“Give me those lazy, hazy days of summer ...” sang someone long ago. Someone who has never been to the UAE in May.

“I’m an expat! Get me outta here!” is probably much more apropos, even if the melody line isn’t that great. However, not all of us can, or even want to, leave during the month and the full-on summer which will follow it.

Some of us have businesses to run and holidays for us are about starting a little later in the morning and taking the whole of Friday afternoon off. For many “solopreneurs”, start-ups and freelancers, their businesses slow down because of the exodus of clients, and the fact that not a lot of decisions get made during this period.

But a few people I know have said they are using this quiet time to do a bottom-up review of their business. Not just looking at profitability, but things like productivity, their beliefs about the business, and the assumptions they have made which form part of the business’s foundations.

They are also really testing their commitment to make sure they really want to keep running their businesses. Because it’s not getting easier. More federal level charges on small businesses, static or even declining client bases, more competition — all of these factors must be taken into consideration when deciding whether to fix, close or sell. Thus the effort it takes to run a business gets greater every year.

You may think that my comment is a little over the top. But consider that deciding to go into business as a solopreneur or an entrepreneur is a massive commitment of time and resources. It’s also often a finely balanced decision, rather the a “no-brainer”. When one factor changes, it can have a domino effect and tip the balance against the current decision to run a business.

You have to stay totally focused and determined every day. As Vidal Sassoon once said, “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Or as Benjamin Disraeli put it, “One has to summon the energy and leap! You cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps.”

Here’s the thing, and the thing of the thing (as the Irish would say). When your head is down and you’re forging ahead, you may not necessarily be heading in the right direction. It pays to look up and take stock.

There’s an old joke about the very short HR tribe, who lived in very tall elephant grass. They moved ahead relentlessly, with rosters for grass cutting and stacking. They had an environmentally friendly replanting programme, meaningless policies and procedures, complex performance metrics and a bonus programme which not even the authors understood. (Hey, I had 35 years in HR — I’ve earned the right to say it.) One day a troublesome millennial climbed the only tree for miles around, looked around and shouted down to the tribe “Wrong direction”. And a voice came floating up, “Shut Up, we’re making progress.”

So, lifting your eyes from the day-to-day priorities and stepping back is very useful. I always suggest to clients that they build a little framework for this exercise. Take a look at six key areas, and write down tough questions in each key area.

The areas are: me, my circumstances, my business idea, marketing and money. Some examples are — “What do I really want to get out of running my own business?”. Or “How can I be sure that other people think my amazing business idea is as great as I think it is?” “How long can I keep going with no income while I start up the business?”

Write your answers down and share them with someone you trust to give you the unvarnished truth. The tougher the questions you ask yourself, the better the outcome will be.

We’re constantly amazed at what people find out about their limiting self-beliefs, and their cloud-cuckoo-land ideas about what will work. Or the fact that what they’re doing is only 20 per cent of what is possible, and they have an enormous business opportunity, with very little extra effort.

All by using this framework and the questions we have written for them.

So, why not give it a shot. No one’s looking. You just might find this exercise delivers the most productive Friday afternoon you’ve had for a very long time.

So perhaps then your song will be “Into the Great Wide Open”.

Steve Ashby is the founder of Businessmentals.