Transcript

Episode: One Simple Hack for Taking a Perfect Vacation

Michael Hyatt:
Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Marissa Hyatt:
And I’m Marisa Hyatt.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is lead to win our weekly podcast. To help you win at work and succeed a life. And this week we’re joined by a very special guest, the one and only the woman, the myth, the legend, Marisa Hyatt who has hijacked her sister’s seat. Marisa, welcome.

Marissa Hyatt:
Thanks, dad. Super excited to be here and happy to fill in Megan’s shoes.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, this is our 200th episode of Lead to Win and we were just talking to Nick, our producer, about this. Nick has been with us from the beginning. He deserves some kind of award for just listening to us over and over. And if you guys could only hear the stuff he cuts out.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah, I’m sure there’s some pretty good footage there.

NIck:
I call it Michael Hyatt After Dark. I have a whole folder of stuff I’m just keeping on file just in case I need it someday.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah, I’m just waiting for one of his minions to show up with some kind of extortion demand.

Michael Hyatt:
We’re going to talk about one simple hack for taking a perfect vacation. Why? Because it’s vacation time and vacations are essential for active rejuvenation. But let’s be honest, for a lot of us vacations aren’t all that restful. And coming back from vacation is a nightmare. If you’ve ever wondered, why did I bother to take that vacation? We’re going to help you get a different plan.

Michael Hyatt:
Too often, Marissa, we start off with a great plan. And then because we don’t tie up the loose ends before we go, we end up working during our vacations. So we never really have the opportunity to rejuvenate because we never clear our heads from work. And so today we’re going to be talking about one simple hack to solve that, to take the perfect vacation.

Michael Hyatt:
So Marisa, let’s start with you. I want to introduce you to this audience. You are the youngest of five daughters and you are one of two daughters who work at Full Focus. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yes. Well, you all who listen, are familiar with my sister Megan, and I like to call us the bookends of the family. So she’s the oldest and I’m the youngest. There’s about 10 years between us both.

Marissa Hyatt:
I am the director of marketing here at Full Focus. I’ve been here for about three and a half years. And I’m passionate about working and I’m passionate about vacations. So this is a great episode for me to talk about. And dad, this is really top of mind for both of us because here in about a week and a half we are going to be on our way to Peru together for the first time. We are going with my mom, your wife, and my other sister, Mary, and her boyfriend. And we are really excited to get to go to Peru.

Michael Hyatt:
You’ve never been, right?

Marissa Hyatt:
I’ve never been.

Michael Hyatt:
I’ve never been either. Mary has been several times, probably five or six times, but I can’t wait. I am so ready for this. And then beyond that, mom and I are going to take a couple of other little vacations this summer. We’re going to Hawaii for a week, and then we’re going to go to some friends down in the Gulf of Mexico. So we’re excited about all that.

Michael Hyatt:
But here’s the thing. For those of you listening you’ve probably got a vacation coming up, too. And are I’ll bet you’re with us on that last point. And that is that you want to really experience the vacation.

Michael Hyatt:
And so what we want to do is share a tool that we use with our coaching clients to help them maximize their vacations. And we call it the Vacation Optimizer. You can download it for free. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But we’re going to unpack this by looking at five missing features of most people’s vacation plans.

Michael Hyatt:
And this has been one of those tools that we’ve incrementally improved over the years, because vacation is like any other skill, you got to practice to get better at it. And I’m always happy to practice. I don’t consider myself professional, but I’m kind of a proficient amateur at it. And I feel like I’m getting better at it. And one of the reasons I’m getting better is because of this tool. And the Vacation Optimizer is what helps us solve for each of these five missing features in most people’s vacation plans. So Marisa, are you ready to dive into this topic?

Marissa Hyatt:
I am really ready to dive in and I hope everybody listening is as well. And you can get a copy of the Vacation Optimizer for free by going to fullfocus.co/vacation. And I particularly want to talk to the people today who have ever taken a vacation who when they get done with it they feel like they need a vacation from their vacation. Can I get an amen?

Michael Hyatt:
Amen.

