, I try to rope Joel into my home projects when we have a staycation, and we have an agreement now…this is very important…that staycation home projects are not allowed. That is a recipe not for an ideal staycation but for a disaster for him, so we’ve had to find a compromise for that. Occasionally, I’ll do something I can do on my own, but, for example, if I wanted to reorganize the garage, a project that would take both of us, that’s a no-go.

Michael: I think we should point out there’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s just important to negotiate it and come up with something that’s intentional. In fact, I don’t care what you do on your vacation or your staycation as long as it’s intentional and you don’t just drift back to work. That’s the worst.

Megan: It is. One of the things I think is a secret to success for you and that you’ve really taught all of us within the company to kind of take this to the next level is to do this with your spouse or if you’re going on vacation with somebody else, to each create a Vacation Optimizer and then to talk about it together so that you’re able to help each other accomplish what you really need out of the vacation. For example, if I had all of these home projects on my optimizer and Joel had the opposite, it would be great to reconcile that before we were in the middle of the vacation.

On the flip side, if I really wanted to go to bed early, it would be great for Joel to know that, because he could help support that and we could work together to make sure I got the rest I needed. Or in his case, he might want to do a lot of reading, or something like that, and if I overplanned, that might be hard for him. So, you can really take this to the next level by looping your partner into the conversation, and it can be really helpful.

Michael: Yes.

Larry: Well, regardless of what you do, the key is to take the time. I don’t know if it will surprise you or not to learn that since 2015, the number of days Americans take off work has been falling. For 25 years, it was around 20 days a year on average, and since 2000 it has been dropping, and it’s now about 16 days off on average. According to the U.S. Travel Association’s Project: Time Off, would you believe, 52 percent of Americans do not use all their vacation time?

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: I believe it. I mean, that was certainly my experience in corporate America, where I had some people who would never use all their paid time off. I tried everything. I tried threatening them. We tried making those days go away. They couldn’t carry them over. But some people just… I remember one guy in particular. He never, ever took a vacation, and then he ended up in the hospital, and even then, it was all we could do to keep him… He was deathly ill, but he… At that time, he was on a BlackBerry. He wanted to keep working. It was like, “Dude, chill out.”

I don’t know if it comes from a place of fear, where people feel like, “Oh my gosh! People will realize that they can get along without me.” Frankly, I look at it as the opposite. If you can’t step away from the role you’re in and it can’t continue to run without your constant intervention, you’re doing it wrong. You have to do it in a different way. It’s important for succession within your company, for stability, for continuity. So I think it’s a good exercise to get everybody out of the office on their vacations. It stress-tests the business.

Larry: To your point, Michael, that same study by Project: Time Off reports that employees who do take all their time off are more likely to be thought of as competent and productive by their managers. It actually has a positive effect.

Michael: That’s good to hear. People need to know that.

Larry: So, step one is to state the outcome you’re looking for. Step two: get in touch with your “why.”

Megan: This is really important. We talk about this in so many different contexts, whether it’s goal setting or vision or whatever, but it’s equally true here. Oftentimes, we’re unaware of our true motivations, and we don’t really match our activities to our deepest desires and needs. I think when we become aware of that, we can tailor-make a vacation that helps to meet the needs we really have.

Also, one of the things that has been super helpful for me (and this is part of the Vacation Optimizer) is understanding what’s at stake in taking this vacation. So often, we have this little conversation in our heads about, “Well, it doesn’t really matter if I can’t go out to the beach with the kids today, and instead, I’m going to sit inside and work on this report my boss asked me for or that the investors want to see.”

The problem is there’s a real loss on the other side of that, and this is even easier to talk yourself into if you’re staycationing rather than going away somewhere where you’ve made a big investment in the vacation and all of that. Getting in touch with what’s at stake if you do take the vacation and what’s at stake if you don’t can be very helpful in keeping you on track with your intentions during the time you’re away. I like to use three questions here as you’re thinking through this.

First, “Why does this vacation matter to me?” This would be a great topic for a date night with your spouse or a friend you’re traveling with prior to leaving, or staycationing in this case. “What will this vacation mean for my life?” and “What will I lose if I don’t do this?” For me, that’s the one that tends to be kind of a gut punch in a good way.

