Ah, the sweet taste of achievement... Today, I’m having a real, proper Sunday. That means, no work, whatsover! I’ve been meaning to do this for ages and it has taken me surprisingly long to achieve it… Actually, today was already the second “proper Sunday” in a row and I’m determined to keep it that way from now on! The “trick” is to get all work-related stuff done on Friday and Saturday. While I used to postpone necessary but-not-immediately-urgent work to the weekend (and thus often loading up the two scrawny days that a weekend consists of with easily three days worth of work…) I now – as one measure – don’t do that anymore, at all. I mean, hey! That’s what Mondays are for, right?

The second measure is that I’ve created a special todo-list in my home-grown GTD system called crontab.txt that contains all the tasks I need to execute regularily, broken down into weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly. The effect of that has been immense. I now make a big effort to get all things of the appropriate lists done on Friday and Saturday. Knowing that once I’ve done all of them I can relax without guilt is a) extremely motivating to, well, get things done and b) creates a whole new experience of free time.

While I’ve been following through the crontab approach now for well over four months(!) and enjoying its benefits (clean office, nearly immaculate bookkeeping, ease of mind etc.) I have now finally managed to reap the full benefit – a Sunday full of leisure time. Needless to say, the wife and kids love it and since I still do allow myself time at the computer for fun stuff (blogging being one of them) the geek in me is not intimdated ;-)

So if you’re self-employed and overworked – give it a try: treat yourself to (at least…) one full day off per week...

Update: Okay, so I'm feeling a little bit guilty now, after all... I just persuaded Erdgeist to not work on the Datenschleuder tonight but rather hang out with me (and a couple of beers) ;-) Sorry folks, you'll just have to wait... (To be fair: tomorrow evening we'll meet to do the final layout on the upcoming issue, so not to worry!)