It’s week 4 of taking my 5-day work week, and compressing it into 4 days! This will be the last “weekly” instalment of this blog series, but I’ll be doing a follow-up in a month, and then a month from then.
So, how did the last week go?
Hmn… 🤔 It’s a bit of a mixed bag…
Let’s start with the bad news: I went through the week feeling pretty depleted, and sleep took a pretty big hit. The week before I was out of the city, and while it was nice to see family, it wasn’t exactly a restful visit. As a result, I ended up starting the week less energized than usual. Because I needed more rest, I had trouble starting my days earlier, which meant finishing them pretty late, and that wasn’t ideal.
On the flip side, I took some time to reflect and I noticed that I’ve been doing some of my best design work lately! It’s more creative, audacious, and solid, and I’m having more fun with it as well! ✨As for the weekend, it was nice and varied. I caught up on sleep, hit the gym, hung out with friends, cooked some tasty food, and made progress on a few side projects. Monday was also a day off for Canadian Thanksgiving, so it made for an extra long weekend! This does throw off my schedule a little bit, if I want next weekend to be a long weekend, but it’s not unworkable.
All things considered, I’d say it was a good week overall ☺️… I just need to make sure I get proper rest, especially if I’ve had a busy weekend!
As for the last month, well, given that I’m still writing about this and I haven’t felt the urge to stop, I’d say it’s going really great!
My initial goal with this new schedule was to improve my work-life balance, and not feel so rushed on the weekends. I’d definitely say that that was a success! 🥳Also, early fall is consistently the busiest time of the year for me, because I love autumn food. There’s pies to make, apples to pick, cranberries to sauce… and not to mention all of the fall chores like preparing plants for winter, washing windows, and putting away patio furniture. Despite all these extra things to do, I haven’t felt particularly overwhelmed by them. I can spend a whole day going to the market, peeling apples, and making apple sauce, and I still have 2 more full days to do whatever I want! 🎃🍃🍂🧙♀️🍁
I also had a feeling that proper sleep habits and routine would be very important to make this work, and so far I’ve been right about that. It’s not impossible to have poor sleep and maintain an intense work schedule 4 days a week, but it is significantly more difficult. The weeks where I’ve been well rested were a lot easier. 🌙
As for productivity and motivation at work, I was pretty neutral in my expectations. My goal wasn’t to be more productive, but I’ve found that for me personally, the new schedule leads to more periods of flow-state, more often. Every week is different, but on average I’ve been pretty impressed with what I’ve been able to get done! 💪
So far this has been a really great experience, and I’m looking forward to checking back in in a month letting you know how things went! I’d also like to plan some experiments around a true 4-day work week, rather than what I’m doing now which I’d describe as “optimizing the fuck out of the 5-day work week via flex time.” It’s been really good as far as optimization goes, but I think we can still do better 😉