I Don’t Enjoy Endless Hustling After Work Hours Too. Here’s Why I Still Do.
Hear me out?
Hey, I am a human too.
Given a choice, I would rather,
- Focus on a high-paying job that takes care of my bills,
- Or build a business that grants me financial freedom.
Why would I choose to burn the candle on both ends? That makes zero sense.
But I know I am not alone.
And I suspect I know why.
Many, Like Me, Don’t Enjoy Floating Along
The office is as vast as the Antarctic Ocean.
It is deep, cold, filled with killer whales swimming faster than we can sprint and fellow herbivores with thick layers of fat surrounding us all day.
An uncanny parallel. An irony. An ugly, visceral truth.
Yes, the office is a hyper-evolved food web in disguise. Chances are, there are more disagreeable corporate predators than there are brothers-in-arms.
And these predators feed on our ingenuity, creativity, and initiative to get things done.
How so, you may ask.
Easy.
All they have to do is,
- Tell you to do something.
- Piss on your submitted work.
- Tell you to redo the way they want it.
- And tell you that you are not up to mark.
And it destroys your motivation at 11 in the morning.
What happens after? We lick our wounds by doom-scrolling our Instagram accounts.
I don’t see a point in this.
I would rather quietly work on my newsletter project that disseminates my thought bubbles into your inbox.
That Brings Me to… Control
If you find yourself floating along from point to point with no clear objectives in your 9–5… you will find the entire workday a dread.
Let me share a story from my friend. Her name is Sue-Ann, and she is a senior compliance manager with an established bank.
Being highly conscientious, she knows what she must do today. She is aware of the plan for tomorrow.
Her immediate boss, Jo, is the opposite. J panics for today.
Sue-Ann suffers dreadfully (as a consequence) because,
- Jo would drag her along to all her meetings.
- J would loop Sue in emails, creating that unnecessary maelstrom of urgency.
- Jo expects Sue to answer all questions the headquarters fire at them.
According to Sue-Ann, the real problem is Jo, per se.
Why so?
Because Jo has control over her time and freedom.
Sue knows what needs to be done. She knows when things must be done. She knows who to seek counsel when she needs assistance.
Jo does not contribute to her work progress. Yet she can destroy and disrupt her day.
Not out of malign intentions, of course.
But this is sufficient to push people over the cliff edge.
It was the same for me many years ago.
That is why I work on copywriting projects and writing articles online, even if it brings me a forgettable $100.
I wanted 100% control over my work, time, and effort.
Self-empowerment allowed me to overcome after-hours fatigue.
The Promised Land of Never-Ending Time on Our Hands
Look, life is not all about what we don’t like.
That’s the 40%.
Our focus, emphasis, and target should be what we want for ourselves. That is the real meaning of personal investments.
Yes, of course. The goal is to improve our craft, skills, and business, one day at a time. Some people call it 1% per day. No matter. They are one and the same.
But we must confuse the metrics with our intrinsic wants.
You see… we push ourselves to become better to earn more.
And we want to earn more with less time. This is how we redeem time back for activities we care about. Like running. Maybe charity work. Or playing video games.
That is the real reason powering us into and throughout our after-hours.
I commit to that cause.
Not for anyone else. For myself.
What do I commit my after-hours to?
This is my list.
- Working on questions from seminars.
- Website design & prototyping.
- Writing landing pages.
- Scripting emailers.
- Drafting e-Books.
- Article scoping.
- Story mining.
I don’t work on all of them daily for 3 hours. That is impossible. You should not, either.
Mental fatigue is near when you do.
I will only work on one of them each time.
And.
I know I am working on a daisy chain. They connect.
Getting better at one helps the others.
Take, for instance, writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting landing pages.
Let’s not fake it. This is writing. Sure, you are writing copy. But the intent is to convert words into digits.
An effective copy on my landing page helps to sell my e-Book.
See the connection?
The other direct connection you can see is article scoping. This one is easy.
When our copywriting skills move up one level, our writing skills follow. Better readership on our online article can determine the topics, pre-sale, and reception of our e-books.
A leads to B lead to C.
Abandon the task mentality.
You are not working on individual tasks. You are working on a daisy chain of activities that builds a business… that means something to you.
When you have that level of clarity,
- You will look over that sense of fatigue brought over from 9–5.
- You will reignite your enthusiasm for the night.
Yes, it is that simple.
The Close
Simple is not easy.
And this is the thing.
A vast majority of us drift along in the corporate Antarctic. We know we are. And it is not that we want to.
We just haven’t figured out what we want to do.
I have a suggestion.
Commit that first bucket of 60 minutes in your after-hours to work on things that excite you.
- Writing online? Go for it.
- Trading the financial markets? Go for it.
- Becoming the sexiest speaker on stage? Go kill it!
Focus on the start. Attack one question within the first 60 minutes.
That first question will lead you to the next, to the next, and to the next.
And then, you will, in my opinion, know what you would like to commit your after-hours to.
May the power be with you.
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