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The 4-day workweek: Why I choose to work only 4 days a week and you can too

This article is part of a series called “What truly matters” - all about finding out what’s really important in your life and then finding time to do it EVERY DAY. See preceding articles in this series below:
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Feb 11th The 4-day workweek: Why I choose to work only 4 days a week and you can too (You are reading it)
Feb 4th The process of finding out what's truly important
Jan 28th What decluttering your home shows you about the meditation process
Jan 21st: What to do with the uncanny feeling you feel in your stomach or in your body? What does it mean?

Last week, I wrote about the process of finding out what’s truly important to you. I have been dealing with this question ever since I found myself feeling uncomfortable sensations in my stomach - a gut feeling that something’s not right and that something needs to change. (I wrote about this uncanny feeling in an article here and how you too can work through it).

What I discovered through this process was not something new - I had known this all along but now I became more fully and clearly aware of it. I became aware that one of the things I really want to do is to: ”Create videos, books, articles that help people live a life of happiness”.

But for that to happen, I need to make time for meditation, being in nature and being in silence. That’s because I can only help others through my own spiritual progress. I need to keep letting go and dissolving my negative mental states and shift into a positive state of love, equanimity, and inner-peace and then show others how they too can do this for their own lives. If I don’t intentionally allocate time in my life for that, then this cannot happen.

If you did the process of finding out what’s truly important, you too will have identified what is of essence in your life. But just knowing about it and being aware of it is not enough. You have to take bold steps and create the time and space in your busy life for it so that it actually manifests in your life. Otherwise, you become aware of it and then it gets put away in the back of your mind again or buried in some papers in a drawer somewhere. We need to make what’s important to us take up time on our calendar, it is to actually happen in our life.

Eight Hours a Week To Make Room For What’s Truly Important

So in order to offer these weekly classes to our community every Wednesday, we needed to block off one day a week for it. That means we have left 4 days left for our work week.

As I am self-employed running my web design and online marketing service, I do have a bit more freedom in planning my week. So, along with my husband, we decided to invest one day a week in writing, reading and meditating and volunteering once a week to facilitate a weekly meditation class for our community. (The classes are free to all - if you are in Boone, NC area you are welcome to come join us - see dates and location here)

And now we are both working only 4 days a week.

In other words, we have four days a week to earn our livelihood. We grew up around the 5 days a week work model and so this is an experiment. We know that we are not the only ones doing this kind of an experiment. Many companies are putting limits on the number of hours their employees work in a week, only to find an increase in productivity, creativity, satisfaction, and happiness of their teams. Some countries are even experimenting with a four-day workweek.

Make it Work for Your Current Schedule

This may or may not be possible for someone working a full-time job. But you can still carve out time in your workweek by getting a little creative. Start with an hour a day during the workweek. That’s five hours. Then, add an hour and a half on the weekends. That totals to eight hours a week. 8 hrs/week in this way = 1 day/week in our way.

Maybe it is only 3.5 hours a week for you or half an hour each day. You can carve out time in a way that works in your current schedule and still make it work. You will find that our lives are already filled with so many unimportant distractions that take up so much time - just remove those distractions and you will end up with more than enough time to devote to what’s truly important to you. Consider how much TV you watch or how much social media scrolling takes up your time. There are all kinds of distractions from useless conversations, activities that you said yes to that you only said yes to be polite, not saying no to all the people who want a piece of your time. It’s not easy, I know because we love our friends and the people in our lives. But you can start slowly, bit by bit.

How a 4-Day Work Week Impacts Our Income and Energy

How this change to a 4-day work week affect our productivity, income levels and time management is still something we are monitoring. Maybe our income will go down because there’s one day less to work on projects. Maybe it will go up because we’ve become more focused and productive (like all those studies show). I know that my time scrolling my Facebook feed has gone done tremendously this year because of our new plan because there’s just no time for it!