It reorients me to the fact that I need rest, and burnout is the consequence of not doing this, that my kids need my undivided attention. Joel needs my undivided attention. I need to refuel if I’m going to make my greatest contribution to the business as a leader. Just going through this helps you be intentional and on purpose and very focused on not just what you want to create but why you want to create it in the context of your staycation.

Michael: Could I just share from my Vacation Optimizer what I wrote down?

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: This is a little bit vulnerable, but I think it’ll be valuable for people to see how vulnerable we try to get on this. This is the vacation rationale. “Why does this vacation matter to you?” This is what I wrote: “I’ve only had two days of vacation so far this year. With COVID-19, the economic downturn, and the racial unrest, I’ve been under a lot of stress.

I’ve felt on the edge of burnout and depression for about two months. The business has performed amazingly well, but we’ve had to pivot more than once. During the first two weeks of the pandemic, it was all hands on deck. Things have settled down, and we have more cash on hand than ever before. Still, those first few weeks took their toll.” So that’s my first rationale.

Then, Megan, to your second question, “How will it benefit you if you take it?” I said, “It will restore my soul, it’ll rejuvenate me, and give me the stamina I need to finish the year strong.” By the way, these are a series of bullets. Then thirdly, “It will give me perspective, something I think I’ve somewhat lost.” Then “How will it harm you if you don’t?” I said, “I risk getting burned out and/or depressed, and I risk developing health problems.” I want a big why so I stay focused on the task at hand, which is rejuvenation.

Megan: That’s really good.

Larry: I’d like to thank you, Michael, for sharing that, because having been in leadership positions, being the senior leader in some organizations, I realize how much weight you carry, and there are probably a lot of leaders out there thinking, “I just can’t afford to do this.” You sharing that helps us see, man, you can’t afford not to.

Michael: So true.

Larry: Let’s get to step three in planning a rejuvenating vacation or staycation: plan your rejuvenation.

Michael: This is important for any vacation, but it’s vital for a staycation, because the activities that are going to rejuvenate you may not be quite as obvious, and maybe you feel like you don’t have as many options. Again, so often, that’s a limiting belief or a failure of imagination. You have to be intentional so this time actually produces your rejuvenation.

Here’s a tip: think about life domains, not dream destinations. For example, what does rest look like on this vacation? How will you exercise? You know, walk, hike, local options. What will you do to relax or just for fun? What do you want to eat? Where? With whom? What relationships will you invest in? What else do you need to achieve your vision for rejuvenation?

On my Vacation Optimizer, I literally had a list of options, like a menu almost, of all of the things I wanted to do in six different categories: sleep, eat, move, connect, relax, learn, and then I just had another category. Then I crossed these off as I went through my vacation as I did them.

I had all of these restaurants, for example, that I wanted to try while we were out. I thought, “We can’t travel someplace, but we can eat out. I don’t want the burden of meal preparation to be on Gail, so let’s just eat out more than usual. What are some restaurants we’ve been hearing about that we want to try?” So I made a laundry list, and boy, I started to get super excited as I did that.

Same thing with relationships. “Who are the people I want to see who maybe I’ve had on my list for a couple of months but have never gotten around to getting with them? How could I do that during this staycation, this downtime, since I’m in town anyway?” That was a lot of fun just to come up with a list. You may major on one domain, but a great vacation usually touches all of these different bases. Again, think about life domains, not dream destinations.

Larry: Michael, when I hear you talk that way, that’s my ideal for a vacation: to make a list and check everything off it. What a feeling of completion. But a lot of people come into this so low on fuel that their dream vacation is just to crash. Is it okay to go into your time off with really no plan at all, just, “My plan is I’m going to sleep”?

Michael: Well, I wouldn’t recommend it, but you might have to get that sleep before you can plan the rest of your vacation. I can tell you that about 10 years into my career, Gail and I went to Hawaii on a vacation, and I literally slept over 24 hours. I don’t know how I did it, but Gail started to get nervous, wondering if there was something wrong with me. I was so exhausted it took that for me to get rested. I couldn’t sleep that long today if I tried.

