Summer is my favourite time of year for a number of reasons. For example, even if my skin only ever changes from pasty white to a seething red under a hot sun I still love hitting the beach.
This is also when you can forget about all of your worries for a while and live a week or a fortnight of not having to think about doing the dishes, changing the bedclothes or washing the car. It is a time for total relaxation really. So why is it that I always need to take my laptop with me to note some interesting new SEO ideas which come into my head?
An Empty Head
My brain is under used while I am on holiday. There, I’ve gone and said it; I turn into a gibbering fool who doesn’t know what time of day it is, where he is or why on Earth he is handing over perfectly good money to buy a small and rather grotesque donkey statue. This is a great state to be in and in some ways I envy the people who live their whole lives like this. However, nature abhors a vacuum and something always ends up filling the space which was previously occupied by shopping lists, DIY jobs and other dull things. Now that I am free to spend a full 3 hours looking at the sky without saying a word I find that one thing start to enter my mind; SEO. New ideas and approaches can also come to me on long flights, endless bus journeys and in restaurants where the delightfully ramshackle service leaves me with plenty of time to work out that I don’t understand a single word of the menu.
No Pressure
If there is one thing which stops me from working well it is when I have too much pressure on me. If I get to midday and I haven’t done what I needed to then my mind shuts down while I try to work out whether to eat some food, collect my daughter from the nursery or continue to stare at a blank screen. On the other hand, when I am soaking up a foolish amount of UV rays the only pressure on me is to finish my ice cream before it melts. At times like this I can think better and really enjoy the process as well.
Different Influences
Perhaps the biggest factor to consider here is the exposure to different influences which you receive when you go on holiday. You don’t need to go to Outer Mongolia to feel this effect either; simply taking a break from the routine and seeing a different view out of your window every morning can be enough to get you thinking in a different way. Of course, if you really want to experience a completely new culture then you will find that being surrounded by a lot of different people and places really opens up your mind. We can’t forget that SEO work is essentially a creative job. When I went on holiday from my boring office job I did it with the idea of escaping from everything from a while and trying to forget that I had such a lousy career in the first place. Since I have started working in the SEO industry this has changed drastically. Sure, I still see a trip abroad as being a chance to unwind but I also look on it as giving me plenty of opportunities to broaden my horizons and do a better job when I get back home again. Maybe even that tacky donkey statue will give me a bit of inspiration if I am lucky.
Copywriters can enjoy their holidays even more if they realise the benefits which going away can have for their career.