The realities of creating a guilt-free work week — Week 3

Reflections from my 12-week Investigation Day experiment

Here we are again. The end of another week. I’m starting to write this week’s reflection a little earlier than usual because, frankly, I’m lacking some energy today (a few too many reds with some wonderful overseas guests last night)…and I know if I leave it any longer there’s a chance I won't do it at all.

If you want to catch up on the background to this experiment, you’ll find it here and you can also look back on last week’s reflection here.

So here we go…

Week 3

Do I feel less guilty?

I do. I’ve had a really productive week. I’m finding that my desire to protect Fridays is making me work more efficiently on Monday through Thursday. It gives me an extra kick in the pants at the end of a day when I’m feeling a bit tired but still have a few things to do. I used to let those things carry over from one day to the next (and of course carry the guilt with me). Now I push myself to get them done knowing that if I don’t, they might jeopardize my Investigation Friday. I’m finding that I am falling asleep more easily too — my brain isn’t full of “the things I didn’t get done today”.

There is one exception. You might recall that last week I committed to change today’s gym workout from 6 am to lunchtime to make sure that I get out from behind the desk. Confession time — I didn’t do it. I could give you a load of excuses but the truth is, at lunchtime, I just didn’t feel like working out. I am planning to go once I finish writing this and hopefully at least one of you will ask me if I made it!

What observations have I drawn from today?

Given last night’s overindulgence, I’m pleasantly surprised by the progress I made today. I started with 2 wonderful conversations. The first, with a good friend /amazing coach, who inspired me with some big wins she’d achieved in her work this week. She pushed my thinking on 2 important projects to places I could have never reached alone.

The second was my first (but hopefully not last) coffee with smart, thoughtful and creative Programs Manager from a Cleantech Accelerator — definitely new and inspiring territory for me — and, as a result, I have an idea for an article I want to write about the relationship between burn rate and burnout. Stay tuned for that one!

I delivered almost all of the tasks on my project plans that were scheduled for today. I am thrilled to be able to say that I’m building strong momentum on a couple of projects that I wasn’t able to move at all last year. It’s such a good reminder for me that productivity and momentum are not about having hours and hours free to devote to something — it’s about recognising the conditions that best serve my own creative thinking processes. I worked through 2 problems today that, on any other day, might have completely stumped me — but I’d made space, and in doing so, actually needed less time.

I did struggle to stay away from email and Slack at various points throughout today. I’m guessing that’s due to a combination of tiredness and lack of devoted scheduling. I’m definitely more disciplined when I know I’ve made time for checking in on client work.

How will next week’s Investigation Day be different?

Next week’s Investigation Day will be entirely different. Firstly I’ll be spending half of it with my parents and the other half on a plane. My plan is to:

• Spend the morning focused exclusively on family time — no email, no social media — just quality time with the folks
• Spend some of the ‘plane time’ catching up on my reading pile — it’s heavy enough to provide good incentive to ‘read and discard’ rather than continue to carry around those ‘unread bundles of guilt’
• Write my weekly reflection in the air and hit ‘publish’ when I hit the ground (assuming there’s no wifi on the flight…)
• Expand my weekly reflection to do a ‘zoom-out’ overview of the 4 weeks of Investigation Days. It feels like a good time to take a look at the bigger picture and see if there any other changes I would like to make.

I’ll resume my normal Investigation Day routine in Week 5. For now, I’m off to the gym. Cheers.