It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

if you work the weekends, you don’t get a chance to recharge. Basically, when you’ve worked all week and you’re forced to work the weekend, the following Monday is the eighth day of the last week, not the first day of next week. This means that if you keep working through that following week, you’re working 12-day weeks. That’s no good.

an unhealthy obsession with growth at any cost sets towering, unrealistic expectations that stress people out

Taking someone’s time should be a pain in the ass. Taking many people’s time should be so cumbersome that most people won’t even bother to try it unless it’s REALLY IMPORTANT! Meetings should be a last resort, especially big ones.

When someone takes your time, it doesn’t cost them anything, but it costs you everything. You can only do great work if you have adequate quality time to do it. So when someone takes that from you, they crush your feeling of accomplishment from a good day’s work. The deep satisfaction you’d experience from actually making progress, not just talking about it, is eliminated.

If you don’t own the vast majority of your own time, it’s impossible to be calm. You’ll always be stressed out, feeling robbed of the ability to actually do your job.

Peter Drucker nailed it decades ago when he said “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

You can absolutely run a great business without a single goal. You don’t need something fake to do something real. And if you must have a goal, how about just staying in business? Or serving your customers well? Or being a delightful place to work? Just because these goals are harder to quantify does not make them any less important.

You can play with your kids and still be a successful entrepreneur. You can have a hobby. You can take care of yourself physically. You can read a book. You can watch a silly movie with your partner. You can take the time to cook a proper meal. You can go for a long walk. You can dare to be completely ordinary every now and then.

The answer isn’t more hours, it’s less bullshit

Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity

People can’t get work done at work anymore. That turns life into work’s leftovers. The doggie bag.

They guard so many things, but all too often they fail to protect what’s both most vulnerable and most precious: their employees’ time and attention.