I am at the sweet spot of the summer.

Early summer, just after the Fourth of July weekend, lazy wide open days ahead of me.

So what does any self respecting nonprofit executive director/momspy/artspy/nonprofit knitter do – angst!

That’s right.  I am frantically scheduling relaxing moments and down time into my Blackberry with alerts to remind me to calm down, take deep breaths, wear sunscreen, read, exercise and lose 10 pounds.  God forbid I forget to do something.

Another couple of things I have added to my evergrowing List of Things I Must Accomplish are blog related tasks.  I want to write, write, write and accumulate a cache of posts.  Then I want to work on some sketches, videos, guest posts, reviews – just a few thousand other things.

Sound familiar?

Why do we do this at a time when we are supposed to be on vacation from all of this?  Simple.  It’s a habit.  We are in the habit of overachieving and addicted to the challenge of being ahead of the game.  Since we do this more than we are on vacation, it is difficult habit to break especially if we don’t have something else to replace it with.

What we all need is a plan.

This is what you should do.  I will give you the first step and then I will need your help in completing this list that will make us happier:

A Twelve Step Plan for Restless Creatives Like Me

1. Get over yourself

You are not as irreplaceable as you think you are.  If you go off the grid, believe me, everybody will somehow get along fine without you.

If you feel that the world will explode without you being part of everything, you are a bottleneck, not a leader.  Shared decision making infuses your team with an increased sense of responsibility.  You can delegate someone the authority to sign off on say, decisions revolving around purchases under $500.  Or all correspondences to committee members.  If it is something you need to weigh in on, have that someone evaluate the options and make a recommendation.  That way you can simply agree or disagree and move forward.

Get addicted to the gradual distancing between you and every little thing that has to be taken care.  Design a better system that removes you from doing it all.  This is a habit we can get used to.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?