When his little brother was born two years ago, I had to cut down the hours that I worked quite significantly. Before I was able to work five days a week. He was at nursery three days a week and his nan looked after him the other two days. With an addition to the family, we couldn’t expect nan to look after two little ones on her own so on the days that the older one was off nursery, I would take the day off to look after them.
I discussed some of the ways I was able to cut down the amount of work I did each week here but it was a real struggle. Having to cram in what was five days of work a week into three, even with the bits I put in place, was draining. The constant task switching from being a parent, to working, back to parent mode… at the end of my working hours, just before going to do the school run to pick him up from nursery, I would often have a headache caused by the constant focus required to get all of my work done in such a short time.
This stress carried over into the rest of my day. I would rush to the nursery, then rush home again, organise bits around the house and get family stuff done all while having work in the back of mind, wondering did I actually do everything I should have done today?
Things changed a few weeks ago when the oldest one of the two boys started primary school. No longer was I rushing around trying to get everything done in three days, I now had five days to spread the work over. In total, I only actually gained 4.5 extra work hours a week because school finishes earlier than nursery but those 4.5 hours make a huge difference.
I’m no longer rushing around everywhere trying to get everything done in the small windows of time that I had allocated. Rather than working Monday, then off with the boys Tuesday, working again Wednesday and Thursday, then off with them again on Friday – the constant changing and only getting two consistent days of work in at a time; now I had five consecutive, albeit it shorter, work days to manage my workload.
I spent the first two weeks of the new term catching up on all of the jobs that I had neglected or just didn’t have the time to complete before but in week three, I really noticed a difference. One morning whilst I was walking away from the school after just dropping my son off, I saw a mum battling to get her three children down the hill and into the school before the gates shut. She was clearly running late and desperately trying to herd them into the school before the gates closed.
I noticed other parents doing similar things. The school gates open at 8.30am and stay open until 8.45am. This gives parents a 15-minute window to drop-off which is a far better situation than having everyone arrive at exactly the same time and it gives us parents a bit of leeway in-case we are struggling to get our beloved into their school uniform in time to shove them into the car and hurtle towards the school.
At 8.30am there is always a queue of parents and their children waiting to get in. Some mornings I see parents squeeze through to the front, rush to the classroom, drop off their child and rush back out again. They, I assume, need to get to work at a set time.
Seeing this and the lady desperately trying to get her three children into the school grounds before the 8.45am deadline got me thinking. I’m not like this anymore. Three weeks ago I was that parent but now, now that I have an additional 4.5 hours a week, I’m calm, I’m relaxed. I’m not rushing to the school or indeed away from it. Now I have just a tiny, little bit of extra time in my day, I move at my own pace.
We have six people living in our house and a shared determination not to leave it and go out shopping if at all possible. We do a huge amount of our shopping online and with two young boys and a teenage daughter, we are constantly ordering new clothes as they outgrow their old ones. Based on the volume of packages that we have delivered, our neighbours could be forgiven for thinking that we are running some sort of parcel processing operation.
Working from home, I’m usually the one to answer the door to any deliveries. As my brain has been able to relax a bit over the last couple of weeks, it’s been chugging away thinking about other things. One thing that I have noticed is how rushed the delivery people are. It’s quite common for them to knock the door and ring the door bell at the same time. Then, if I do not answer within five seconds, they start hiding the package around the back. If I’m not sat by the door and open it instantly, they assume that I am not in.
They are pressured by their jobs to work ridiculously hard to get an insane number of deliveries done per day. Presumably if the number of packages delivered in a day does not meet the quota that their company sets, they are punished in some way either by being ‘written up’ or punished financially.
There’s incredible pressure to get things done in a limited time with very real consequences if they don’t. There isn’t time to knock the door and wait for a moment, they are forced to move on to the next delivery as soon as possible.
This creates more stress and more rushing around.
In both examples – the parents rushing around and the delivery drivers trying to get it all done – things would be much better, for everyone, if everyone had a bit more time or a bit more pay. If paid more and lifestyle was prioritised over work then people would be happier. People have to work more to earn more. It leaves less time to do things at a reasonable pace rather than always rushing because there isn’t enough time to do what you need to do.
I am sure you are thinking ‘well of course if people are paid more or have more time they would be happier’ but my point is that as an entrepreneur having just an extra 4.5 hours a week has made a huge difference and I think most entrepreneurs could squeeze that time out of their week so that they can slow down, too
In the months leading up to my son starting primary school, I started writing down a list of new businesses that I wanted to start. I settled on three. I was desperate for September to role round so that I could benefit from all of these extra hours in my week and start up some exciting new ventures.
Now that I have experienced the bliss that is not rushing around all of the time, I’m actually considering not doing that. I might ditch the ideas and just… enjoy life.
I’ve been working for myself for 10 years now and it has been a constant, although self-imposed pressure to do and earn more. From what I understand, a lot of people fail to just stop and enjoy what we have. Life is whipping by and there’s plenty more to do than just sit at my desk, trying to boost the bank balance. Unlike most people, entrepreneurs usually have much more control over our time. Isn’t ‘flexibility’ one of the reasons we got into this type of work in the first place and yet I’m not taking advantage of it?
I’m off to walk the dog…
