The Importance of Free Days

Our recent Friducation session with Teresa Easler introduced a handful of Strategic Coach concepts and systems to empower our teams to achieve higher impact. The Entrepreneurial Time System landed with more confusion than clarity, particularly the Free Day concept.

Let’s clear it all up.

A quick refresher on the Entrepreneurial Time System.

This system is for work/life integration to drive high performance.
 

You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to take advantage of it.

At its core is the discipline of treating one’s time with clear purpose and intention, because we all have limited time on earth. When you are deliberate with your time, you will get more value and impact from the finite amount you have.

You don’t need to own a business to run your time well. You are the CEO of your life. If you want to live life as a high performer, you must behave like one, including how you treat your time.

The most important mindset shift in this time system:

Over a 3rd of the year is primed for Free Days.

Let’s do quick math.

• A year has 52 weekends, that’s 104 days off.
• Add 10 statutory holidays (Civic Holiday included).
• Add 2 weeks of vacation (or more with longer tenure), that’s another 10 days.
• Add 6 to 8 days when we close HQ for the winter holidays (or PDVN for Tet holidays).

That’s 130 days, more than a third of the year, primed for Free Days.

How many days would you like to dedicate to recharging and rejuvenating yourself?

Ways to increase the number of Free Days from your time off.

You’d miss out on Free Days if you had to spend most of your weekends on absolutely essential but non-rejuvenating activities, such as housework and life admin.

If it’s possible for your weekly schedule, consider shifting those essential but non-rejuvenating activities from your weekends to your weekdays (early mornings, lunch hour, or evenings). Even an hour or two every weekday can free up your weekends.

If that’s not possible, try committing Saturday as your weekly Free Day, and Sunday as your weekly Buffer Day (or vice versa).

That said, not everyone has flexible weekday hours outside of work. If you have young kids, someone you care for at home, or a long commute, the above shift may not be available to you. Do what you can with the time you control. One protected Free Day a month beats none.

Unexpected things can pop up that demand a lot of extra time and energy outside of work. If you need the extra time, simply communicate and coordinate with your team.
 

Rules for Free Days
 

A full day for enjoying fun, recharging, rejuvenating activities.
The keyword here is enjoy, not plan or schedule. Use Buffer time on another day for planning and scheduling.

Absolutely no work-related activities.

• No consumption of work-related content (books, podcasts, videos, etc.)
• No checking emails, Slack, or work-related communications
• No thinking, talking, or writing about work-related topics
• No ideating, stressing, or ruminating about work situation or project
• Not even just one email, text message, or phone call about work

How to adapt this time system for our work week.

As a professional services agency, every workday is essentially a Focus Day. With understanding the intent and purpose of the Entrepreneurial Time System, we can adapt it to our standard work week.

Except for Free Day, which must be a full day, we can have Focus Time and Buffer Time within a day to suit our work settings and demands:
 

Focus Time at work
A solid block of time each workday where we focus on doing great work that produces results for our clients, and participate in meetings most essential to achieve this focus. This is what we’re all paid to do.

Buffer Time at work
Depending on the nature of your current role, you can either set aside a dedicated day for all planning, scheduling, and essential admin tasks outside of client work, or block off 1 hour at the end of each workday for them. It will take some trial and error to find a Focus/Buffer ratio and cadence that would work best for your current role and responsibilities.
 

Buffer Time at home
As mentioned above, before and/or after each workday, there may be time you can allocate as Buffer to take care of housework and life admin, which includes planning and scheduling various social and free-day activities. If that’s not possible at all, consider alternating weekends as Free Days and Buffer Days. Speak with us if you want guidance or support in this area.

Let’s prevent burnout.

Burnout sucks. It is dreadful for the person burning out, worrying for those around them, and problematic for the teams and the clients dependent on them.

That’s why it’s in everyone’s best interest to prevent burnout. There are ways to do so.

When you’re starting to see yourself spread thin, don’t wait until you have nothing left in the proverbial tank before allowing yourself the time to recharge. Speak with your team lead and project teams to coordinate the earliest possible time for you to take off to recharge. If you need more time, take more time. The only thing we ask is that you communicate and coordinate with your team so balls don’t accidentally get dropped.

When someone has needed the extra time, we’ve found a way. In fact, PD has a habit of enforcing extra time off to teammates who have been working too hard.

For those putting in long hours due to the nature of creative work (for example, a live production shoot, a live multi-day event, a sprint with an exciting timeline), please take the time off to recharge accordingly.

We want you to be healthy: physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Take a break so you don’t break.

We hope this article makes it much clearer how you may apply the time system for yourself. Like all new habits, it will take time and discipline to form.

If you still have questions about this topic, please ask. I (Lan) have been practicing this time system for many years, and have adjusted it many times to adapt to new roles and responsibilities over the years. Feel free to ask me anything about it.

On behalf of XT,

Lannie