给自己打工：5招巧解休假难题

发动亲友，寻求帮助

    OFD咨询公司是一家位于弗吉尼亚州的婚礼营销企业。公司业主梅根•伊利去年九月曾与丈夫一起去爱尔兰度假八天。她说：“在度假之前，我会培训我的一位员工，让他变成‘我的代理人’。” 比如代替她回复电子邮件，前期接洽潜在客户等等。

    如果没有员工该怎么办？对医生来说，他们会在假期期间彼此帮忙代班。如果你欣赏和信任某一位同事，尤其是在你准备休长假之前，你可以尝试向他托付自己的工作。你还可以请求一位你信得过的好友或者家人替你查看电子邮件和语音邮件，如果有很糟糕的事情发生，他们还能打电话到你度假期间下榻的酒店找你。

少量多次，分期休假

    古拉夫•沙尔玛现在经营着初创企业RightBuy.com。他还开过一家网络咨询公司。他说，“去年我休假一个礼拜，虽然我事先规划得很好，但还是给几位客户造成了困扰，”这几位客户后来也不再光顾。所以现在他主要休长周末。

    而有些人则在常规的日历周期之外另辟蹊径，但时间长度仍为一周。蒂姆•帕西雷奥经营着董事会顾问营销公司（TheBoardRoomAdvisors）。他休假的时间通常跨越两周，比如，从这周三到下周三。如果说客户考虑问题的周期是以一个星期为单位，这样实际上的休假并不会完全漏掉某一整个星期。他说：“这让我更容易应对客户，并且这对我的收益流也没有多少影响。”

闲里偷忙，张弛有度

    布莱德•弗莱德曼在一家社交媒体营销公司担任代理人。他说：“我的A型人格不可能允许我完完全全地关张一礼拜。”所以他所做的是“在度假之前做好规划，每天或者隔天抽出一些时间查阅电子邮件和电话信息。我尽量把这种‘工作时间’限制在每天不超过半小时。坦白讲，与完全抽离工作长达一整周时间相比，这个小经验能让我更放松地度假。”

    然而，即使你牢牢记住上面提到的所有经验，有一些快乐的企业主会建议说，有些时候只要大胆抽身就好。休假有风险，但经营企业通常也有风险。佩奇•阿洛夫芬是行家大腕咨询和营销公司（Mavens and Moguls）创始人。她在自己40岁生日的时候休了整整一个月的假，呆在海外乡下的一户简朴的农家，上不了网也不能接打手机。她早在数月前就通知了所有人，到时间就出发了。她非常享受这段经历。她和丈夫决定在2012年再用一个月时间前往澳大利亚和新西兰度假。

    她说：“这对我们两人来说，这并非一个具有重大纪念意义的生日，而仅仅是一种享受人生的方式。”她和丈夫在过去几年内相继失去了数位亲人，他们从中得到的感悟就是，即使在度假归来需要努力才能挽回一些生意，也“不要非得等到有了什么理由才去休假。”

    译者：李玫晓/汪皓

Get help.

    Meghan Ely, owner of OFD Consulting, a Virginia-based wedding marketing firm, took an eight-day trip to Ireland last September with her husband. "Prior to leaving, I trained one of my staff members essentially how to 'be me,'" she says, answering emails, taking the first few steps with prospects and the like.

    Don't have staff? Doctors cover each other's shifts for vacations, and if you have a colleague you admire and trust, you could try referring work over there during your time off -- particularly if you plan to take a longer leave. You could also ask a trusted friend or family member to check your email and voice mail and call your hotel if anything disastrous happens.

Consider shorter, more frequent breaks.

    Guarav Sharma, who now runs the startup RightBuy.com, used to run a web consulting company. "I took a week off last year and even though I planned it well, a few clients were frustrated," he says, and did not become repeat customers. Now he sticks to long weekends.

    Others squeeze in a week by thinking outside the usual calendar categories. Tim Pacileo, owner of TheBoardRoomAdvisors, a marketing firm, often takes his vacation from, say, Wednesday to Wednesday. If clients think on a weekly cycle, this allows you to never actually skip a week. "It's easier on my customers and doesn't affect my income stream as much," he says.

Schedule short "work breaks" on your vacation.

    Brad Friedman, an attorney who now works in social media marketing, says that "My type-A personality wouldn't possibly let me completely shut down for an entire week." So what he does is "set a schedule before I leave town. That schedule provides me with some time every day, or every other day, to check email and phone messages. I try to limit this 'work time' to no more than an hour a day. Frankly, this tip helps me relax on the vacation much more than if I would try to totally cut myself off from work for a whole week."

    But even keeping all this in mind, happy business owners say that you sometimes just have to go for it. Taking time off is a risk, but so is running a business in general. Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder of the consulting and marketing firm Mavens and Moguls, took a month off for her 40th birthday, staying in a rustic farmhouse overseas that had no Internet access or cell phone reception. She told everyone months ahead of time, and then just went. She enjoyed the experience so much that she and her husband will be taking another month off to go to Australia and New Zealand in 2012.

    "Not a milestone birthday for either of us but just a way to celebrate our lives," she says. She and her husband have lost several relatives in the past few years, and the lesson they are drawing from it is to "not … wait for an excuse to take time off" -- even if it takes some effort to scale back up when you return.