From the book Invisible Power:

(all about success at work)

***

Sandy interviewed a particularly harried executive prior to his leadership retreat.  He was lamenting that his home life was suffering due to his work schedule.

Sandy asked him, “Why don’t you work twenty hours a day?”

“That would be unreasonable” he replied.

“Do you decide what amount of time at work is reasonable?”

He hesitated and said, “I guess I do.  It doesn’t feel like my decision though”

***

Join the club pal.

Rewind the clock a couple of thousand years to a time of sundials & sandals and the question of how long to work wasn’t even a question. 

If you’re working in the field and the sun goes down, you stopped.  You didn’t have a choice.  Same thing if Sunday rolled around.  Sunday was a day of rest and prayer.  Maybe even a family game of Caesar Says.  But it wasn’t a day for work.

It’s not like this nowadays though.

Most of us aren’t hammering away on stone tablets.  Instead, we’re hammering away on cloud-connected tablets – whether or not the sun is shining and whether it's Monday, Sunday or any other day of the week.

Take yesterday evening.

When I clocked off work, I had a bunch of unread emails and my to-do list was longer than the 8.30am queue at my local Pret.

I could’ve kept working all night if I’d wanted. 

So how did I decide I was done?

Well, there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it.

I didn’t use an algorithm or a Gantt chart to figure it out.

I just knew I was done. 

Even though I was getting whacked with thoughts about how much more work there was to do, how little choice I have and how much I “should” be working, I let these thoughts go back to where they’d come from.

Once these thoughts had floated away, it was obvious my working day was done & dusted.

Thing is, some days it’s equally obvious to me to roll up my sleeves, keep going and pull a late night. 

Sometimes it’s obvious to leave work on the dot of 5pm.

But there’s no “how to” for any of this.

There’s just knowing for yourself when you’re done for the day.

This "knowing" is like an internal compass or guidance system which we all have access to, even when we’re drowning under the weight of looming deadlines or unread emails.

This is the same system which helps us think clearly, make good judgments and stay true to ourselves.

If you’d like to connect more with your own inner guidance, 1 on 1 coaching could be just the ticket.

All the details are here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That’s all for today.

 - Tom