Marissa Hyatt:
We have been there when we get back and we are stressed and it wasn’t rejuvenating. And we feel like we need a whole other vacation to make up for it. So hopefully what we shared today will prevent that from happening.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, maybe I should start with a story, but I was that guy. Years ago when you were young, little, I would be the guy that would take the vacation, but would sneak my laptop. And I would get up early in the morning before everybody else got up and I would grind through some email because I didn’t want to be left behind. And frankly, I was a little bit curious about what was going on at the office, but I didn’t want to come back to this mountain, this avalanche of email.

Michael Hyatt:
I was also the guy that often was preoccupied, not fully present, looking at my phone, checking in on the internet, all those kinds of things, but that’s exactly why we developed this. And one of the things I realized is this wasn’t going to get better unless I had a plan, unless I had a tool.

Michael Hyatt:
And so the Vacation Optimizer really grew out of my experience and then Megan and Joel added their part to it. But it grew out of their experience of being frustrated with vacations and wondering why we go to all the trouble and expense to take a vacation if we’re not going to be present during the vacation.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
So that’s what we want to solve. And we want to talk about these five missing features. And the first missing feature is your vision. This is where it always starts.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yes. Well, we all know that famous Stephen Covey quote that says, “Begin with the end in mind.” And I feel like we know that this is true in businesses. This is what we teach in business accelerator to our clients is creating this vision for their business. But it’s really easy for us to forget this in our personal lives, especially with something that could be considered as small as a vacation. We think we don’t need a vision for it, but I actually think it’s incredibly important here.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah. And I think sometimes we think that part of a vacation means that we shouldn’t have to plan. We ought to be able to just kind of drift into it and enjoy ourselves and not stress out and have a great vacation. But the truth is if you’re going to have that kind of experience on your vacation, it’s going to take some planning before your vacation. And most of it is to get clear on what you want.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And I find that so often, and I’ve been in this situation too before, where we arrive at the vacation destination and Gail, my wife, has one vision of what she wanted to accomplish in the vacation and I had another vision and we never bothered sharing those visions with one another. So we were misaligned during the vacation. And so it’s incredibly helpful to go through the Vacation Optimizer exercise together as a couple or with your significant other so that you have a shared vision because left to our own devices that’s not usually the case.

Michael Hyatt:
So to give you another example, Gail’s idea typically of a vacation, and I think she’s gotten better with this over time, too, with more practice, but she liked to pack the vacation to the gills. She wanted to be really busy. She wanted to be sighting. She wanted to be doing something all the time.

Michael Hyatt:
Me on the other hand, now this is a little telling, I’m an enneagram three. And so, I can go to an enneagram nine, the low side of that. That’s kind of my default on vacations and I didn’t want to do anything. And I definitely didn’t want to plan anything out. I wanted a lot of white space on my calendar where nothing was planned.

Michael Hyatt:
But as we began to think about our vision and I could share what I wanted and she could share what she wanted, we found that we were able to accommodate both and it ended up being a better vacation. So I think she’s, she’s better now with being more relaxed, less structured. And I’m better with doing those activities.

Michael Hyatt:
We went to Disney World with one of our daughters and her family back in January. And I mean, it was like 12 hours a day and I loved it. It was so much fun, but they involved me in the planning. So it was definitely one of those choose your own adventures. And I chose 12 hours a day and it was great.

Marissa Hyatt:
Well, and I think this is equally important, even if you don’t have a spouse or you’re traveling with somebody else who is not your spouse. So earlier this year, the other sisters, myself, and my mom, we took a girls’ trip. It was actually our first time ever taking a girls’ trip, which is crazy since there’s so many of us and you would think that we do that every year. We’ve never done it until this year.

Marissa Hyatt:
The first night at dinner we all sat down and went around and shared kind of what our personal vision or expectations were for that trip. So we said by the end of this trip, when we go home on Sunday or whatever day it was, what do you want to be able to walk away and say about this vacation? And I think that this is really helpful because it allowed us to meet each other’s needs.

Marissa Hyatt:
For some of us that meant… For my sisters who have four or five kids, they said, “I just want to chill. I want to get a massage. I don’t really want to do anything.” For some of us it meant having really in depth, meaningful conversations. For other people it meant going on a hike. And so we were able to help meet each other’s needs by having that conversation on the front end.

