No, we even do not think about spotlighting procrastination. Instead, taking a planned pause can be a powerful tool for your business’ preparation, strategic layout, and success as you cannot speed up endlessly without getting exhausted, relentless, and unsustainable.
“Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.” Ralph Ellison
Who will listen to your shout-out when you are screaming all the time? In praise of balance: Those who embrace creative slowness can also enjoy productive speed. Just take a look around in nature.
When you catch yourself not having time to think, give yourself even more time to question your behavior on top.
Hibernation is not only for animals, artists profit from it as well and so should businesses: Such in-between periods usually signal the starting point of a new cycle of creation. On the outside, it’s a blunt phase of non-productivity in the process often perceived as laziness. Pondering and being lazy is, believe it or not, becoming a trend in 2023 as even Nelly Rodi states in their latest newsletter. Be that as it may, meanwhile the light is shed inwardly on going back to neutrality and regaining ground as a necessary breeding place for creative ideas. This is the time to shift the outer focus from everyone else to yourself, on self-reflection, and create space for your business priorities. It is thus the most significant part when it comes to processing this inspiration and the ideas that arise from it, through the “dead time” that forms into a productive nothing.
The magic lies within receiving clarity.
What are you pausing from? The facts, the numbers, the market, the expectations, the target group, and the time. Clearing one’s mind is the most powerful tool you have and you decide when, how, and for how long yourself. Just remember the last business decision and under which circumstances it was taken. If there would have been more time, would there have been alterations to it? The market, all its players, and our society overall tend to live at the max, doing everything last minute, speeding up any process, and deciding at the very last minute which option to take often without proper evaluation. Quick fixes are not necessarily the best ones. The good old times were not as good as we often believe, nevertheless, preparation was always key and so is a time-out. Carve out that precious time to listen, evaluate and surrender to do the work that is required to have the very best. Because in the end, clarity comes with distance and time.
Fear of oversleeping success?
In hibernation mode, there are plenty of “unseen” tasks such as:
Assuring a consistent brand performance no matter where
Reorganizing brand and marketing strategies and cascaded marketing plans
Improvements to brand- and marketing-related processes, mediums, and communications
Thinking and working on team structure, co-operation within as well as on networking outside your company
The good news: hibernation has a beginning and an end. As soon as you have clarity, the whole organization will feel the right timing for speeding up again. Even more energized and determined than before as self-reflection implies that you are solely working to your standards, values, and principles, hence, your very own agenda to success in your business habitat. If you wish to check in on your principles, simply drop me a line.
Yours truly,
Margot
A&P sidenote: Angela Glajcar (born 1970) is a German sculptor who is famous for her sometimes monumental paper staggerings called "Terforations" into which a space is torn. Glajcar's "Terforations" remind me of a cave into which one can retreat to fathom things and develop ideas.
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