Welcome to Grow North Thursday - One idea each week to help you grow on purpose, earn well, and live like you mean it.
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On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers walked off the job to demand an eight-hour day. In Chicago alone, tens of thousands of them marched.
Many of them were singing a song written a few years earlier, and its chorus became their slogan:
"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will."
My favorite line is in the first verse: "We want to feel the sunshine, and we want to smell the flowers."
That's what the third eight was for. Family, friends, rest, the sunshine and the flowers. People went on strike for it.
And for years, I gave my third eight away. My weekdays went like this: work all day, pick the kids up from after care at 6, and bedtime at 8. That left me about two hours a day with my kids, and most of those went to scrambling to get food in their mouths, always being behind on laundry, or not seeing them at all because I was running evening work events. I burned out twice before I really saw it, once in the C-suite and once in the business I built to get away from it.
Does this ever happen to you? The workday ends, and then it keeps going in your inbox, in your head, and into your evening.
Today I'll show you how to see where your third eight is really going, and how to start taking some of it back.
Let's get to it.
The word that matters is "will"
It's easy to read that slogan as a rule: work stays in the first eight, and never touches the rest.
I don't think that's the point. The last eight belongs to what we will, which means what we choose. Some nights, staying up late on something you care about is exactly what you'd choose, and that's a good use of the hours.
The trouble is the hours nobody chose. The ones that drift back to work because work was sitting right there.
Count it
Take last Tuesday. Leave out the hours you worked and the hours you slept, and write down what the rest of the hours actually went to.
For most of us, that list has work hiding in it. The email you answered after dinner. The "quick" call that ran long. Rehearsing tomorrow's meeting in your head in the shower.
Those hours are work. They just never make it onto the calendar.
Whatever is left after that is what you actually got of your third eight.
Your time goes where your business is built to send it.
If you run your own business and your count came back mostly work, a better calendar won't fix it.
That's the design problem I wrote about on October 1, and it's what GPS is built for: catapultnorth.com/gps
What’s in mine now
My own count looks a lot different than it used to.
The kids get off the bus now, and I sit down with them for homework. (Fourth grade math blows my mind.)
Running kids to activities or the hot tub/sauna with Ed, sometimes the whole family, and sometimes (gasp!) just me.
Cooking, which I never would have guessed I'd love. Dash and I are working on our knife skills. I make soup and bread every fall, and a healthy tater tot hotdish with egg whites and cottage cheese (it's even better, I promise). Every so often I skip the swaps and go for broke, like my first peach cobbler. It's weirdly meditative.
And The Land of Stories books by Chris Colfer, which Dash and I are listening to together. We are totally into it.
I rarely go to evening work events now, and when I do, it's my choice.
None of it is impressive. All of it is mine.
Takeaway
Those workers in 1886 wanted to feel the sunshine and smell the flowers. Mine turned out to be woodfire sauna, fourth grade math, and a pot of soup.
What's one hour of this week's third eight you'll take back for yours?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.
-Colleen
➤ I help solo consultants, coaches, and experts grow their business without growing their hours. Cohort launches January 21st. Applications close December 18th. Learn more here or send it to someone who should see it.
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