Michael Hyatt:
Having a clear vision on the front end really helps you avoid a lot of conflict on the back end. And we often say, and I think we recorded an episode on this a few weeks ago, vision, alignment, and execution. Everything starts with vision. And oftentimes you have a difficult time being aligned and experience a lot of conflict because you don’t take the time to create a shared vision. And so that’s where it has to begin for everything, but also when it comes to vacation. So that’s the first missing feature is your vision.

Michael Hyatt:
The second missing feature is your why. What do we mean by this, Marissa?

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah. So your why is so important? Every good what has a great why. So a few questions you can ask yourself about your vacation are, why does it matter? What does this vacation mean for you? And what’s at stake? I love this question. What’s at stake if you don’t take this vacation?

Marissa Hyatt:
We’re going to Peru and we’re going to be there for about two weeks. And I actually have a week on the end of that trip that I will not be working either. So I’m going to be taking three weeks off. This is the first time I’ve ever taken that amount of time off in one go. And I’ve been asking myself this question, why does it matter?

Marissa Hyatt:
My anxiety is kind of building a little bit as I’m getting closer to it, thinking about how much time I’m taking off and is my team going to be okay? All the things I’m going to have to do when I return. But what’s at stake if I don’t take this is my own personal rejuvenation. It’s so important for me to take this, to take some time away, to reset, recalibrate myself, get filled up in other areas of my life beyond my work, so that when I come back at the end of this back to work I can show up fully and wholeheartedly and with new excitement and new energy like I never would’ve been able to do if I just kept burning through and working.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, I have a question to ask you. And I want us to pretend for a moment that we’re on the honest planet, where everybody tells the truth all the time. And on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 means your tank is totally full, you’re rejuvenated, you’re excited, you can’t wait to get to work in the morning, and zero is I’m past running on fumes and I’m just going through the motions, where would you say you are on that scale of one to 10 right now?

Marissa Hyatt:
Okay. Well, since this is a safe space, don’t tell my boss. No, I feel like lately it’s been at about a two.

Michael Hyatt:
Wow.

Marissa Hyatt:
I’m still able to show up and I’m still here, but honestly I am exhausted. It has been a while since I have had a really good vacation.

Marissa Hyatt:
The other thing that I noticed, and this is kind of what motivated specifically going to Peru, is my travel tank is empty. Since COVID I have not been able to have any kind of culturally exciting trip.

Marissa Hyatt:
Prior to that, I would try to go somewhere overseas and go somewhere that had a lot of culture. And I haven’t been able to do that in about two plus years. And so I am really excited about that because it’s going to fill me up in a way that just going and sitting on a beach, for me, doesn’t do. I need to get out. I need to see different things. I need to taste different flavors and go on the side of a mountain and see different things. And so I’m really excited specifically for that aspect.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s awesome. Well, I know that you’ve been working really hard. You’ve been extremely focused and I get that.

Michael Hyatt:
I think my tank’s fuller than that because I’ve probably had more time off. And one of the things for me that’s like a vacation, a mini vacation, is going to the lake where we have a house. And so that kind of fills my tank back up. So I’m not quite in the same shape, but that doesn’t mean I’m in better shape. And it doesn’t definitely doesn’t mean I don’t need it.

Michael Hyatt:
So I was talking to my pastor just the other night and realized that he’s now been our pastor for five years. And somebody, this was actually a meeting of our leadership, and somebody suggested he might want to consider a one month sabbatical. And that kind of blew his mind, I think, but I was really encouraging him. I said, “Man, the last thing we want to have happen…” Because we love him so much. He’s doing such a great job. But the last thing we want to have happen is for him to burn out. And I think this is the antidote to burning out.

Michael Hyatt:
If you don’t take regular vacations, if you don’t periodically unplug and give yourself a chance to reboot, you will burn out. And I can’t remember who. Maybe it was Anne Lamott. Somebody said, “Everything runs better after it’s been rebooted including you.” And that’s what a vacation and especially a sabbatical is all about.

