I was born into a world that operates on a 7 day week and accepted it as normal. Kids went to school for 5 of those days and adults went to work. 5 days on, 2 days off. And thats just how it is.
When i was eventually forced to join the full time work force i questioned this structure.
Why grind away for 5 days only to enjoy 2? Working through the week to afford ourselves a weekend? The 5 day grind costs so much theres often nothing left for the weekend anyway. Time and money spent travelling to and from work, over priced but convenient caffeine and takeaway food to keep you going. Some of us buy expensive cars to travel to and from a place we don’t even want to go.
It’s fucking crazy.
I expanded this scale from days to years. Imagine working 5 years just to take 2 off. Then take it even further, imagine working 50 years for 20 years of freedom.
To me, that's just not enough.
I started to treat each week like it was my whole life. If how you live one week is a snapshot of your life then theres no way i was signing up to work 50 out of 70 years. My only goal initially was to claw back 1 day, just to see if i could. By going from working 5 to 4 days a week id be gaining back 10 years of my life. I was working full time but living alone in a 2 bedroom apartment, i rented out the extra room reducing my cost of living and told my boss i no longer wanted to work more than 4 days a week. Relishing the taste of freedom, I cut additional costs and eventually realised i could get away with only working 3 days a week. I’d officially tipped the scales to the point id now work less than half of the week.
3 days on, 4 days off. 30 years of work for a 40 year weekend. Way less fucking crazy.
Reframing the 7 day work week into an expanded view of your whole life helps to illuminate the absurdity of our accepted norms.
Its all well and good to say “suck it up” and grind it out for 5, 10 even 50 years, and then reap the rewards. But what if you die? Imagine working from 20 to 30 then dying at 31. Would you be stoked to have spent the last decade working 5 out 7 days? Fuck that!
You need to love your life along the way. You need to live as you go.
If you’re truly ok with working 50 years to enjoy the last 20 then you’ll have no problems finding work and getting by in this world.
That’s your choice, but it is exactly that - a choice.
But if you want to live more, and work less, like i think most people do. Then it helps to look at each week like its your whole life and start finding ways to claw back 1 day a week, or half a day, or even just an hour.
But how can you do this without renting out your spare room? What if you don’t have a spare room to rent out? How does someone working full time to support dependants start clawing back decades of their life?
That’s what Formulate Freedom is all about. Almost every article on this site speaks to that sentiment.
Unfollowing Freedom will help you cut social media out of your life completely and gain back valuable time you can spend actually enjoying real life or channeling into a business you love.
Dont Stop Yourself From Starting illustrates how important it is to just start, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Fortune Favours Freedom speaks to the life changing opportunities that find their way to those who are open to them.
Just Add Value gives a realistic framework for finding something of your own worth starting.
Finding Freedom breaks down my 10 year entrepreneurial journey into bite sized pieces that might shed some light on why i feel qualified to speak on such topics.
Have a poke around and see where the site takes you.