Do This One Thing Over The Holidays

As 2020 mercifully comes to a close, I’ve got one more ask for you. But first, a story. 2020 was frustrating for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, but one of my most frustrating personal moments wasn’t a moment at all.

It was a series of choices I made that led to the deterioration of the cartilage in my right knee. This is significant, given that I still play minor league basketball in my free time and all of a sudden it hurt to even jog. But this wasn’t one of those made-for-a-sports-movie injuries where I fell to the court in writhing pain as the crowd looked on in hushed concern. It happened gradually, over time. Because of choices I made with my routine to get back in the gym at 4am the morning after getting out of practice at 10pm in an effort to balance basketball workouts with my more important duties as CEO and penultimate responsibilities as a husband and father to two young boys. This sort of push is fine once in awhile, but I did it for an entire season.

As you might imagine, the lack of sleep took its toll. Not in my work- I’m usually able to step up with a shot or two of caffeine and do what I need to. But my body’s ability to recover suffered and I didn’t even realize it. I kept forcing myself to put out effort without giving myself any reasonable time to recover. Eventually, that led to a knee injury that now requires a couple of injections each year to manage it as I continue to play.

This year has been hard. I don’t care if you’re reading this from a brand’s in-house team, as an entrepreneur, or as a freelancer or agency marketer. It’s been a hard year. We’re more socially distant and divided than ever before. Marketing and Communications resources are more strapped than I can remember them ever being since I started Fidelitas over twelve years ago.

Now, as most in our industry enjoy the opportunity to work from home, the lines between work and personal time are blurred more than ever. Which is great, if you manage it well. But if you or your team fail to allow time to recover, you’ll burn out faster than a bad light bulb.

And you probably won’t even see it coming.

So my ask for you is this: take a rest. Enjoy Christmas. Enjoy a breather before the New Year. Binge Netflix, time in the great outdoors, and time with loved ones. Because if you don’t take a breather now, you may not be able to catch your breath next year.

And for that very reason, this is our last email until the first week of January. Enjoy your downtime.