Building on the weekend can cause you to burnout.
That’s not with this article is about. You can work after hours and not burnout if you’re smart about it.
The trouble is most of us use the weekend to escape. Writer Jari Roomer got me thinking after a recent article. “Use the weekend to build the life you want instead of trying to escape the life you have,” he says.
Jari explains that for many of us, the weekend not only stops us from progressing our goals. But the weekend can make us go backwards, so we start Monday being further behind than we were the previous Friday.
If every weekend you get drunk, it moves your health backward.
If every weekend you go shopping or purchase expensive bottles at the club, it moves your finances backward.
And if every weekend you spend a lot of hours watching Netflix, it moves your mental clarity backward.
Habits move us forward. Escape activities move us backward.
Pay attention to which category you fill your weekend with. It explains why you haven’t built that one thing yet that you know can change your life.
Find a way to become this sort of person
There’s two types of people in the world:
1) I don’t know how to do it.
2) I don’t know how to do it but I’ll find a way.
— Ross Simmonds
It takes a little creativity to schedule building something on your weekends and after hours. You can keep saying “I’m too busy” and feel the regret later. Or you can be the second type of person and be determined to find a way.
We find a way to make time for things we want to build. If they’re not important, we find a way to make excuses.
The trouble is you think you’ll have time in the future
The trouble is, you think you have time.
— Jack Kornfield
None of us are dumb. We genuinely think we’ll have time to build one day. The trouble is our imagination takes over from reality. If you can’t find time this weekend then you’ll unlikely ever find time. May as well be honest.
No time equals not a goal.
Get clear on your goals and you’ll find it easier to make time. We force ourselves to make time for the things that matter. If you’ve got kids, you don’t say, “ahh screw it, I won’t pick them up from school today and I’ll leave them to stay there overnight. I’m too busy, I tell ya.”
Nope. You make time for the kids because you don’t want them to die of neglect. Makes sense.
The worst problem I’ve seen with people who want to build is they use holidays as their saving grace.
Holidays are a fantasy.
If you didn’t make time to build for the whole year, you likely won’t build on the holidays either. You need time to relax. You need time to go overseas and experience other cultures. Using holidays is the worst strategy to build something.
There’s a simpler way that doesn’t lead to burnout.
What quietly scares us about building
What you build could fail.
Others may see it self-destruct. So out of a fear of failure we secretly put off building to save ourselves from hidden embarrassment.
There’s a better way.
Build in silence. Be quiet about it. Tell no one. Do your weekend work away from the view of other people. Don’t write about it. Don’t talk about it.
Just build, then experiment …. build, then experiment.
Find a way. Show the results later if you choose. Or stay quiet.
When I quit my old job, I told no one.
When I started making money, I told no one.
When I started hitting the gym, I told no one.
I tell no one anything.
Outside opinions will throw off your energy.
— Aaron Will
The powerful way to build after hours
Tiny steps is how you build something that will change your life.
Building something when you get time is being the guy on the right in the picture above. It’s too hard. The gap between the steps you have to take is too great. The trick is to make the gaps between steps shorter using consistency.
The way to start building is with 15-minute habits.
You don’t have time. You’re busy. I get it. But you can easily find 15 minutes a day to build something that matters. The time needed is so tiny it’s nearly impossible to screw it up.
What happens with 15-minute habits over time is they produce small amounts of progress. That progress helps you allocate more time in your schedule to build as you go.
Progress is evidence. Evidence leads to motivation. Motivation simultaneously produces prioritization.
Freedom builds a wall between yourself and the things you hate doing
The reason we can’t find time to build is because things we hate doing get in the way.
Maybe it’s a job. Maybe it’s a project you committed to. Maybe it’s the toxic people in your life.
The way to overcome the barrier is to understand that what you build will end up creating the freedom that puts a wall between what you love and what you hate. You can’t escape dream killers unless you start to build the antidote.
If you don’t see building as an urgent escape, life will show you more of what you hate until you do.
Start building this weekend for 15 minutes. Make building a habit. That’s how you escape the life you hate and replace it over time with one you love.
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