fuzzyness

4 day week reality

15·Mar·08

I work too hard. I work too many hours. I find it hard to fully switch off.

There – I’ve said it.

Call it the consequence of running my own business from home. Call it a consequence of always having far too much to do, and waaaaay too little time to do it. Call it a consequence of really, really loving what I do (I know – sick isn’t it?!). The fact is, I’m in danger of being burnt out and frazzled by my own enthusiasm a good deal of the time.

I first read about the 4 day working week back in 2006 in this great article by Ryan Carson on A List Apart. Ryan makes a great point – there will always be way too much to do – embrace that and find time to relax, before the endless pursuit of perfection kills you. Hmm… I gave it a half-hearted go and failed miserably.

Fast forward to March this year and up pops a timely post from Jason Fried about how 37 Signals have implemented a 4 day working week as standard. Interesting…

So I decided to give it a go, with today being my first Friday off of the new regime. Has it worked?

Well… I think ‘sort of’ is the honest answer. I actually had a very important report to finish writing that just didn’t get done yesterday, so I got up at 6am to finish it so as to actually be OFF by 9am — but actually still was writing it at 11.30am. Not good!

I’ve kind of been a little twitchy about email too, never far from totally not resisting the temptation to just quickly check in and see what might have landed on my inbox-shaped plate.

I think it’ll take a couple of attempts to ‘re-frame’ my notion of what the working week is — 4 sensible days as opposed to 6 (or 7) wildly crazy days of 10+ hours each. All in all, I’d say it’s looking promising.

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