But it was good, and I had a completely different frame of reference, a different mindset. I was in a completely different place after that rest. So, yeah, you might need to get a little rest before you can really plan and dream about the future, and that’s fine. But I would not advise just drifting through the rest of the vacation. Not a good idea.

Larry: So, that was step three: plan your rejuvenation. That brings us to the fourth and final step: plan for your absence.

Megan: This is important, because there can be a lot of anxiety about “How is it going to work while I’m gone? What’s that going to be like, and what balls might get dropped?” You really want to plan for it so you can take time off and be truly unplugged. One of the things I’ve found is that a lot of work emergencies are things that could have been foreseen if I had thought about it in advance, but I just didn’t.

So, what I find is helpful to do is list my current projects or tasks, and then either do them, defer them until later, or delegate them to someone else. They have to go somewhere. They can’t just kind of be in suspended animation where I’m leaving people hanging. Another helpful tip here is to ask your team if there are any open loops you have with them. This is particularly true if you’re a leader.

One of the things that will happen if you don’t plan carefully for it is there will be decisions someone needs you to approve or make, and you’re kind of the last stop on the train. If you’re not aware that those are coming up, then they’re going to call you for those, but if they know in advance, they can make sure to accelerate them and get them on your desk, get your decision, so you can leave and everything is taken care of.

I like to create an emergency plan of action. This is something that, Dad, I think we did for the first time for you a few years back. I’m trying to remember how many years ago that was. I remember just writing it up on the whiteboard. We created a list of qualifying issues. It was very concrete, things like, “If this person quits…” or “If this kind of PR situation happens…” or “If this type of a financial result occurs…” It was very defined, very clear. “If any of these things happen, then I want to be called.”

What’s great about creating that kind of list is that you know if no one is calling you, none of those things have happened. It takes away that constant conversation in your head that sounds like, “Oh, I wonder if everything is okay. Are we doing okay? Are they still producing like they would if I were there?” Well, if you’ve already set it up so that if there’s some kind of threshold and things aren’t going well you’re going to be called, then you know if nobody has called you, it’s okay.

I remember a couple of years ago, I was on a sabbatical out west, and I had done this exercise, made a list of the things I would have considered emergencies, and we had someone resign who was very key. She got an unbelievable offer that was a gift to her family. We were really excited for her, but she was a key person where we didn’t have a redundancy, so I got that phone call.

Actually, I probably spent a total of maybe an hour over two days talking about how we were going to handle it, whether or not there was anything we could do, and we realized there really wasn’t, and we decided we were just going to cheer her on, and we were excited for her. That was so helpful to know, because for the rest of the vacation, I didn’t get any more calls and I knew everything was fine.

I think this is one of the best strategies you can use if you feel like you struggle to unplug because you’re anxious if everything is going okay. You just have to make sure to align your key people around this list. Usually there’s one person who’s kind of your right-hand person who you give this list to, and they’re in charge of managing the list. It gives you so much peace of mind.

Michael: It really does. To add to that, I would also inform other people, like colleagues, maybe your top clients or customers. It’s all about expectations. As long as they’re not surprised and you tell them what you’re going to do, why you’re going to do it, and then give them how they can proceed with business in your absence, most people are fine with that. Then, of course, you have to do the right out-of-office messages and all that.

This is a little bit crazy, but I actually put a message on my email inbox that says, “Thanks for your message. I’m on a sabbatical. I’m going to delete all of the messages that come into this inbox, and if this issue is still unresolved in 30 days when I get back, then write to me again.” Because here’s what I don’t want to do. And I give the rationale. Nick is looking at me like I’m crazy.

I say, “I have not done this in the past, and I’ve come through to a bucketload of email inbox messages that I’ve had to work through, which sometimes makes me wonder if taking the vacation was worth it.” The worst part is 90 percent of those issues are resolved. They’ve been taken care of. When people get your out-of-office message… They’re smart people. They figure out another route. They get it taken care of. Even this time I did that, and there was not one response, not one thing that came to me after my sabbatical. Why? Because all of it got taken care of.

Megan: By the way, Larry, let’s put a link in the show notes to the blog post where the exact mechanics of how to do that in your email client are outlined, because it’s not hard to do, but it is a little technical. I think people would appreciate knowing exactly how they can do that for themselves.

Larry: Yeah, we sure will.