May be our current projects will overflow into the weekend. That actually just happened last week for my husband. He was working both Saturday and Sunday and now today is Monday and he is a bit ill because of a lack of rest. It sure is not easy to manage a full workload from a 5 day week into a 4 day week. Plus, our weekends are serious business usually - they are all about rest and recharging and so he is used to getting rejuvenated on the weekend to be at his best during the week. But without that weekend rest, it has affected everything. However, I know that this is part of our process. We have only started this new schedule six weeks ago. So there will be adjustment period and we may more such work overflows into the weekend.

But what I can say is that from volunteering our time once a week to the community towards a cause and a purpose that we deeply believe in (helping people find inner-peace through meditation), is very fulfilling for us. It has given us a deep sense of purpose and meaning.

And it has also contributed to an increase in actual physical energy on the days we do our meditation classes. We get a million things done on that day, starting from meditating in the morning, brainstorming topic for the class, drafting a 4 to 5-page handout, refining that text, printing copies for the participants, uploading the text to the blog, making a PDF version of the text for instant download, charging the batteries for the camera, preparing lunch, getting the gear ready (tripod, lav mic, extension cables, camera, water bottles), sending an email reminder to our group, driving to the center, holding our class, recording it, heading back home and picking up groceries on the way, transferring all the video and audio data to the computer, editing the two videos, rendering them, uploading them, publishing them, and embedding the videos on the blog and sending out an email with the link to the latest recording). All of this in one day!

On any other day, this would be a massive accomplishment leaving us drained. But on Wednesdays when we are holding our class for our community members, they give us enormous amounts of love, appreciation, encouragement, and energy. That’s how we can make it happen.

Saying No In Order To Say Yes

Of course, this has meant that we also have to say “no” to a lot of other invitations and activities - not because we don’t want to do them, or don’t want to hang out with the people in our lives. It’s just that we are still learning to get our most important goals accomplished in the time we have got. And to make time for what’s truly important to us has not been easy in light of all the external invitations and excitements all around us that we want to partake in. Brunch invitation from neighbors, lunch invitation from friends, a new art exhibit in town, this excursion, that gathering, that event, this conference.

But we have found that with a full-time workload, and working 4 days a week to come up with funds to pay all our bills, AND investing time in things that are truly important to us, we just cannot succumb to all of these invitations. That is why we have become more of a hermit/reclusive from the perspective of others, when it comes to social engagements. That doesn’t mean we don’t like to be invited to things. That always feels great to receive an invite. But we have just had to say no to a lot of things if we are to make time for our core goals and dreams happen - which already is not an easy task.

When you carve out a time slot in your calendar for the things that you want to pursue, the thing that falls under “most important”, you too will have to learn to say no to other very exciting things. And it may even disappoint others. But in order to make sure that what’s most important to you finds ample room in your calendar, you will have to say no to the other “distractions”. And saying no with love and compassion is an art and be sure to be kind in your refusals of invitations. People will understand when you outline what’s important to you and your own struggle with time to get that accomplished. You may even inspire others.

Find it! Find it!

Do take a few moments to do the introspective exercise I outlined in my previous blog post and then find the time in your calendar to devote to it. The exercise involves going over a handful of questions and seeing what answers emerge for you. Some answers may not be news to you. You may already know them. But the process will surely give you more clarity on what’s truly important to you. Then take out your calendar and find a time-slot where you can dedicate complete attention to this one thing that truly matters to you and take steps towards manifesting it in your life.

Peace,
Sophia

PS: If you’d like to see the books that inspire me, see the books I love here.

*There are affiliate links on this site. When you purchase via such links, I will receive a small affiliate commission without any extra costs to you.

Now, it’s your turn to share:
Share with us how you are finding time for that which is truly important for you. Let us know in the comments how you’ve placed it in your calendar
and what you’ve had to say no to, in order to achieve this. If you are yet to make this part of your plan, tell us how you plan to do it!

I’d love to know so please share in the comments below.