Do you limit your working day to have time for your family and hobbies? I do limit my day by leaving the office at 5pm. Then I have commute time for 1.5hrs when I still answer my work calls. And I even answer my calls after that time. I thought I'm just changing places not limiting my work hours...
Do you limit your working day?
- Thread starter Oleg2011
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Oogiem
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Oleg2011;92741 said:
Yes and No. Yes in that I do try to have a balance by including my hobby projects in my GTD system and move them forward via next actions as well.
No because I live and work in the same place so I can easily switch from work to hobby to work so the timing is more decided by reviewing my contexts and action lists.
I have very few time critical commitments. Those are on my calendar but they are rare.
Yes. If I had people frequently calling me after 6pm (I don't), I would let those calls go to voicemail. I wouldn't tell people not to call - I think that people should have the option of leaving a voicemail message, at whatever hour they please, if they prefer that to email.
If people frequently needed to leave me voicemail messages after 6pm, and those messages were stressing me out and making me wonder what was going on, I'd get a work cell and a personal cell, silence the work cell in the evening, and only give the personal number to anyone who might legitimately need to reach me in an emergency. (Like my manager.)
Gardener
If people frequently needed to leave me voicemail messages after 6pm, and those messages were stressing me out and making me wonder what was going on, I'd get a work cell and a personal cell, silence the work cell in the evening, and only give the personal number to anyone who might legitimately need to reach me in an emergency. (Like my manager.)
Gardener
I'm a yes-and-no as well. I am pretty disciplined in my work hours, but we use Blackberries at work so I get emails at all hours. I make a habit of periodically checking my Blackberry out of hours, but I only action emails where they actually need to be addressed before I go back to work - which would be at tops 1 in say 20. However my role does have a few 'mission critical' components to it - if it didn't, I'd switch myself off when at home.
Oleg2011;92741 said:
Well, I can't limit my working hours as far as the business is concern. I believe in work more and earn more. I can't make a schedule of my daily working if I would be owning a business.
Self Employed
I also find trouble limiting my working day, I am self employed. It is much different being told what to do then going out finding stuff to do. I get nervous if I do not do anything in my business and that makes me procrastinate, GTD calmed me down a lot and I can now focus on certain things when I am in the context, although I still feel as if I am not doing enough. I also believe that what you put in is what you will get out. Being self-employed adds a lot of stress to the mixture. You have to make things happen and not wait for them to happen, this is the reason why its hard for me to limit my work day... Because i never know when I will earn what I need to survive...
I also find trouble limiting my working day, I am self employed. It is much different being told what to do then going out finding stuff to do. I get nervous if I do not do anything in my business and that makes me procrastinate, GTD calmed me down a lot and I can now focus on certain things when I am in the context, although I still feel as if I am not doing enough. I also believe that what you put in is what you will get out. Being self-employed adds a lot of stress to the mixture. You have to make things happen and not wait for them to happen, this is the reason why its hard for me to limit my work day... Because i never know when I will earn what I need to survive...
As another self-employed home-office type, let me give you this one advice.
First off: you need to set boundaries. These can be anything, they do not have to be units of time. If you do not limit your work context, you will be always 'on' and never be able to relax fully. This will invariably end in either total burn-out or to the point where you give up and get a corporate job again telling yourself the half-truth of being glad to have escaped that hell of self-eployment. Only that deep down you know, that really, the truth is you were not able to make it work. I have seen that sort of strife, it's not nice to look at.
Second, about the financial survival. The key to become cool with your day-to-day output and month-to-month income is to have a nestegg. It is a secret keep of enough money for you to live off from at your _current desired lifestyle_ for a determined period of time. That means in practice that you work for the future, not for this month. I have attached a nestegg of six months, because I am confident that I can find a job, any job, in 3 months, should everything go downhill. So I have left 3 months. That means I can have 3 consecutive months of zero income until I have to give up and get a job.
This also means that the money I earn this month pays the costs for some time in the future. The money for this and the next month is already on my bank account and allocated. If I do not hit my income target for this month, that means it has influences on my income targets for future months and/or that I have to re-evaluate long-term goals, not creating stress for how I pay the rent this time around. Key-point: the frontline is always some months in the future.
DariusOpperman;92803 said:
First off: you need to set boundaries. These can be anything, they do not have to be units of time. If you do not limit your work context, you will be always 'on' and never be able to relax fully. This will invariably end in either total burn-out or to the point where you give up and get a corporate job again telling yourself the half-truth of being glad to have escaped that hell of self-eployment. Only that deep down you know, that really, the truth is you were not able to make it work. I have seen that sort of strife, it's not nice to look at.
Second, about the financial survival. The key to become cool with your day-to-day output and month-to-month income is to have a nestegg. It is a secret keep of enough money for you to live off from at your _current desired lifestyle_ for a determined period of time. That means in practice that you work for the future, not for this month. I have attached a nestegg of six months, because I am confident that I can find a job, any job, in 3 months, should everything go downhill. So I have left 3 months. That means I can have 3 consecutive months of zero income until I have to give up and get a job.
This also means that the money I earn this month pays the costs for some time in the future. The money for this and the next month is already on my bank account and allocated. If I do not hit my income target for this month, that means it has influences on my income targets for future months and/or that I have to re-evaluate long-term goals, not creating stress for how I pay the rent this time around. Key-point: the frontline is always some months in the future.
DariusOpperman;92803 said:
It comes down to expectations.
As I said I am self-employed as well. As far as I figured out the formula is roughly as follows.
Regarding the big picture you never know when you worked enough on a given day, because you cannot predict the future. You can only know when you did not work nearly enough for sure, i.e. when you did nothing. So we cannot determine that we worked enough for today from looking at the work we did today.
But we can answer the question: if I work so much every working day as I did today, can I sustain that pace over the long term? And do I have energy reserves for emergencies? Or could I work a little bit more?
Then we can set longterm goals according to this daily amount of doable work. And then ask: if I reach this realistic long-term goals, will I be happy with that? If not, change the goals, but not by adding more work. Or change your thinking and be more realistic about what is doable.
Then we still don't know if we did the right thing on a given day, because we still cannot predict the future. But we have a baseline from where we can come to conclusions about our progress.
long-term goals = daily workload * number of days in long-term
How high can we set daily workload over the long-term without crashing the body (or the psyche)?
The limiting factor is your energy, not the work. There will always be more work. You cannot force the universe to bend to your will (or if you believe in such things, you cannot force the will of other people (or if you believe in such things: why do you still work?
)), things will happen. But you can manage a steady flow of focused effort.Enjoy the ride!
It is true what you are saying, that is if you have a couple of months savings saved up and can afford to work like that.
My situation is a bit different. At the moment for me, its not about how much I do in a day but how much I get done (for the results I want). So it always feels that I need to do more. But I will follow your advice and plan accordingly. I'll ask myself "If I do get something done worthwhile during the day, is that enough?".
Check your inbox
My situation is a bit different. At the moment for me, its not about how much I do in a day but how much I get done (for the results I want). So it always feels that I need to do more. But I will follow your advice and plan accordingly. I'll ask myself "If I do get something done worthwhile during the day, is that enough?".
Check your inbox
TesTeq;92827 said:
That doesn't mean that If you work more then your business is not scalable. It all depends on how much focus and dedication you have towards you work. If you work more then its obvious that you would be earning more for sure. Doesn't this make sense?
AND, if i own a business its a sure thing that I have to take care of many things simultaneously and for that i have to work more.