As per my Take Back Your Weekends Manifesto – there are too many people are working way to hard imo and it’s becoming a bit of an epidemic in our entreprenerial society.
So i’m curious – do you work on the weekends? How many hours a week do you work on average?
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I can see why people spend more than normal hours on their business in the startup phase. I am in that category. Between doing client work and business building activities, there are times when we spend more than 40 hours a week on the business. I have started keeping a small note pad in my purse and when I get ideas during “off-hours”, I just write them down and deal with them during my business hours and note run to the computer to deal with them. It is very hard but it is a process.
It is a good point Heather re: wanting to spend more time on your biz in the early days… there is lots to do and it’s quite fun! And at the same time you want to start to build the habit of *not* working weekends early on… otherwise you’ll find yourself in the habit of doing so. (Love the notebook tip too, awesome.)
When I first started my company and I was doing it all myself, it was nothing for me to start work at 4am and finish at 10pm, 7 days a week. Boy did I burn out!
Now I start my day around 8am, stop around 4pm and I rarely work weekend! I’ve become incredibly organized, and I have a team to help me. I need my family time and my family needs mom time. I am on the East Coast and have clients on the West Coast. They all know that after 4pm ET – I’m done. They are welcome to call me and if it’s an emergency I will jump in, but generally they know that nothing will be handled until morning. And they all respect my boundaries. It feels good to have boundaries and to enforce them. Keeps my sanity!
yay for boundaries! makes a world of difference, I agree… and contrary to what many people think, for the most part our clients are a-ok with our boundaries when we set them (and enforce as needed. 😉
Thing of the past…for the most part! I only work weekends when it’s something urgent that needs to happen, preparing for travel, or IF I feel like catching up on things. Otherwise I do not even come into my office! Which, as you know, was not something that was happening a year ago!!! Love the passion in your new videos 🙂
My husband and I have a routine that works for us. We both work for 6-8 weeks straight, including putting in some hours on weekends, although not often full days.
But then we GO AWAY for a week or two. We leave town. Go someplace completely different. And we don’t work while we’re on holidays, or at least not very often or very much. Sometimes one or the other of us has to be on a call, but we rarely bring work-work with us.
I don’t put in billable hours or work on client projects on weekends, though. Weekends are more for working ON my business: writing and program/product development, or taking online training of some sort.
Our kids are grown and out of the house. That makes a HUGE difference. I started my business 20 years ago, when they were 6 and 9. Back then I didn’t work weekends!
Oh, and what am I doing this weekend? Flying to Mexico tomorrow for two weeks!
Love that – work hard for 6-8 weeks and then take some serious time off. Very cool. Great point too re: not doing client work on weekends – that sets up some super off expectations if we make that a habit!
I totally understand where you’re coming from and agree that we need to set boundaries on our work hours! When I started my business, I definitely worked a ton – 60+/week in my top growth mode before I had a team. Bringing on a team and raising my rates helped me reduce that drastically and I now typically work maybe 25 hours total each week (client work plus non-billable work on my business).
However, a good amount of my work time falls in the evening and on weekends by design. I choose to spend many of the daytime hours (i.e. traditional 9-5 working hours) with my daughter and therefore often opt to work after her bedtime or on weekends when my husband is home. I do try to take most of the weekend off, but would rather work some on the weekend in order to enjoy play time with my toddler during the week! Once the kids are into elementary school, I know this schedule will change and I’ll be singing the “no work on weekends” tune!
ok so, my “weekends” are the days off my husband has (he is a manager at a car repair shop and he gets 2 days off per week) I notify my clients the Friday before when my days off are going to be the following week as they vary week to week. But those are absolute “no work” days for me. Sometimes his days off include “weekend” days…but mostly not. 🙂 If there are extra days off due to kid stuff….then we deal with that as it comes. 🙂
~Kim