Skip to main content

Weekend Do-over

A friend shared this on social media.


My first reaction was "of course you can". I do that every weekend. I work Wednesday to Friday. So Monday and Tuesday are my 'second weekend'.

Sadly though, not all employers offer 3-day-a-week jobs. And it is sad.

Sub-consciously we realise that we are spending a lot of time working and not so much time enjoying the benefits of that work.

As a result we start to resent the work that we do (even though it's our chosen line of work) because it takes up so much of our time.

Sometimes the standard weekend is barely enough to recuperate from a stressful week and catch up on household chores and then it's back to work again.

We hunger for more time to actually live life and enjoy it.

So how can we do it?

1. Hope that employers realise this great opportunity. Offering a diversity of work options can help them compete for the best employees. Working 3 days per week is also more productive.

2. Team up. Where I used to work there was a pair of people who actually applied for their job as a pair - each working 2.5 days per week. Again this relies on the employer being smart enough to realise that they are getting two brains for the price of one.

3. Take breaks between jobs. If we're in the position to do so, sometimes a break between jobs (kind of like a mini-gap year) can be a good opportunity to escape the grind and enjoy life. So many of us don't use up our annual leave. That pay-out can help you have some time-off at the end.

4. Set your own hours. If you're self-employed you can sometimes set your own hours. A tradesman was recently telling me how he moved to four days per week to spend more time at home with his kids.

5. Be more selective with spending our money. Most of these options also mean getting by on less income than before. But do we really need that much money for a good life? That's a question worth asking.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Offline

Yes, by now we all know that smartphones and social media are doing us harm. How do we harness the benefits of them without the destructive effects. The book Offline makes 5 main points. If you've only got a minute, here they are: The addictive design keeps us on online platforms longer. The 'brain hacks' disrupt our brain's ability to function. Humans need "real" interaction, and social media does not deliver this. Technoference (digital over-riding direct interactions at the play ground, coffee shop, dinner table) result in something valuable being lost. Speed of the transformation is astounding. 75% of people are connected, with almost half using social media. We have no idea what the long-term effects of this real-life experiment will be. Going a bit deeper, here are some of my highlights from the book. So what are side-effects? According to various studies, the effects can be grouped into the physiological (poor sleep, neural re-wiring, and increased str...

Big motivator for small living

It's been a while between posts here - mainly because we've been moving house. It's been a real motivator for downsizing. Packing each and every item we owned, really makes me wish there were fewer of them. Moving everything from the old apartment to the new one made me envious of those people who live in a "tiny house on wheels". For them moving house simply means towing it to a new location. No packing required. The whole process has reaffirmed our commitment to owning less stuff. So we're going to be intentional about downsizing. It will be an ongoing activity. My environmental heart couldn't stomach a spontaneous dumping of things into the garbage, but it's also more fun this way. Selling things online brings in some handy pocket money. Giving items away is also a great community activity, whether it is to friends and family, to charity or to people in the neighbourhood. I'm looking forward to it as a lifestyle rather than a task to do....

Don't dump on charities

Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot ...