The 9-5. The daily grind. Rush hour. Weekend Warriors. Two weeks off.
It’s a lot.
And it’s all made up.
We’re given these things, and we just take them.
Of course, if you’re working in someone else’s company, you kind of have to.
But, if you’re a soloist, contractor, or small-to-medium business owner, you have an opportunity to improve lives. (Yours, your family’s, your employees’, their families’.)
I remember reading (somewhere) about the tyranny of the half-hour time block. Foisted on us by Google Calendar and, for the most part, blindly accepted.
But do all those things we do actually take 30 minutes (or 60 or 90)?
So many of these conventions are ridiculously simple to buck. And, as far as I’ve seen, without much (any?) of the negative consequences we (vaguely) imagine.
More and more, I hear of people and companies experimenting with alternate arrangements. The four-day workweek, in particular, was just the subject of some press.
I also know a few people following an “every seventh week off” routine.
The point is: we’ve got options.
If it helps, here are a few of the ways I’ve bent from the grid:
- Default meeting time of 25 minutes
- Finish at noon on Fridays
- Finish at 4 pm M-Th
- Reserve mornings for deep work
- 2-hour lunch break
- Making a bigger deal of Solstices and Equinoxes*
Timely,
James
*P.S. I started this piece thinking it was going to be about being more attuned to nature – the solar and lunar cycles, circadian rhythms – but it ended up being a bit more square than that. Ah well, another time, perhaps 🙂
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