The ideas you come up with will be worth hundreds of times any income you may lose in those ten days.

(I like to schedule this one around end of calendar year, when things are usually slow anyway.)

THE REWARD

Whenever you have made some goal, reached some new accomplishment, done something you're proud of, take a few days off to congratulate yourself.

After finishing a web development project, I always take a couple of days off in which I do absolutely nothing, not even think about any new projects, even when I have another contract waiting to be started.

There have been times when I had less than three months living expenses in bank and I had no idea when or how my next income would come in. Even then, I resisted temptation to frantically go out and try to solve my financial problems.

Inevitably I found myself so refreshed after a couple of days of leisure that I was able to generate an endless stream of valuable ideas almost effortlessly.

You owe it to yourself to provide your creative mind with an opportunity to prove to you that leisure time pays off - physically, emotionally, and financially.

Just in terms of health, you can't afford not to take it easier. Learning to eliminate stress from your life can add five years onto end of it.

So next time someone asks you why you're taking day off "for no good reason", just tell them, "I'm eliminating stress from my life, developing a lot of new valuable ideas, and enjoying myself right now - in present moment!"

Read biographies of some of great achievers in history and you'll see many of them have been basically lazy.

To have freedom of mind just to let go of goal orientation is a major breakthrough for most people.

The creative mind needs a state of relaxed calm to really get going, and working hard is one way to deny and avoid your own creativity.

THWART THE GUILT-TRIPPERS!

Taking leisure time will inevitably create hostility in people who don't want you to have more fun than they do. These folks will try to make you feel guilty. Let them in on secret! Show them you're having so much fun that you're not susceptible to their guilt trip.

Someone who has ability to relax, play and let creative mind work freely, and freedom to exercise that ability on a regular basis, has kind of self- confidence that can succeed in any endeavor and enjoy life to fullest.

5. Cut them out altogether. Yes, that's right, just stop doing them.

6. Take time daily to decide, and re-decide as priorities change, what truly are your big "boulders". And keep these actively in my focus - whenever, and wherever, you can. List them and keep them in front of you. Make a big colorful poster of them. Draw them, so your creative, "everything is possible", visualizing, right brain can work on them.

7. Always choose to do "boulders" [big, valuable tasks, goals, projects] over "sand" [small, trivial, non-valuable tasks, goals, projects].

8. Create and define important, valuable, whole, regular, systematic jobs - with a beginning and ending. And, if someone else can do them, and someone else is available, delegate these jobs permanently and completely to others.

9. If you have to, employ someone new, part-time or full-time, to do it instead of you. Delegation is best for jobs that need to be done regularly, and done 100% well. Almost any "complete" job can be delegated.

10. Focus on, volunteer for, emphasize, choose, what you like, what you're good at, what you find FUN!

11. What you don't find fun, make fun. Lack of fun de- leverages tasks, and time. Fun leverages it. So build in fun, consciously. Create fun. BE fun.

12. Learn, and practice skill and art of saying "No!" (nicely) - especially to chronic time wasters.

13. Aim to do far more, far less perfectly.

14. Do no more than 7 things really well, or excellently. "Excellence" is not "perfect", but rather "fit for its purpose".

15. When faced with large daunting tasks or projects, break them down into smaller tasks - and build in rewards for achieving some of smaller steps.

16. Be more effective: Stop doing wrong things well.

17. And if right things push your skill frontiers, learn to do right things poorly, first. Then to do them well, over time, second.

18. Train your customers to do more. Give them tools; teach them how to use tools.

19. Use technology to reduce time you take to do tasks.