Truth Bomb Tuesday: You were never meant to fit everything in.
Why do the weekends feel so short?
Even the long ones. Three days never feels like enough.
But they feel short because they are short.
It’s been a fair while since I had to work a 9-5 job, but I just don’t know how people do it.
You work hard all week.
And then you have to somehow cram the maintenance on your house, the lawns, your taxes, your investments, your kids sporting commitments, your friends, your relatives etc into the remaining waking hours.
Not to mention finding time to actually relax and charge your batteries.
And then influencer mum wants you to bake organic peanut butter cookies.
Really?!?
It just doesn’t feel possible.
And it doesn’t feel possible because I don’t think it is possible.
Remember, this isn’t a system designed from first principals.
They didn’t get the best social scientists in the world, put them in a room with some coffee and tim-tams, and then ask them to come up with the best system they could for a healthy society and joyful and meaningful individual lives.
That didn’t happen.
No, the starting point was serfdom and slavery.
Everything since then has been an iteration – a small improvement at the edges.
There’s nothing intrinsically good about a 40-hour work week. It was just an improvement on the 60-hour work weeks that went before it, which itself was a small improvement on indentured slavery.
The point is, if you have the sense that it’s not possible to live your best life within the confines of a 5-day work week, there’s a reason for that.
And 100%, that reason is not because there’s something basically wrong with you.
No way.
I see this idea all the time and it breaks my heart.
People feel like they can’t keep up. They can’t find time for the things that bring them joy – they can’t even find time to keep themselves from physically falling apart. They’re burning out, and then they blame themselves for not being up to the job.
Please don’t blame yourself.
The system is broken.
It’s not you who’s broken.
And if you’re starting to think that, actually, maybe you don’t want to be working a 5-day work week, good. That’s a good thing.
Give yourself permission to be a little more ambitious.
The 5-day work week is fine if you’re not tethered to it. I often find myself working 80-hour work weeks, and I love it.
But I still have my freedom. I can work a no-hour work week if I want to.
And I can balance out my own life. If I feel I’m working too much, I make time for relaxation. Or I make time for friends.
I can do that because I’m not a slave to the system.
And so the key question we all have to face is, “How can I escape the system?”
This is it.
And this is what I help people with.
DB.