Marissa Hyatt:
That’s so true.

Michael Hyatt:
So yeah, so to find out why is critically important. What is it that you’re trying to gain? What is at stake by taking this vacation? What is at stake if you don’t take the vacation? And I think both of us would agree, because we’ve had some practice at this, that what’s at stake if we don’t take a vacation, if we don’t take time off, is burnout, and less creativity, less productivity, and usually a not so great attitude.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah, you’re not going to be able to show up as a great leader, if you yourself aren’t rejuvenated. If you don’t have the energy, if you’re struggling with burnout, you’re probably not showing up in the best way. So I think it’s so critical to connect with your why on the front end of your trip.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. First missing feature your vision, second missing feature your why, and the third missing feature is no plan for rest and rejuvenation. Now there’s a difference between kind of going into a vacation with no plan for rest and rejuvenation, but thinking you’re going to rest and rejuvenate and then discovering that you didn’t. There’s a difference between that and actually planning. Because planning for rest and rejuvenation begins with thinking through, what rejuvenates me? How do I define rest? And it’s not the same for everybody. What about for you, Riss?

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah. Well, I think going back to what you were talking about of when you and mom have traveled together in the past, and she has one expectation and you have another, and those really look different for each other. For her, it means, going to the art museums and the sites and seeing all of that. For you it might be taking naps every single day or going and having a really nice dinner, just the two of you.

Marissa Hyatt:
And so for me, a huge thing for me, like I was saying earlier, is the culture. So for me that is the food, the museums, walking around in the cities or the towns that we’re going to be in. We’re going to Peru. So one of the things that many people who go to Peru are going to get to see is Machu Picchu. We’re going to get to hike there. And I’m really looking forward to that. Now that isn’t necessarily restful. It’s going to be pretty physically intense, but I know that for my soul it’s going to be really rejuvenating.

Marissa Hyatt:
And so, for me, it’s kind of a mixed bag. It’s having those conversations over dinner where you just slowed down. You kind of forget what time it is and you’re not… I know, dad, you, mom, and I went to Italy several years ago and we would joke that we had this dinner that was three or even four hours long. And all of sudden we’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’s 10:00 PM. Where did the time go?”

Marissa Hyatt:
But I love that. That is so fulfilling to me, are those kind of meaningful meaningful moments where you just forget about time. You’re just so in the present moment. And so that’s not necessarily a massage or taking a spa day. Although, I’m certainly not opposed to those things. But for me, it’s really those shared experiences together.

Michael Hyatt:
It’s interesting you brought that up about those long leisurely dinners because I would say that’s one of the primary ways that I rejuvenate. Even though I’m an introvert close intimate relationships rejuvenate me.

Michael Hyatt:
And I just want to take us back, because we’ve got so much history vacationing, but I think the first place I ever learned the value of this, and we went to the beach and a lot of those things as you guys were growing up, but the first time I can remember really unplugging and really enjoying one another you and your mother and I went to Scotland for about… Was that like 10 days?

Marissa Hyatt:
I think so. I was like 13 or something.

Michael Hyatt:
And so we discovered that in Scotland there was always this tradition where you would go to the restaurant or whatever and you would have cocktails before dinner. And so that was usually in a kind of a lounge area. And that was like, everybody did it and then you’d be called for your table and then you’d go in. And it was just normal that you would spend two hours at dinner.

Michael Hyatt:
And I’ve been in Europe where unlike America they don’t book the tables to turn over. When you get a table you’ve got it for the whole evening, because you’re probably going to sit there for the whole evening.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yep. Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
So yeah, that’s rest and rejuvenation for me. I also like catching up on sleep. But whatever it is for you. So for those of you listening, we’re just urging you to plan for rest and rejuvenation. What does that look like? And literally write it down, share it with your family, make sure that you get it on your vacation.

Marissa Hyatt:
Well, and on the Vacation Optimizer we ask several questions to help spark some ideas for you. So we ask things like, what does rest look like on your vacation? What do you want to eat? Where? With whom? How will you nurture your mind and heart? What will you do to ensure you disengage from work? So these are all really helpful questions to get you going thinking, how can I actually end this vacation feeling rejuvenated and rested?

