I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but for me this is a great time to avoid doing hard work. It’s cold. I just got back from vacation. Everybody’s out of the office.

Don’t get me wrong – we all need to have some relaxation and downtime.

But we know that most of these reasons are bogus excuses.

It’s easy to blame a lack of progress on things that aren’t really true. The question should always be: what do we learn from this?

It’s certainly possible to plan around vacations. If it takes me a day to get back in the groove after some time off, then I just plan that into my schedule.

If I’m relaxing, then relax. Play. Space out. Do something different.

But when I get back to work, then I’m going to try to make that time productive. Because otherwise it’s just frustrating.