It amazes me how many people are still working 60, 80, 100+ hours per week at their corporate job — no matter how much they “love it”. I used to be one of these workaholics not long ago — constantly working on busy work, things that I thought were mission critical, urgent, hyper-important, or that needed to be done ASAP (this was my favorite), else the whole world would fall apart. Now I just call it bullshit.
I figured out how things worked and moved far away from this life.
I learned from all the bad experiences — how else?
I saw everything that I don’t want to become and in the process, I learned what I actually want to be and how I want to work.
Well, let’s jump back into the ASAP bullshit, shall we?
Let’s address something: when a company hires and pays you a salary for your full-time work, it means it’s paying you for about 40 hours of your time to work — let’s say 9–5. It’s not paying you for your over-time (I doubt it unless you’re a contractor/freelancer 😁), it’s not paying you for your work at night, during weekends, or during your vacations.
Let’s try to understand the difference between company time versus personal time.
Company time: 9 am — 5 pm => 8 hours * 5 days = 40 hours per week.
Personal time: everything before 9 am and after 5 pm + weekends.
Personal time is your time, so protect it so you can do your own stuff — things like having dinner at home, hanging out with friends, family or pets, exercising, studying, learning and practicing new skills, enjoying a hobby, traveling, watching a movie, reading a book, becoming a more interesting and well-round person, you name it… Get the gist?
Of course, it goes the same with company time: protect it, so you can get your work done within 40 hours. If we stop for a second and think about these 40 hours, it’s a lot of time if we know how to efficiently use it.
I can write 2,000 more words about time, but I won’t 😁.
Now you might be asking how to get all of your weekly work done within about 40 hours?
• Protect your time from everyone and everything else
• Eliminate all distractions around you
• Attend fewer meetings, none if possible
• Say no more often
• Have long, uninterrupted stretches of time
• Try the Pomodoro Technique
• Call it a day at 5 o’clock — it forces you to get your work done before leaving
• Get shit done
There will always be more work, but there won’t always be more time. You can’t buy more hours in a day, more days in a week, more weeks in a month, more months in a year.
I hope you get the gist if you’re one of these people working crazy amount of hours for someone who might not even have your best interest at heart.
Richard Chan 