Michael Hyatt:
One of the things I want to say on this point too is that if you don’t do this what you inevitably do is create a vacuum. You’re not working. You’re not really proactively doing anything. You create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. So what happens? You drift back into work because that’s the only thing that you may still remember how to do. And you haven’t really had any intentionality around rest and rejuvenation, so you just drift back to the familiar.

Michael Hyatt:
And so what we’re saying is, no, you’ve got to have a proactive plan. You’ve got to fill that vacuum with other things, even if it’s taking naps. I mean, that’s a way to fill an hour of time or two hours or whatever you enjoy, but being proactive about it’s important.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, let’s go to the fourth missing feature, closing open loops.

Marissa Hyatt:
This is so important.

Michael Hyatt:
What do we mean by that?

Marissa Hyatt:
This is so important. I think this, to me, this and actually the last feature that we’re going to talk about are probably the areas that people forget about most often.

Marissa Hyatt:
So often when we’re thinking about vacations, we’re thinking about the actual vacation, the destination, we’re going to, what we’re going to do when we’re there. Obviously we’re thinking through where we’re going to stay and what kind of activities we want to do. But I think where most of us go wrong or we just become forgetful is closing up those open loops at home so that when we are on the vacation we can actually be fully present in those activities.

Marissa Hyatt:
So I just did this this past week where I had to look through everything that I had coming up, so any tasks that I have coming up, any projects that are going to be happening, and asking myself now we’re about a week and a half out from taking off to Peru, what can I do now or defer till I return or delegate while I’m gone to set myself up for success? And I think it is so easy to forget this step. And I’m curious, dad, with you, what does this look like for you in the position that you’re in now?

Michael Hyatt:
Well, my position’s a little bit different then it was when I had operating responsibilities inside of Full Focus because Megan’s the CEO. She has the burden of leadership for the entire organization and I get to do the stuff that’s fun and that I enjoy, but not a lot of people are counting on me in the same way that it is for her.

Michael Hyatt:
But I can tell you how it looks. It looks like Jim, my executive assistant, he sees, is planning way out in the future and he’s saying, “Okay, what are the things like podcast recordings that we need to get done in advance of you leaving for a month?” Because I’m going to be gone for the entire month of July. And so Jim is making sure that all that stuff is scheduled. I honestly don’t have to give it a lot of thought thankfully, but Jim is thinking on my behalf so that when I leave there’s nothing that anybody’s can know me to do.

Marissa Hyatt:
Well, and I think this is the problem is that if you don’t take the time to do this, where you’re closing your open loops, the likelihood of your team needing answers or help with something while you’re gone is so much greater. And so the disruption comes when you don’t close these loops. And then you’re in the middle of your vacation trying to be present and you’re getting pinged from the people back at home saying, “Hey, where did you land on this project?”

Marissa Hyatt:
For me, I created a whole list of every single project that our team has coming up in the next several months that I knew that they were going to be working on while I’m gone. And for every single one of those projects I have a full status update of where we are now, anything that might be helpful for my boss, Courtney Baker, who’s our chief revenue officer, to make sure she has everything she needs to know where I’ve left the projects or the task.

Marissa Hyatt:
And then there’s certain things for me that I do every single week, reporting on certain numbers, looking into certain data. And so I’ve created Loom videos for the team so that if they need to look at that, at those numbers, while I’m gone, they know exactly how to pull those numbers. Because what I don’t want to happen is that I get a call saying, “Hey, we need to look at X, Y, and Z and we don’t know how to find that number.” And then I’m in the middle of nowhere in Peru trying to find internet access so I can get them the information they need or worst case I’m unreachable and they’re not able to get the information they need.

Marissa Hyatt:
So closing these open loops before I think is really important. And making sure you hand this over to those key players on your team and getting their input to make sure there’s nothing else they need from you before you go. So I handed my list of projects to my boss, but then also to our project manager to say, “Did I forget anything? Are there any other projects that our team’s working on that I just forgot?” And there were actually two that I forgot and that input was critical for me.

