I’m taking February off. Here’s why.

Is a Chief Happiness Officer always happy at work? Heck no.

Everyone has bad days once in a while and I’m no exception. I always say that if someone is always happy, there’s something wrong with them :)

But for some time now I’ve been feeling burnt out.

Don’t get me wrong – I love giving speeches and workshops. Nothing beats the kick of getting on stage in front of an audience and sharing an important message with them. But over the last few months, I’ve been getting bogged down in a lot of my daily chores and maintenance tasks that just didn’t light my fire.

I’ve also felt like I’ve been stagnating professionally. Business is great, we’re making a ton of money and clients love what we do, but I’ve been feeling frustrated that we haven’t progressed beyond that and grown as a company lately.

If there’s one lesson we try to teach it’s this: when you’re not happy at work, you should take it seriously and do something about it. So it would be pretty hypocritical of me not to do that myself :)

So when I noticed these feelings in myself and, by coincidence, that my schedule for February was actually pretty free of big events and gigs I decided to take February off.

I’ve delegated all my tasks to my awesome coworkers and have closed my inboxes (here’s why I don’t just use an autoreply/vacation message) and company phone so no one can reach me.

What will I do with that time? I don’t know. I have not planned anything and that’s on purpose. I think that completely free and unstructured time is what frees your mind to think big thoughts. Too many plans (or any plans at all) would interfere with that.

So I’ll see you again in March.