Our ancestors worked six days a week. It was tough work – on the farm, in factories and mines.
As the Industrial Revolution kicked in, the growing prosperity created a desire for more leisure. Henry Ford was a leader in this endeavor.
He wanted his workers to have time to shop. So the five day work week became the norm.
But how many people actually follow this regimen today?
Do you?
We sure don’t.
Almost none of the people in our industry do.
Most professionals we know don’t either.
Listen to this post! Click a player to hear George & Mary-Lynn on The BIGG Success Show Podcast.
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Finding your ideal work week
Now we love our work. And we go full tilt. But we have learned to entrepreneur our work week.
It’s kind of like engineering it. But engineering is a science.
Entrepreneuring is a science and an art. So we think of it as entrepreneuring our work week.
Work and play are two of the five elements of BIGG success. You need to find what works best for you in the work/play dynamic.
The only way to do that is by experimenting.
If you’re an employee, of course, your boss will have a say. But even if you’re self-employed, you may need to work your schedule around your customers.
But customers can be led. Chick-fil-A has been very successful and they don’t open on Sundays, even though their competitors do.
What we do
We rotate our schedule. Most weeks, we will only work a partial day on the weekends.
So it adds up to about six days of production in most cases.
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We often approach this time off from two different directions. Mary-Lynn tends to start later than me. I tend to stop earlier than her.
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I’m more of a night person and George is more of a morning person. Our point is – your schedule doesn’t always have to align with your partner’s.
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Of course, there are weeks when we’ll schedule a whole day off. We both love our work so we can go and go and go. But I’ve found I reach a point where my get up and go gets up and goes!
The key to making it work
The key for us is getting it on the schedule. If we don’t schedule it, we keep working.
In fact, we did this post to remind ourselves of this very fact. We hope you find it helpful, too.
As we said earlier, our tendency has been to push and push and push. The problem with that is that you eventually run out of fuel.
You need to fill your tank before that happens. And the only way to do that is to get some time away at regular intervals.
BIGG success is life on your own terms. Our terms are to have less routine. You may do better with more routine. If it works for you, it works.
The only way you’ll know is to test out different work / play schedules. Finding one that fits you perfectly will help you reach BIGG success!
What works best for you?
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00734-090911.mp3