Michael Hyatt:
In the language of goal achievement the research calls this implementation intentions. And what it means is that you try to anticipate the problems that will occur in the pursuit of a goal and head them off at the pass. So in this particular situation the goal is to rest and rejuvenate and be on vacation, be fully present with the people you’re at. And so to anticipate what could go wrong is part of the process and to head it off at the pass and make sure that you’ve prepared adequately so that you don’t get those phone calls when you’re in Peru. And I don’t anticipate any of those either.

Michael Hyatt:
But this leads us to the fifth and final missing feature, which is activating your departure plan. So again, this takes intention. But you’ve got a vacation plan. Now it’s time to activate that plan. So what does that look like?

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah. So this is going to look like scheduling a team meeting with those key players, like I said, to review your departure plan. So again, all of this is in the Vacation Optimizer worksheet that we have for you.

Marissa Hyatt:
But you’ll schedule some time with your meeting. So I’m doing that this coming week where I will sit down with our marketing team, walk through my entire plan. They can ask me questions. If there’s any other loops that I need to close, we can do that before I leave. But making sure that you block the time on your calendar to close any loops that come out of that meeting.

Marissa Hyatt:
Creating an emergency contact plan so that you don’t get unnecessary messages. And this is again so important. For me, one of the things that I do in my position is I review everything that our team creates. So I’m reviewing email copy or other various marketing copy, graphic design, all of that. So I had to create an entire plan for our team of who was going to be taking on that workload while I’m out and making sure that those key stakeholders had an emergency contact, if something goes wrong. So again, you’re just trying to make sure you’re not getting inundated with calls or messages while you’re on vacation, making sure that all those people have what they need to do their jobs.

Michael Hyatt:
One of the things that I think is important here too, and Megan and I have done this for a number of years, is to define what constitutes an emergency.

Marissa Hyatt:
Oh yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Because an emergency is not just because a staff person is struggling to figure something out or they’re stuck. But I’ve said to Megan, in my role as the founder and chair of the company, I’ve said, “Look, this constitutes an emergency. If we get sued and that comes out of the blue, then notify me. Or if there was some inadvertent, catastrophic cash flow issue that you can’t figure out call me.” Which by the way, has never ever happened in 11 years of business. But I said, “Other than that, yeah, I don’t really want to hear from you.”

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah. I had a conversation with my team a couple weeks ago where a lot of us are going to be taking time off. As a company we’re actually taking the week of July 4th off. We’re closing the company for a week, which is the first time in our company’s history that we’ve ever done that. And I’m really excited for what that’s going to mean for us as a team for everybody to have that opportunity for rejuvenation.

Marissa Hyatt:
But in order for us to do that successfully, we really have to set each other up for success and make sure that everybody has what they need ahead of time. And then for our contractors who are still going to be working while we are gone, making sure they have everything they need. And again, defining what those emergencies actually would be. So for me, it would mean that our store crashed. That would be an emergency that’s when I would need to be looped in. Pretty much other than that it’s probably not an emergency or there’s other people in the company who can help come to the aid of those situations.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s good.

Michael Hyatt:
Another thing we’re going to want to do is inform stakeholders. It may be clients, it may be vendors, it may be other strategic partners, but to let them know, and again, to head off at the past, any issues that may come up in your absence.

Michael Hyatt:
So to say to your clients, “Hey, just want to let you know I’m going to be out for the month of July. If you’ve got any issues…” And this is the important part. Give them a path. “If you have any issues, please contact Jim in my absence. You have his email address. If Jim thinks it’s an emergency, he can get to me. He’s got my contact information. But otherwise I’ll look forward to seeing you in a month.” Or to even be more proactive and say, “Do you anticipate anything that you would need from me? Let’s go ahead and deal with that now before I leave because I don’t want to be taking calls.”

Michael Hyatt:
And again, I think you have to set the expectation on the part of your clients and your vendors for how you intend to communicate. And in my experience, and I’ve been doing this now for a lot of years, in my experience everybody’s willing to cooperate. They just need to know the ground rules.