Megan: If you don’t want to wait for the show notes, you can actually just go to mh.fullfocus.co, and the article is called “How to Unplug While You Are on Vacation,” and it gives all of the details on how to set this up in your email.

Michael: Okay. I’m really excited to hear from Nick. Nick is our producer. Nick has been hearing us talk about vacations and sabbaticals for some time. One of the liabilities or one of the assets (I’ll let Nick articulate which it is) to sitting in on these podcasts is he gets to be exposed to a lot of content. He decided… I didn’t even know he was doing this until we got on the session today. He also took the month of July off as his first ever 30-day sabbatical. So, Nick, give us a report.

Nick: Well, I want to just tell people that it is possible. I’ve done various versions of, like, two weeks off, but the problem with that in the past was I had to do all of this work ahead of time in order to take the time off. The two weeks before the time off were like… I told my family, “I’ll see you in a week. I’m too busy.” You know, I was having to produce all this content.

But two things happened this year. I hired an assistant editor, and I really empowered everybody to make decisions on their own. Not only was this my first full month (I went from July 2 to August 3), but it was the first time we had had content produced…there were like 30 episodes of content produced…away from me. I got back, and I looked at the list, and when I didn’t know… Clients felt really empowered to keep sending us stuff. We didn’t miss a step. So it is a thing that can happen.

I had a client yesterday email me and ask, “Can you teach me how to take Julys off?” which felt like a real win. So, I just want to say that I feel great coming back. To get back to what you said earlier, Michael, it used to be that I would take these vacations and I would dread the email box. You sit there and you go, “Oh my god! This is where all of the fires are. If I don’t look at it, then I haven’t given it any oxygen. It’s not burning yet.” That idea of deleting your emails and telling people is amazing. Of course, I have an assistant who was kind of tracking it.

One more tip. I have an 11-year-old, so not everyone can do this. For one day, I told my fiancée, “I want to have a no parenting day,” and I prepped him for a couple of days. I was like, “On Friday, I’m not parenting you at all.”

Megan: That’s amazing. That’s a total breakthrough.

Nick: I know there are certain ages you can’t do this, but we just talked about “What does that mean you need to do?” We’re stuck here, so there was no escape. Can’t send him to his grandparents. Couldn’t go to summer camp. I just was like, “We need a day where I can just do the thing.” And it was great. It really was a fun thing he could live up to. So, all in all, everybody should do it. I feel amazing. I took walks every day. It’s very, very possible even with my small team.

Michael: A funny story that you reminded me of is when I got back… Of course, the first question I have, as a business owner, is “What’s our cash position?” As it turned out, our cash position was better than when I left. I said, “What’s the forecast for the end of the year in terms of profit?” and it actually had increased in my absence. The first thing I said to Megan was, “Boy, it sounds like the best thing I could do is leave for another 30 days.”

Nick: “Bye!”

Michael: “See ya!”

Larry: Well, today we’ve learned that every leader can enjoy a rejuvenating vacation even during the pandemic when travel is difficult or impossible by following these four steps:

1. State the outcome you’re looking for.
2. Get in touch with your why.
3. Plan your rejuvenation.
4. Plan for your absence.

Final thoughts today?

Megan: Well, I would just say: you need this. If you’re listening to this episode and you’re like most people, you probably have had very little time off this year so far, and you need this to lead at the highest level possible. I mean, the leadership challenges we’re all facing in this year are extraordinary, and the only way you’re going to be able to rise to the occasion is if you’re rested, if you have access to your best thinking, your most creative and innovative thinking, if you’re able to align your team, and on and on. To do that, you need to be rested. So, I would just encourage you to give this a try, prioritize it, and then make it a priority for your team.

Michael: I would say something similar. Don’t take a vacation, don’t take a sabbatical, unless you want to be more focused, more creative, more productive, more rested, get your sanity back, connect meaningfully with family and friends. If none of those are priority, don’t take a vacation, but if they are, you absolutely must. The sooner the better.

Larry: Michael and Megan and Nick, thank you all for sharing this encouragement, I think giving us all permission to do the thing we really need to do. So thank you.

Michael: Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Megan and Nick. And thank you all for joining us today. We’ll see you right here next week. Until then, lead to win.