A lot of entrepreneurs go in for hustle culture, seemingly working 60-80-hour weeks, but I’ve been trying to create a sustainable practice. To help myself take time to rest and give myself a break from work, these are the guidelines I’ve developed for myself over the past year and a half.
- Check email once in the morning — after finishing breakfast — and once in the afternoon, on weekdays. On weekends, try to only look once. If I open email for 2FA or reference at night, try not to read anything, or at least not work-related messages.
- Never look at email in bed or at my reading nook; chiefly read it on desktop.
- Leave my desk and take a 30+ minute lunch break, by 2pm.
- Always stand up and leave my desk during the (3-5 minute) breaks in my co-working sessions.
- Do not respond to any work emails after 6pm.
- No consulting work after 6pm or on weekends.
- Close all work documents and software at the end of the day.
- Physically close my laptop at the end of the work day — even if I plan to use it for personal stuff later.
- Stop working on creative / personal projects by 10pm and get off the desktop.
- No fiction writing on the weekends, only blogging.
- Try to not think about work projects at night.
- Take all government holidays off work.
I’m pretty consistent about these except for stopping personal work at night on time 😉 I’m considering dropping the writing on weekends rule 🤔 I still haven’t figured out a good way to balance personal and paid work — I have a very hard time not putting paid work first — so I might add a rule there. I also haven’t figured out a system for taking longer breaks since they’re infrequent, but my minimum standard for myself is at least one full week off paid work a year, preferably two (the week around Christmas / New Year’s is usually dead, so planning another week in summer or early fall is ideal).
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Rob Hardy