Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asking my new subscribers this question:

If you could wave a magic wand, what one thing would you change about your job?

I’ve had a steady flow of replies to that question and one theme is popping up again and again.

That theme is time.

A new reader replied a few days ago to say they love what they do, but not enough to be working 14 hour days and squeezing their life into the time that’s leftover. Another said they wished they didn’t give away their time so easily. A different reader told me they’d like to make their job more predictable so they could spend time with their family in the evenings. One reader even said they hate the whole idea of trading their time for money.

And I get it. I really do. 

In v1 of my banking career, I often worked so late that the office cleaner would wipe the desk around my still-warm takeaway boxes and hoover under my seat while I was still sat in it, neck deep in a financial model. And after the cleaner had left, I’d stand up every half hour to wave my arms and convince the motion-sensor lights that I hadn’t conked out in my chair. Then I’d get home after midnight, try to grab a few hours’ sleep and be back in the office for 9am to lather, rinse and repeat.

That was my life for months.

But when I returned to my City of London banking job after my self-imposed two year hiatus, something had changed.

Nowadays I regularly have dinner with Lauren and Baby Grundy at 5.30pm. I often do Baby Grundy’s bathtime and read her a bedtime story. I write my newsletter most weekdays, I have a roster of coaching clients and I still watch more TV and listen to more podcasts than someone with a full time job and a one-year old should freely admit to.

It’s not perfect mind you.

There are days where I can’t do dinner with Baby Grundy or miss a daily email. There are other days where I work late or cancel my annual leave because my day job has gone to hell in a handbasket.

But it’s chalk and cheese compared to how things used to be.

I’ve carved out a good chunk of time from my day job (even though my workload has gone up) and my day job hasn't taken a hit as a result. In fact, my 2025 end of year review was so positive that I almost fell off my chair when I read it.

So what changed?

Well, it wasn’t an exotic time management system. Nor was it learning to say no, setting better boundaries or blocking out my calendar. And it certainly wasn’t delegating more work, batching my emails or trying to be more disciplined.

Instead, it was a simple shift in how I saw time itself. A bit like getting a cheat code in a computer game. And once I’d seen it, I couldn’t unsee it.

I haven't written about this shift before and I’m not going to reveal it here.

But I am thinking of running a new workshop called Reclaim Your Evening where I’ll share this shift with a small group of people and help them apply it to their own working lives.

Why a workshop? 

Because the last thing a time-strapped professional needs is a 400 page book or a three month program that piles even more crap onto their plate. I want you to get results, I want you to get results quickly and I want you to have fun while you do. 

A one-off workshop is perfect for this.

So the only question I have for you is…

Would you come to this workshop?

If you would, just reply to this email and say “it’s about time”.

To fulfilment,

Tom