I remember a friend telling me that it didn’t make sense to her that people would spend the first third of their life preparing for the second and then spend the second third of their life preparing for the third and then die.
If you calculated, how much of your life will you spend at work away from the things you enjoy and the people you want to be with?
How much of your youth will be spent sitting in an office cubicle instead of outside travelling the world or chasing dreams?
Working 40 hours a week is a stone age model that can be changed IF people would only start changing the way they work and learned to be more efficient with their time.
Unfortunately the in office work schedule of 8 hours day doesn’t encourage people to be more efficient workers, so the first step is to escape this constraint.
Escape the Office to Escape the 9 to 5
As long as your company insists that you work 8 hours a day while you are in the office, you will need to escape that environment. This can be achieved either by asking to telecommute from your job, quiting your job and finding a telecommuting compatible position, or becoming a self employed freelancer or business owner.
Work Less and Produce More
It is possible to do a 40 hour weeks worth of work in 20 hours if you learn to eliminate useless tasks and prioritize your work.
The usually time wasters that you would use to kill time in the office like web surfing, chatting and staring at the wall need to stop once you escape the office.
Simply by eliminating these little time wasters and actually focusing on the task at hand, you will find that you will get your work completed much faster and as a result will have more free time at home.
Conclusion
Working in an office unfortunately leads to lazy habits of thinking whereby people feel productive by simply going to work and staying long hours, even if they get nothing done.
Working on your own at home means taking charge of your schedule and making sure you get the job done.
The benefits of being in control of your time mean that you can do whatever you want in the extra time you do have.
I really don’t miss those early morning commutes, and knowing that I can start work at 2pm if I want to doesn’t hurt as well.
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Yasuo Long believes that all employees should have the right to design their lifestyle according to their needs in order to maintain their health, their relationships and their happiness. In pursuit of this, he quit the 9-to-5 and became a telecommuter to give himself the time and mental freedom to discover what it really means to live with direction and purpose.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
In a work focused environment I could do my normal week’s work in about 8-10 hours. My current location is in an open area in the center of the plant. Not very condusive to CAD Design. Also 90% of my work could be done from anywhere with a broad band connection. Unfortunately we are in a visual manufacturing world. You must be visible and appear to be working 40-60 hours per week.
Tony, I know what you mean. When I first started out at my job, they didn’t have a place for me to sit so I sat in an open area where everyone could see me but I couldn’t necessarily see them when they walked pass.
I believe in the merits of accountability, though I think the 40 hours of contact in the office is a less than optimal approach. Honestly its much easier to slack off at work or get distracted at work. It’s hard to work when you know you have to be at it for 8 hours and there’s this flawed logic that if you are at work and there is sound coming off your keyboard, you must indeed actually be working.
My work keeps me accountable by having me send reports every fortnight detailing my activities. That’s just one method, and those tend to be so much more effective than just sitting in the office. The fact is, as a person who works from home, if I don’t deliver by the deadline, there are simply less excuses you can make that are good enough to justify not delivering so you’re actually more motivated to stay on top of your work and stay productive.
Ever thought about looking for telecommuting or freelance work