3-Day Weekends Are Mandatory
I am not sure why we don’t have more pool parties on Fridays. I know one thing is certain – I believe in 3-day weekends. No one should work on Fridays.
Stay with me here.
Owning a home, having a family, enjoying friends are all important to me and fortunately (and sometimes, unfortunately) take a good bit of time. I don’t believe 2 days on a typical weekend is enough.
I have always railed against the idea of Work Life balance. It is a dumb phrase, as balance makes me think of equal, and equal amounts of work and life is not sustainable. As someone who truly believes in seasons, I believe in harmony and I believe LIFE comes first.
If you are not happy at home, or living a healthy life, how can you bring your best self to your work?
I have always believed that phrase should be Life Work Harmony, especially since words matter. Your life comes first, then you find purpose in your work, and they have to be in harmony with each other. Some seasons work will take precedence – some seasons, your life will lead the way. It shifts and swings with the different seasons of life. Sometimes they may be in “balance” with each other, but most of the time, I have found they are not.
The key is to be aware of when the season is forcing more work than life, and learn to prioritize your lead domino and those key elements that make sure you are still showing up to work as your best self. This is difficult – but not impossible.
We just had a bunch of our friends over for a happy hour pool party on Friday night – AND IT WAS GREAT! Laughs, swimming, kids playing games, adults telling stories and lots of food. It took a lot to prepare (pretty much all day on Friday) – with cutting the grass, getting the outside set up, prepping the pool, picking up the house, etc.), and then on Saturday and Sunday, I still had time to do all the other things necessary in life, like shop, relax & recover, pay some bills, etc.
Hot take here, but 3 day weekends are a necessity, not an occasional nice to have.
Day 1 – Fun
Day 2 – Normal weekend stuff
Day 3 – Rest and recovery
I understand this is not an option for a lot of people due to the demands of their job – but I also know we are living in a time where things are rapidly changing due to AI, and productivity and the ability to leverage tools to do more work more efficiently are changing by the day and hour (not by the month or year). It is an exciting time – and one I believe every person should be exploring even for a few minutes a day. Here is a question for you to think about…
How can I use ChatGPT (or whatever main AI tool you are familiar with) to help me complete ONE task in my job today?
A lot of you are probably already doing this, but some of you are not. The way I started was to have a post it note on my computer that said, “What does Hank think about this?” (btw, “Hank” is what I named my ChatGPT – he is super helpful, so therefore ‘Helpful Hank’ was created).
This simple note in front of my face reminds me daily to ask him more questions.
I use Hank as a thought PARTNER, challenging me to think of things in a different way. Sure you can just ask AI about things, but that is just a replacement for Google. You want to leverage this incredible tool to not only make you more efficient, but smarter. The way to do that is to treat AI like an incredible teacher, who has a PhD in everything ever known in the history of the world, and is your partner in tackling problems.
I recently went through an AI Training with Geoff Woods, which I thought was fantastic, and he talked about the best way to write a prompt and get the most out of these new tools was the following 4 steps:
- Context – give the tool the background and relative information that brings them up to speed
- Role – what role do you want it to be? Consultant, coach, teacher, friend, smartest poker player in the world?
- Interview – have the tool ask YOU questions to better clarify exactly what you are looking for
- Task – what do you want the tool to actually do? Give it explicit directions on what the outcome and output you need
Just the one switch of having it ask me questions before beginning was an absolute game changer in how quickly I could work with Hank and get to the final result.
So my challenge to you is to use this framework above, and figure out how AI can help you complete ONE TASK TODAY!
Do that, and you may just be on your way to a 3 day weekend like me.
Talk soon,
Dan