Rest on Sundays was How God Liked It

We should all find our own patterns to work-life balance

First, God was telling us how He created all the stuff in the universe and decided He needed to rest on Sundays.

Then came a dude who promoted a four-hour workweek. And now we have people working so hard to create multiple streams of income so they can FIRE (“financial independence, retire early”).

But hey, what really works for you? The whole thing about working for ourselves, being financially independent or free, is so that we can decide when we work and when we rest.

Not to follow God, an acronym, or your boss in this regard.

Some prefer to work a little every day

When my old boss quit his job and started his own start-up, we caught up and he was buzzing — a kind of buzz I have never seen before in the 7 years I worked for him.

He spoke to me on one of his daily walks breaks up the day. He said he doesn't take time off now, weekends, public holidays, whatever. He even works in his sleep because he is buzzing with ideas for his startups, something he owns dearly, and gets excited in dreams and awake.

This happens to most entrepreneurs who are brave enough to create their own companies, including me. As a writer, there are times when the muse arrives as I am peeing at midnight, and I just have to turn on my laptop and work. I am radiating in front of the blue screen because I am creative!

It was the May bank holiday in the UK recently, and the Tuesday back to work for me was horrible. In fact, most entrepreneurs at my co-working space were a bit off.

This holiday disrupted their creative flow. They would rather work a little every day than burn out during the week in anticipation of a big 3-day weekend.

Do you, seriously, need holidays? It is really a question only you can answer.

The most optimal way of working

Here are a few questions I find helpful when determining my work pattern. I asked myself this question after being pushed to the corner by one of my former jobs. It was so bad that I couldn’t even write an email without typos.

At first, I thought it was my fault, I even thought maybe I had adult dyslexia or ADHD. But it wasn’t that, it was just a work pattern that wasn’t suitable for me. I got anxiety disorder from being forced to work a certain way.

Here’s what I have learned to ask myself when determining the most efficient and productive working pattern for me. It has to be sustainable (because I don’t like FIRE, but that’s for another time), healthy and balanced.

• What are the times when your brain is the most active?
• How long can your brain be active and hyper-focused?
• Is there any point(s) of the day that you lose focus completely?
• What are the effects on your work after lunch? Do different lunches create different effects? Do you even need lunches? Or breakfasts?
• What do you normally do to pick up the focus again? If you do nothing, such as allowing yourself to binge-watch YouTube videos (I do that a lot!), how long does it take for you to pick yourself up again?
• What else could you have done to remind yourself to stop procrastinating? (for example, I will go for a swim, or take a bath)
• Have you got any way to remind yourself to stop procrastinating and do that thing(s) described in the question above? Like an alarm, or a smelly poop from your pet dog?
• Do you prefer to drink during the week, or only on the weekends? Do you, therefore, thinking there’s no work the next day, binge drink, and waste your weekend in hangover? (honest question!)

See your day in chunks

Rather than seeing our work “week” as working hard during Mondays to Fridays, then off completely from Friday nights onward, some should break the week into days, and days into A.M. & P.M., or even by 5-minute slots (that’s what Bill Gates and Elon Musk do I think).

Having said the above, time means nothing to me. I hate this arbitrary concept completely (blame my anthropologist background), so I only break my day by tasks.

Every morning, I sit down to see what do I need to do for the day, then I rough estimate how long each task would take me. Then I work task by task.

However, if one particular task becomes very overbearing and might take me more time than I expected, I might need to take a break or change the task. Especially if I re-read the same sentence three times and clearly I just want to do something else, I let myself do it. No one is bloody watching me anymore (thank God for that).

And that is true freedom and independence.

There’s a right time for everything

I take breaks and do social media too, but I always know when to come back. I have a strong drive to come back to work after watching 10 YouTube videos (that’s still a lot; I know). The drive partly comes from doing things I am passionate about, but also partly because I am inherently a driven person.

Now whether you are driven or motivated inherently or by your work or other things, that’s also an honest question for yourself. It might also slip into a bigger question of do you need to quit your job, which I offer no answer to in this article.

At the end of the day (when my concentration is completely gone), some of the tasks might not be completed. I then honestly question my priority, do I want to extend my working hours, or do I want to rest and get a fresh start tomorrow simply because I might be even more efficient the next day? I have no one to report to, thank God again, so I must be honest to myself.

For example, it’s around 8 p.m. now, but my muse is running on sonic speed for this piece of article, so I write. And I am writing quickly because this is the right time for it. No one should say to me it’s 8 p.m. and it’s time to rest. Because it doesn’t matter, there’s an optimal time for doing everything, and right now, it’s article writing.

This is what I believe to be truly free. It’s not whether we are financially independent or not, or whether we are self-employed or working for someone. The key is whether we know ourselves enough to negotiate a work pattern that suits us, and ultimately benefits the business.

Any employer or whatever should appreciate flexibility simply because this would enhance productivity and employees’ satisfaction. If a new father can go home at 3 p.m. just to see his newborn fall asleep before logging back on at home, you bet my ass he is going to be happier than being a father that misses everything about his baby.

Don’t be a slave to time, be the master of time.

See more work from me —