Everyday for the past two months I’ve been going to the boatyard from 2pm – 5pm to work on our sailboat project.
The other day someone said to me “I’m jealous of all the time you have to spend fixing up your sailboat.” I replied “I don’t have free time.”
But yes I do spend at least two hours per day working on the sailboat.
I get this free time because I wake up around 6:00am and I’m working by 6:30am so by 2pm I’ve already put in over 7 hours of work, so I’m able to end my day then.
Yeah I’d rather lose that 60-90 minutes of sleep but gain the time to get something accomplished. Steve used to say, “if you’re unwilling to wake up an hour early to work on a project the project probably isn’t worth it.”
I come home and I’m home by 5pm to eat dinner and spend time with the family. My wife and I allow our kids to only play one sport or activity at a time. Currently Sarah takes weekly horseback riding lessons and Jimmy has a twice a week Taekwondo lesson. So neither Anna nor I spend a lot of time shuttling the kids around like chauffeurs. Most people fill their time being their kid’s chauffeurs, there’s nothing particularly wrong with that but it’s not for us.
When the kids are in bed I usually sneak in about 45 minutes of catching up with emails then head off to bed around 8:15pm and spend an hour hanging out with Anna.
Stopping work at an unusual time like 2pm is hard because I have to push back phone calls and possible meetings. I feel guilty about leaving people working as well. It’s not a natural feeling for me to not work while others are.
Steven, my business partner, doesn’t give me guff for starting work or leaving work “early”. He knows some of my best ideas come when I’m not sitting at my laptop “working”.
I also have a really awesome wife who doesn’t give me grief about side projects and spending time with them. She handles grocery shopping, cooking & homeschooling the kids. Yep she’s amazing.
Side note: Greg Baugues wrote a great article about waking up at 4:30am as his morning ritual and life design.
If you wanted it to build a product you’d find a way to get time to work on it. If you really wanted to start that new hobby you’d sacrifice something to find the time and money to do it.
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