Michael Hyatt:
And sometimes, and I’ve talked to some of our coaching clients about this, they get frustrated because one of their clients calls during the middle of their vacation and they say like, “Gosh, I can’t believe they called me.” “Well, did you tell them you were going on vacation?” “Well, no, I didn’t.” “Well then why would you have a different expectation?” So that’s where we’ve got to get them in the loop and inform them.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And then finally, unplug. So this is still under that departure plan, but unplug. Set up your out of office messages. Make sure that those are firing correctly. So somebody does, sends an email, one of the things I like to do is to remove my work related apps like Slack from my phone so that I’m not tempted. Because, I mean, I hate to admit it, but at this point, if I have a little downtime, my fingers have a mind of their own. They will tap on an app on my phone and before I’ve even thought about it, I’m right in the middle of Slack. So I just delete those altogether.

Michael Hyatt:
And one of the things I do also is, this is going to sound radical, but I auto delete work messages. So I basically put an out of office message that says, “Hey, I’m going to be gone till the 1st of August.” And during that time I’ve got an automated filter set up to delete all my incoming work messages.

Michael Hyatt:
And the reason I’m doing that… I give a little bit of rationale for it. I say, “The reason I’m doing that is that I don’t want to come back to a huge load of messages. Particularly, I mean, in 30 days, you’ll have solved whatever problem that you originally sent the email about. And so I jump in and have to solve problems that have already been solved and it’s a total waste of everybody’s time. And so I’m just going to delete it. If you haven’t solved it by the time I’ve gotten back then by all means, feel free to email me again after the first.” And I’ve got nothing but positive responses to that. People have said to me, “Oh my gosh, I’m totally stealing that. I’m going to use that. That’s brilliant.”

Marissa Hyatt:
Yeah, that’s pretty radical. And I am stealing that. I have not even thought that was an option, but that to me has been my biggest source of anxiety about leaving is the thought of I’m going to be gone for three weeks. The amount of emails or slack messages that I’m going to come back to and, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to filter through, has this already been solved? Or does this person still need something?

Marissa Hyatt:
And just to say to everybody on the front end, “I’m just not looking at anything. It’s going to be gone by the time I get back. And then if there is still an issue, when I get back, you certainly can let me know.” But I’m totally going to steal that. That’s [inaudible 00:33:56].

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. So the text for that autoresponder is in a blog post that I wrote and we’ll link to it in the show notes here, but I give you the exact text and how to set it up in Google.

Marissa Hyatt:
All right, dad, can you give us a recap?

Michael Hyatt:
Yep. Let me give you a recap. We covered five missing features in most vacation plans. If you add these to your plan, we’re confident you’re going to have a far better vacation as a result.

Michael Hyatt:
So your vision, get clarity on what it is that you want from this time off. Number two, your why. Why is that important? And what’s at stake if you don’t get it? Number three, plan for rest and rejuvenation. This is the guts of it. Actually have a plan of what you’re going to do. Don’t over plan, but have a plan. And then again, get alignment with the people you’re traveling with. Number four, closing, open loops, so that you’ve prepared before you ever depart. So that you’re caught up on your work. You’ve got a plan for what happens if when you’re gone there are emergencies and so forth. And then activating your departure plan. Meet with your team, go through it, turn on your auto responders. And bam, get to that vacation.

Marissa Hyatt:
Yes, yes. This gets me so excited for our vacation coming up. And just as a reminder, all of this is captured in our Vacation Optimizer. So if you want, you can go download that for free at fullfocus.co/vacation.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, Marissa, this is a time honored tradition that I’m about to invoke. And it’s this. Do you have any final thoughts?

Marissa Hyatt:
Oh, I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked that question before. I feel so honored. I do have some final thoughts and that is that your time off is just as important as your time on. If you are not prioritizing your time off and being intentional with that time, you are not going to be able to show up wholeheartedly as a leader, as a business owner, in your specific industry. So don’t be afraid to take time off. You can do this well. You can do it with intention, with a little bit of planning. And you can come back and you won’t need another vacation from your vacation.

Michael Hyatt:
Fantastic. Guys, I hope this has been helpful to you. We’ll look forward to hearing about your vacation on the backside. Until then lead to win.