It has been drilled into us by society that the only way you can be worth something is if you are working hard and constantly. I know this because I feel the same. For 10 years Bernadette and I have been running CM Computer Services. And in those 10 years we have been working our asses off…. and for what? Working hard just seemed like the right thing to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that working hard is a bad thing, but I’d rather work clever than work hard.
2 years ago I was in an accident that had me on my back for about 2 months. It was this accident that made me realise life is too short to waste it working 15 hours a day. It also made me realise that even though we always expect the worse to happen, it very seldom does happen. I expected our business to go under and us to lose everything during those 2 months because if I wasn’t working, no money was coming in. Sure it was difficult for those 2 months, and even for a few afterwards while we were getting back on track, but we survived. I actually think we are better off afterwards than we were before. I cut down my working time to 8-5 in the day, and switched off my cellphone during the evenings and on weekends.
Needless to say, I got to spend a whole lot more time with my wife and doggies. We went walking on the beach, cycling, went away weekends to camp and explore the Eastern Cape in our 4×4 adventures. We NEVER used to take holidays, except when we had to close over Christmas holidays.
So cutting down on working hours surely caused me to lose a lot of business right? That is what I also initially thought would happen, but it didn’t. I’ll admit that we did lose clients, but looking back I asked myself whether I really wanted them as clients. On the whole though, everything started going better.
I then got an employee to start helping out again, something which I thought I would never do again. This allowed me to take off more days in order to explore other things that I wanted to get involved with. The longer he had worked for us, the more comfortable I became with letting go of some of the stuff I held on and let him take control of those things.
This past weekend Bernadette and I reflected a bit on this, and how people perceive us. This reflection is brought on by this book that we’ve been reading. We both used to have the mind set that the harder you work, the better we are and the more acceptable we will be in our social circles. Although we’re trying to change it, it still creeps back every now and then and you feel yourself talking about how hard you are working. Or when people make a comment about us taking off so many Fridays to go on a 4×4 trip, we feel the need to defend ourselves and say that we are still working hard. Why do we care what these people think though? It shouldn’t matter to us because we know that we work hard, but we work clever, which allows us to have the free time to go and do what we want to do. It just comes down that it been drilled into us that it’s the way society wants us to be, WORKING HARD. We would rather work clever or at other times to make sure we’ve got the free time when we want it. If this means working a bit later on a Thursday to be able to get the Friday off, then we do it. We also put in systems to help us with the work load. Simple things like only checking email at certain times of the day, not leaving your Skype open during the day, scheduling to do certain tasks at certain times, all helps us to complete other work quicker and without distractions.
How many times don’t you hear someone say in a conversation, “I have to work this whole weekend again”, or “I was at the office until 11 pm last night”. I hear it way too often, but, I’m very guilty in saying things like that as well. Maybe subconsciously to get recognition for it. Or how often do you start a conversation with a complete stranger by asking them what they do? It boils down again that we judge people by what work they do and how hard they work at it. Next time you hear me say something like that, kick me. Just remind me why you’re kicking me at the time though 
What would happen if you stopped working so many long hours and started concentrating on your life? You’d be much happier and you would probably be able to finish your work a whole lot faster than you realise. Just cut the time wasting stuff out of your daily routine.
I think what we need to do is start finding out what is important to US, and then concentrate on that to find your self recognition in doing what you love doing Don’t let your job define who you are and what your limitations are.
As in most things balance is so important. There are so many distractions in life, and it seems as if one needs to exercise some control to get the right balance i your life. Of course you have to work to make a living, and working smart could be seen as working hard since your actually working 8 – 5 instead of wasting time on skype, or email, nevermind facebook. But your not living if your working. I think you have made a wise choice. A hard one.. but wise.
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