I had a huge shock last week when I stepped on my bathroom scales.

I know I’ve been indulging in the occasional Twix and pints of Timothy Taylor’s.

But I still wasn’t expecting to see that I’d put on more than a stone since the last time I’d weighed in.

(if you live across the pond and don’t use imperial measures, the official translation for “one stone” is “a fair old chunk”)

Anyway, I guess it was a shock because it happened so gradually I didn’t see it coming.

It’s a good example of what Socrates might’ve called “the moment of examination”.

You’ve probably heard the Socrates line that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. And while that’s rather weighty for my tastes, there is a useful seed of an idea here which goes well beyond the bathroom scales.

Take working late in the office.

By “working late” I don’t just mean when you tell yourself “I’ll work an extra hour”, then you find yourself sitting at your desk four hours later (although I’ve done that more often than I care to remember).

I also mean the moment when it dawns on you that a decade or three has gone by without you even realising. A decade or three where you’ve told yourself “I’m going to spend less time at work” and probably also told yourself “I’ll ease off next week” or “I’ll sort this mess out later”. Yet you’ve sunk 100s more hours into your job than you wanted to and missed out on spending time with your family, starting a side project, reading books, doing something creative or just putting your feet up in front of the box.

It was a huge wake up call for me in my early 30s when I looked back on my 20s and realised “shit, did I really give THAT much time to my job.”

Mind you, it’s an easy trap to fall into.

Especially with the phone ringing, the Teams messenger pinging, the inbox dinging and helpful colleagues marking every bloody email as “urgent”.

Socrates didn’t have to deal with that!

And yet, in a funny sort of way, this makes his “moment of examination” even more helpful today than it was 2,500 years ago. The more distractions that pull you in different directions, the more valuable that moment becomes.

When you pause and peek up from behind your keyboard, you get the chance to notice if your job is taking more of your life than you ever meant to give it.

But that pause is key. 

Just like stepping on the bathroom scales, it all starts with noticing. That’s what creates the space for something different to happen. And in my experience, once you properly notice something (rather than brushing past it with a quick “I know that already”), the status quo becomes much harder to tolerate.

This is a big part of why I’m running my new workshop Reclaim Your Evening.

Not only is the workshop a guaranteed space for you to reflect on your own accidental overtime. 

But we’ll also explore a “shift” in how we see time itself. A shift which makes it easier to stop treating life like a dress rehearsal and stop waiting for permission to enjoy yourself.

It’s a shift which has nothing to do with hacks or quick fixes and everything to do with the nature of time itself. 

Which means it’s not one of these things that applies for some people and not for others. Instead, this shift works more like gravity. It impacts everyone whether you like it or not. Even if you join the workshop and tell me your situation is utterly unique and you’re the one exception to the laws of the universe, this shift applies to you too. 

Unless, of course, you don’t have a brain or you don’t exist within the laws of time and space. 

But then you’re probably not reading this email anyway.

Okay, enough.

If you’d like to check out the workshop’s details, you can find them here:

Reclaim Your Evening

The payment link comes down in 8 hours.

To fulfilment,

Tom