Why I'm Working Three Days A Week | #257

February 17th, 2023: Greetings From Austin! Hope everyone is having a good February. I somehow forgot to mention I turned 39 a couple weeks ago. I figured I would keep it pretty low-key before having a bigger party next year. Here’s to another fun year on this rock :-)

We found a massive Taiwanese Buddhist Temple in Austin that was celebrating Lunar New Year - it felt like a portal back into Taiwan for a couple of hours

London Meetup: Some pathless path friends are meeting up in London this upcoming week on the 22nd: RSVP here

Austin SXSW Meetup: I’m planning a SXSW meetup on March 11th. RSVP here

Most of last year I had a no-day workweek. I was sort of just doing stuff when I had time and had enough energy to context-switch away from being with my daughter. I think I was both able to accomplish more than I expected and less than I expected. The quantity was fine but the quality probably wasn’t as good as I would have liked. This was fine though, the goal was always to lean into parenting and prioritize it above everything else. My conclusion: it’s super fun and I really enjoy it.

This newsletter is about how I’m experimenting with a bit more structure and balancing full-time childcare with Angie via a 3-day workweek. I didn’t realize this was that crazy until I was bringing this up to people in the last couple of months. It seems people really are wedded to a 5-day week. So I thought I’d share some reflections.

Lots of people used to say, “you can’t do this sort of life if you have kids!” which was always weird for me to hear because I knew I wanted kids and this sort of lifestyle I’m living now was the only one I could imagine with kids. The five years years before having our daughter, I “practiced” life for the main event, assuming we would have kids. I figured that since I knew how to work, the best things I could do were actually practicing doing nothing, trading money for time, and developing a capacity to sit with uncomfortable emotions. I’m sort of surprised at how well these things prepared me. In addition, the resilience and communication skills that Angie and I have had to develop navigating a cross-cultural relationship in different countries with two very unique work paths helped us really be there for each other over the last year.

You could probably say now, “well you were lucky last year, you can’t bank on continuing to sell bonkers amounts of books every year!” I agree! I really don’t know what the model is in terms of how I make money, how much I work, and what I’m generally focused on five years from now, let alone two years from now. But that’s the fun part! The reason so many people stay on unconventional paths despite obviously better-on-paper alternatives is that they usually find that they are far more capable than they imagined and they like the process of figuring things out as they go. Things are certainly hard, weird, and uncomfortable at times but I am more than happy to pay that “tax.” I love this journey.

Towards the end of the year, Angie and I was finding that our general approach of figure-it-out-as-we-go was leaving us both stressed and exhausted from an increasingly energetic little girl. When we moved back to Austin we decided to implement structured “work” days for both of us. I get Monday, Tuesday and Friday and she gets Wednesday and Thursday. We don’t always “work” either. Today I gave a workshop for a company in the morning, did some admin, and then took a walk with a new friend in the afternoon on the trail before going to the gym. We are trying to embrace the idea that Joe Hudson shared on our recent podcast that we should prioritize our selves and the relationship such that we can present and energized for our daughter.

On a spreadsheet, “only” working three days per week doesn’t make sense. I have made almost all our income over the last six years and have far more things that are “working.” Not only that, I love doing most of the things I’m working on. On the other hand, Angie has only recently found that writing is something she wants to commit to and while she has some interest from a Taiwanese publisher for the memoir she’s writing, it is not clear how she will make money from those things.

But if I had made decisions on what made “sense” I would have stopped writing years ago. I would have focused mostly on the freelance consulting and tried to make as much money as I could. But this is not the life we want to live. We want to build a life around doing the work that matters to us. This is why it’s easy to prioritize Angie’s time on the book. That kind of creative work is more important than my paid consulting work. When we think about the kind of family we want to build and the values that matter to us, creativity is vastly more important than what Aristotle called the money-making life.

But you might be thinking, “why not just get daycare, like everyone else?” This is certainly something we considered and may explore down the road but for now, I actually just love hanging out with my daughter. It’s super fun and I want to do that instead of working. I do feel the tension of feeling like I could do "more but for now, I’m happy to leave money on the table and potentially risk future earnings a few years from now for this experience. If I told Angie that I needed to focus on my work, too, she would gladly let me.

But Angie needs to work on this book. For our family to thrive and for us to build the life we want, we need Angie to pursue her art. It matters to her and because of that, it matters to me. I’m so excited about what she’s doing, committing to something without a clear end in sight. I don’t think she’ll ever regret this.

This three day structure has given me some useful constraints. It’s forced me to prioritize what matters even more and also to be a lot quicker with how I make decisions. Also, since our daughter naps three hours a day and crashes at 7:30 there’s actually still a lot more wiggle room to tinker away at things like this newsletter if I run our of time. We don’t “go to work” and are usually at home most days so theres a lot of flexibility with our approach. If I’m sitting at my desk and my daughter is laughing in the other room, I usually can’t help myself. But it’s been nice to have space to prioritize “me” after putting Angie and our daughter first for most of the past year. Before doing the three blocked days, I felt guilty doing anything for myself. Before she was born, I sort of just did stuff whenever and it worked. I had enough time for myself and did the work that mattered to me. But after adding a kid to the mix, go-with-the-flow was no longer viable. I couldn’t move forward on any of the projects I was excited about (like a journal, clothing, stickers, workbook, and more…stay tuned 👀)

Will this be the setup we follow forever? Probably not. We adjust when the situation changes, as you are allowed to do. This is the fun part of this kind of path. You can make up your own rules as you go. There are no mandates of working five-days per week. You are allowed to work three. Or two. Or one. Or none!

I think far more people could make paths like mine work and I wouldn’t be surprised if the great contemplation continues to drive people to experiment with different ways of fitting work into their lives, especially with kids. I for one, love hearing from parents about how they are reinventing the different scripts and roles of how they are working.

If you get the chance to lean into your child’s first year of life? Do it. It’s so much fun.

There’s always more work to do.

#2 Rick Lewis, A Life Well Lived

College Dropout to Juggling School to Clowning to Street Performer to Author to Corporate Provocateur

This was one of the most fun episodes I’ve recorded and I aspire to live a full life like Rick. Rick shares his journey from a socially anxious kid to a captivating speaker in front of large audiences. He has has so many experiences and wisdom and it’s inspiring to see him still full of energy, looking for ways to give back and spending lots of time coaching and supporting younger people.

You can also watch on YouTube here

Thanks For Reading

Here are three things worth checking out

1. If you’d like to meet others on “pathless paths”, you can join The Pathless Path Community or if you are already a subscriber, get access here.

2. Buy or listen to my book, The Pathless Path. If you’d like to do a bulk order you can do that here for a discount.

3. Subscribe to my podcast and leave a review.

Write Of Passage: Learn to write online and become an internet citizen

Affiliates: In addition, I recommend all of the following services: Ali Abdaal’s YouTube Course, Collective for setting up an S-Corp in the US (recommended >$60k revenue), Riverside.fm for HD podcasting, Descript for text-based video editing, Transistor for podcast hosting, Podia or Teachable for courses, Skystra for WordPress Hosting, and Circle for running a community.

Submissions: Want to share your journey with my audience? I accept drafts for submission.

Sponsors: I accept the occasional sponsor, please submit a request through Passionfroot

A reminder: I don’t check unsubscribe alerts and never look at my subscriber list. So if you feel like unsubscribing, you can do so below.