Welcome to Freedom Fridays with your host, Pete Clark.
Quick disclaimer, this is massively outside my comfort zone and sharing with you stuff that I'd normally keep private. And I'm going to share an experiment. And I'm going to record and monitor that experiment. And I'm going to allow you to see how I progress or not. So here's my experiment based on this logic that I believe that time is our most finite and most precious commodity. And if last year taught us anything, it taught us more and more the value of time with friends and family and doing the important things. Secondly, I'm aware of Parkinson's Law, which is the premise that work expands to the time that we give it. And we've all been in this situation, we have a deadline for two weeks. And we tend to get it done the night before. So we tend to get it done in the time we give it. And so third, here's my experiment. I'm going to take Friday's off, and see what happens. Partly because I'm going to see if I can get done in four days, what would normally take me five. Because part of my challenges being really productive and just getting stuff done. And also, it's the other side of being a small business owner, that really I can create the rules, I can, you know, go cycling or play golf, or go away for the weekend, or even sit and just create or do nothing on any particular day. And while that might not always be a Friday, the intention is I'm going to practice this experiment until Easter by taking that day off from work. So no meetings, no emails, no delivery, and see what happens.
Now, here I am recording my first ever podcast, on a Friday and I've failed already. So this morning, I've had a little bit of delivery. That was in my diary anyway. So I'm going to give myself a little bit of an outline that I've had two meetings on the phone, which I, I reluctant no didn't even reluctantly do. I was scared to say no, is the truth. And so I loved those meetings to happen. I could have been more proactive. And certainly, you know, I can't do Friday. I've taught a couple of people about this, my family and a couple of friends and they've all thought it was fantastic. But I thought I would really ramp up the accountability for myself and make it public. And so what am I going to do with the time? Well, it's now 130 on Friday afternoon, the fifth of February and I'm going to stop. This will be the last thing that I'm going to do from a work perspective. Despite me loving what I do. I'm going to try and diligently practice and experiment with this. And I'm going to go for a bike ride. And then I'm going to connect and check in with my wife and we'll probably go for a walk after that.
So I'm going plan to do this podcast every week give you an update on what's happened during the week have I failed? Have I made progress? Have I had a bit of a win? Have I managed to take Friday's off? Not off from life, obviously, but just off from the the treadmill of constantly finding work to do. Because the world that I exist in and what I'm passionate about, I could always be reading and responding and designing and creating. So I'm going see if I can do all of that in four days. It might be the odd Monday, but predominantly the philosophy and what I'm trying to practice is to squeeze more out of the days that I've got.
So thanks for listening. I hope you've enjoyed that little introduction, and I'll speak to you next week. Cheers.
