Episode 115 - Is working on the weekends really so bad?

Today's episode was inspired by a conversation that I saw on Threads a week or so back all about working weekends and is working weekends really all that bad.

Now, if you'd asked me a few years ago, I would've said to work on the weekends. Don't do it. You need a break. You need time away from your desk and your computer.

Which is 100% true. I absolutely believe that.

But like a lot of things I have grown and I have learned a lot these last few years. And I've really arrived at the point of, there is no blanket, black or white rule about what is good and what is right. And what is wrong. You need to work out what is best for you and how things fit best into your life.

For me sometimes I'll work on the weekends or later into the evenings. Sometimes they won't. If I do work on the weekends, especially, or I do work longer into the evenings than I had intended. It's not because I'm forcing myself to it's because of choice. I'll feel motivated or I'm on a roll and I just want to keep doing something that I'm working on.

On the flip side, sometimes it feels really nice to take a break. And not switch my laptop on over the weekend. And this weekend just gone. I did exactly that.

Now that also can change across my cycle as well.

Sometimes though it can feel nice to take our week's worth of work and spread it out longer over the day. So I'm doing less in the days, having shorter days, but also logging on and maybe doing an hour or two on the weekend. It creates a little more space and allows for their slower pay stays, but still getting the same amount of things done.

Sometimes I have a lot of energy and a lot of motivation on the weekends and I feel really inspired and I just want to jump into things and power through my to-do list.

Sometimes I might do a whole bunch on the weekend and then end up not doing very much on Monday, which has also really nice.

Now what feels good and white for me might be very different for you. And as I said, it can change across the month and across your cycle. And also across the season of business that you're in as well.

But my lifestyle might be different from yours. I live alone. I don't have children, so I do have a lot more time freedom than other people.

Some of my clients have kids. And so weekends is protected family time. There is no working.

I have other clients that also have kids, but find the quiet mornings when the kids are still in bed, or the kids are having a nap can be really productive time for them to get stuck in and get some work done uninterrupted.

It really depends on you, your situation and your lifestyle, and also the relationship that you have with work.

I truly believe that the relationship you have with your work and the hours and the time that you were working is so much more important than when and how much you're doing.

And like all relationships, how you show up for it is reflected in what you get out of it.

If you are working because you feel that you have to, or that you feel that you should be because someone on the internet said you have to hustle in order to be successful, even though you don't have the capacity or the energy to do it right now. That it's not a healthy relationship.

If you are working because you choose to, because you're feeling motivated had this idea dropping and you just want to jump in and run with it and you have the capacity and the energy to do it. Then that has a healthy relationship.

For many, many years, particularly when I was in the corporate world, I used to think that my success and my worth was tied to my productivity. So the more I worked and the harder that I work and the more output I created. The more successful. I would be. If you've listened to any of the previous episodes on the podcast, you'll know that that led me down the path of very severe burnout and is one of the reasons that I am where I am today.

What I realize now is it is not the quantity and how much you're doing. It really is quality over quantity, less is more.

When you are working less what you are doing becomes higher quality because you're focusing on those things and you're doing those things well, rather than trying to do all of the things.

The less is often more meaningful because it's an intentional choice to be doing those things and working on those things rather than output for the sake of output.

I truly believe that the path to your version of whatever a successful business looks like, because again, your vision of success is probably going to be quite different to mine.

But that version of a successful business that you're looking for is one that fits into the time and the energy and the capacity and the life that you have.

As opposed to trying to fit your life around your business.

And when you cultivate a relationship with your work that is healthy and you're doing it because you're motivated and inspired. As opposed to forcing yourself to be sitting down at your computer, even though you're exhausted and you're just not in the right frame of mind right now.

When you cultivate that healthy relationship with your work. You're not going to feel guilty when you rest, when you need it. You're not going to feel guilty for taking time off. You're going to have healthy boundaries between your work and your life, and you're going to be more productive with the time that you do work, because you know, you working when you have the time and the energy to do it, you know, that you're working on the things that you've made intentional choices to do.

Rather than trying to do all of the things be in all of the places.

So the point that I really want to make with this, and this is kind of what happened in this threads post that I saw was that for a lot of us, when we started our own businesses, we were so anti working the weekends. But for many of us we've found a balance between sometimes working weekends.

Sometimes not, sometimes it feels good to maybe do an hour or two on a Sunday and set yourself up for the week.

It really depends on you, your circumstances, your lifestyle, as we talked about if you've got kids or maybe you have a job, then weekends often is the only time that you have to get things done. It really is about finding that sweet spot for you. As I said, cultivating that relationship with your work and being intentional about what you're doing and doing it when you have the energy and the capacity to do it.

So if you have been struggling with maybe feeling like you're working too many hours, or you're always working, or you're feeling guilty about working later into the evenings or into the weekend, sit and think about what is driving that behavior.

Are you coming at it from that perspective of having this healthy relationship with your work? Or are you doing it because you feel that you have to, or that you should be doing it?

Now I can't give you a magical wand. That's going to instantly change. Your beliefs and things. That's something that you're going to have to work at and use your own mindset tools to shift your perspective on things. But just know that it's your business and it's your life. You are in control.

You're allowed to set your business up in a way that works best for you. And if that means working in the evenings or working on the weekends, Then you're absolutely allowed to do that. And if you get six months or a year or two years down the track, and that no longer works for you, you also have the right to change your mind and make a different choice at that point in time.

What matters most is the relationship you have to your work. And as I said, like all relationships, how you show up for it is going to be reflected in what you get out of it.