Today is the start of the year for a lot of people in Australia. We'll now take work seriously until Early April when our super long weekend of Easter will whet our appetites.

In Australia, many people in business slow down between Melbourne Cup Day (the first Tuesday in November) and Australia Day (January 26). There were 83 days between and 24 of them were public holidays or weekends.

Christmas and end-of-year parties start in November. Project starts are delayed due to the holidays. Then there are summer holidays for the kids in school. They go back into classes later this week. The sun is up early and stays out longer, so we have plenty of time to PLAY. And PLAY we do well.

It's been (and remains) a difficult trait for me to get used to.

I took December 23-January 3 off to relax and recharge. That was 2 weeks... Add on the weekends and it was Dec 21-January 5.

To me that is an enormous amount of time off.

I hit the ground running on January 6th. Been working for 3 weeks on heaps of projects.

I've planned a year of growth and success.

I've planned a year of speaking and sharing.

I've planned a year of health and fun.

What have you planned? How does your business weather the storm of summer?