Slow Down and Enjoy Life

I am reading about companies implementing a 4-day work week. I do love the idea of this. Think about how awesome it would be to have a Monday or Friday to get all your personal stuff done.  You can make doctors’ appointments, catch up on the yard work or cleaning around the home.  My cousin works in a firm that for years has allowed her to have Wednesdays off. She absolutely loves it. Tuesday evenings for her are being spent doing activities she otherwise would not get to. Most often she does work around the home which frees up her weekends for friends and church commitments. What she does well, is prioritize what is important to her and does not allow herself to sway from that specific priority. This for many of us, is where the challenge of task, and time allocation to that task comes in.

There may be a feeling within us to get 5 days’ work completed in the allocated 4 days. Do not fall into this mental trap.  We work 4 days and need to get the 4-days work completed. A mind shift must take effect for us to adjust our behavior.  But how do we shift our mindset to see a 4day work week as a viable option?

Allocate time for a task and stick to it. This is one challenge I have. Unlike my cousin, I work a full 5 days and as a business owner I often catch myself in the study on a weekend clearing emails or completing a proposal because I don’t feel like doing the yard work. My cousin does not fall into this trap. She makes the decision to do a task and does it. I negotiate my weekend tasks when I should keep it as a priority because I have allotted the time on weekends for yard work and to be home. This negotiating of tasks and their allocation of time changes things in the week, or over that very weekend. What was important to be done in the yard or around the home was replaced with tasks meant for Monday or Tuesday. This builds tension in the home, creates urgency to get things done and adds to anxiety. I have also frustrated family members who were relying on me. Now I start to hurry and rush, and the tension cycle builds to a point where the weekend becomes stressful instead of relaxing. Now come Monday, I feel tired because I did tasks that were not on my agenda and didn’t get the rest I needed.

Avoid forming bad time management habits. The cycle of negotiating our tasks and pushing them off is habit forming. If we do this with household tasks, then we are more than likely doing it in our workplace too. It is like when we take a 30min break with a colleague and rush back because that one cup of coffee became 2 cups. We are now hurrying to finalize a document that must be prepped for an associate and start feeling anxious or stressed all over again. Having a break for coffee with a colleague is a good decision. That second cup was the bad decision as we now are 30minutes behind time for tasks. This constant rushing creates unnecessary stress and tension in all areas of our work, and personal lives.

Prioritize urgent tasks and maintain control. Our new tension is a direct result of us not rushing through tasks that were not on our priority list to begins with. We need to slow down to enjoy our everyday lives. Take breaks as needed, do so in proportion to the allocated time. Make the decision to do what is a priority and do only those urgent tasks until the allocated time is over and then move onto other tasks. This slowing down to the speed of our surroundings ensures that we maintain control, make better decisions and more importantly are less stressed.  

Here is the challenge – keep the promises you make to yourself. If you commit to something, schedule it and get it done. Apply this attitude with work tasks, or tasks around the home. Consider too that the most productive thing to do, may be to do nothing. This means taking breaks as needed – be sure to plan in some rest too.  Relax in the back yard around a fire, enjoy conversation with family or friends, give your brain to the TV if that is the rest you desire (if TV becomes a binge-watching session where you end up watching until 1:00am…now that is not good). 

Charles Hummel published a book in the 1960’s titled Tyranny of the Urgent where he argues that we are consistently fighting to find the balance between doing what is urgent versus what is important. A simple way to look at this matrix is to consider that the important task are those that are on your agenda, and the urgent tasks are on someone else’s agenda. Understanding it this way may allow us to prioritize our own tasks above the tasks of others which will give us control of our schedule. Of course, items in the various quadrants would differ from person to person, family to family or amongst teams within organizations

As the seasons change, look at how you go about doing the important things that are needed.  Set the time to do those tasks and you will find that life will not feel so rushed and there will be more time for the important and dare I say fun stuff too. Once we learn to master this slowing down mind shift, our tasks, time management and daily routines, we would easily be able to accept that a 4-day work week is possible without added stress, panic or rushing to complete projects.

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Neville De Lucia has been in the people development business for over 20years.  He started his career as a certified financial planner and joined Dale Carnegie as a performance consultant in October 2000. Over the years Neville has applied his trade globally and supports the development of organizations by delivering customized training to clients in the USA, Europe, Middle East and Africa.  Neville is a Business Coach, TEDx Speaker Coach and has a passion for youth development and is currently engaging with young adults on job readiness initiatives that will prepare them for the workplace of the future.

As a people’s person, you will find that Neville is fit for purpose in this industry.  His focus on others allows them to grow into the person that they want to be.  Neville and his wife Caryn moved to Cary North Carolina in January 2021 with their three daughters and are excited to build a successful business in the USA.  To work with Neville or to just have a conversation reach out and connect with him here.