Get Set For The New Year: Refresh, Regroup, And Recharge Learn to be kinder to yourself (and your team).

Scottish poet Robert Burns said, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry," and that's pretty much how I sum up my feelings as I close this issue of Entrepreneur Middle East. For those of you who read my musings on this page every month, you'll know that I had decided to get myself a proper vacation from work (a real break, as I put it), and as such, I figured I'd get myself and my team to put together a joint issue for December 2018 and January 2019- the hope was that it would ease up our workload for those months, and allow us some much-needed time off. We aimed to create a sort-of bumper edition of the magazine, and we figured we'd do whatever it takes to make sure it comes out as planned.

I guess you can tell by now that things didn't exactly go as I envisioned. Remember here that we, as a team, were already quite tired and weary after a particularly busy couple of months, and though my aim with a joint issue was to slow things down for us at least up till February next year, this also meant that we had given ourselves rather lofty targets to accomplish, under remarkably tight deadlines. Add to that the fact that while I may have wished for a little reprise for myself and the team, the rest of the world didn't know (or care, even) for that, and it was business as usual for them- and we, as Entrepreneur, had to remain on alert and on hand to support the ecosystem, because, well, that's our mission, and that's what we are here to do.

But, despite the stumbles and fumbles along the way, we did manage to build this first joint issue in the history of Entrepreneur Middle East, and I like to think that we have managed to come out with a magazine that not only ends 2018 with a bang, but also looks forward to the new year with promise and hope. Looking back, it seems a wonder as to how we managed to do it all- I personally have lost count of the number of ecosystem-building events that we participated in, or the startups whose pitches and stories that we reviewed, or the entrepreneurs that we talked to and interviewed, all through the course of the last couple of weeks.

As for lessons learnt: I know I may sound like a broken record at this point, but I feel it's clear that I really need to learn to be kinder to myself (and my team), and I'd advise all the entrepreneurs reading this to do the same as well. I believe that we owe this not just to ourselves, but to the people around us, our businesses, and our ecosystem as well. We can't run on empty, after all, and I hope that in 2019, all of us will learn to nurture ourselves a little bit more. So, bringing us into Q1, refreshing and recharging yourselves (and your teams) will really help you make that bang you dream for your business.

Wishing you all a wonderful new year.

Related: When It's Time For A Break, Take One