Do Less (8 page)

Obviously, the long hours and sparse vacation time aren't serving you well. But how do you change things? How do you reduce your work hours or even days? Is it really possible to start taking alternate Fridays off or to negotiate working from home or even ask for unpaid leave? Yes. If your goal is to work less so you can have more personal time, you need to realign your work hours to give you more time for those things you really value. With some small easy steps, you can start the process of working less and enjoying life more.

The first answer is to reduce your need for the paycheck. The Money section of this book will give you ideas for cutting your bills, and in the Home section, you learned how to live well by owning and spending less. Revisit your expenses before you make your plan for reducing work hours or taking extra leave. Are there a few more things you can do without if you're spending less time in the office? There are inherent savings to working less, such as:

• Reduced commuting costs
  
• Less wear on work clothing
  
• Less money spent on daycare
  
• Less money spent on takeout food
  
• Less money spent on hiring others to do home services, such as cleaning or repairs, because you don't have the time do them yourself
  

Make a list of all those things you regularly spend money on that you could eliminate or reduce if you worked less.

Are you always behind at work? Do you take on more responsibility and projects than you have time for? If the root of your long hours at the office is an unrealistic workload, it is time to learn to say no. It is time to sit down with your manager and outline all the work you are currently responsible for and how much of it can be realistically done by one person in the hours described in the company policy. Many of us find ourselves working evenings and weekends because we say yes to every request that comes our way and we take on far more than is in our job description.

If you find it difficult to say no, start equating new projects and tasks with what will suffer in your personal life. Saying yes to extra work will mean less sleep, less time with your loved ones, and less time for those things you love to do. Saying yes to extra work means saying yes to more stress, and more stress is bad for your health and can take years off your life. Is it worth it? Start asking yourself that before you accept a new project.

Changing your work hours and working from home are two simple ways to work less. If you have a long commute that doubles during rush hour, request an earlier or later start so that you can reduce your driving time to increase your living time. Ideally this shift in work hours plays into your natural strengths, such as an early start if you're a morning person, or a later start if one of your goals is to have a relaxed morning of personal time before work.

An important piece to remember when negotiating different working arrangements and schedules is that a lot of employers don't have experience with these requests. If anything, people want to work
more
these days. You may be a maverick in the company! For the arrangement to be successful and beneficial for both you and your employer, you should approach it gradually and thoughtfully.

At first, you may want to ask for something small, like working from home two days a month. If you have a thirty-minute commute to work, this change alone can give you the equivalent of three extra days off a year with no loss of salary. In addition to that extra time, you'll also save on commuting costs. Although it might seem frustrating to start with such a small request, there are still big lifestyle and financial gains to be made with just a small change in your work arrangements.

When you ask to work from home two days a month, offer a trial basis of three months. This is especially important if flexible work arrangements aren't common at your workplace. The goal of this trial period is to impress your manager with the benefits to the company so that he or she is open to other flexible work arrangements down the road. Use the ideas in the Work Smarter section to be very productive during the trial period of your new work schedule. A flexible work arrangement hinges on employer/employee trust, so treat your new privileges with the same professionalism you would the rest of your job. If you successfully negotiate working from home, resist taking a work-at-home day outside of the set schedule. This respect for the freedom you are being given will go a long way in creating the trust needed for successful flexible work arrangements.

Reducing work hours is the next obvious step to working less. One relatively easy change if you work shifts is to ask to reduce your hours and, in the interim, offer one of your shifts to a coworker who needs extra money. (Many people are looking to work more, not less, because they have bills to pay and so much stuff they want to buy. When you, however, decide to Do Less, you are freeing yourself of that all-consuming need to work more and more.)

If you are in a salaried position, rather than hourly or shift work, take a hard look at your workload:

• Can your job truly be done in four days instead of five without the loss of hours impacting the quality of your work?
  
• Could you ask to work four longer days instead of five traditional workdays?
  
• Could you telecommute one day a week?
  
• If your job can't be condensed, think of tasks that could easily be shared or shifted to a coworker or perhaps into a new role.
  
• Keep your eyes and ears open for colleagues who are also looking for flexible work arrangements or anyone eager to take on more responsibility and projects. A colleague interested in working fewer hours could become a valuable ally for job sharing.
  

When you sit down to discuss your desired work arrangement with your manager, come prepared with a list of the benefits to the employer rather than the benefits to yourself. You'll need to prove that working less is in the company's favor, rather than just part of your own plan to create more time for yourself.

If at first you don't succeed in reducing your work hours, be patient. It may not be the right time for your employer, but you can still use the ideas in the Work Smarter section to leave your work at work instead of taking it home at night. Continue to build a case for flexible work arrangements, and when it's time for your next performance review, ask again for a trial period to work less or work from home.

If work flexibility is completely unavailable, consider looking for a new job. More and more information shows that flexible work arrangements benefit employers as much as they benefit employees. Unless you're on the cusp of retirement, there is no reason not to look for work arrangements that fit your new simplified lifestyle. Keep your eyes and ears open for friends and acquaintances who have flexible work. Good jobs are often found person-to-person rather than in traditional advertisements or listings.

Retirement might not be the panacea or enticing finish line people envisioned years ago. Previous generations of retirees benefited from good pensions, decades of saving when credit was scarce and consumerism far less rampant, and jobs that they left at the office each night rather than carried around with them in their pockets. The people currently living well in retirement had far more work-life balance in their careers than most of us do today.

The long hours, stress, and sitting at our desks and in cars for most of the day are actually eroding our ability to enjoy our golden years. We're not putting the energy into our health and wellness because we're so busy working. And if we don't take care of our health now, we'll face a shocking decline in the quality of our lives as we hurtle into old age. The visions of annual cruises and summers golfing will be replaced by the reality of medical appointments and bills. The active retirement life we dreamed of will evaporate under the weight of our poor health and limited mobility.

If all that sounds very depressing, don't despair. It's never too late to start living better, no matter how old you are. It's yet another reason to streamline your home and working life with minimalism. To enjoy many tomorrows, you need to take care of yourself today. Do not deceive yourself into thinking you will get into shape or start eating better or reduce your stress when the pace of life is a bit slower. Start your wellness plan—your working less, doing less, and living more plan—
today
if you want to enjoy your golden years.

Besides, why wait for retirement to start enjoying your life? Embrace minimalism, and you can restart that hobby, reconnect with family, or finally learn another language now, not in retirement. Live a vibrant life every day of your life. Let go of the idea that retirement will be a line in the sand or that it's when you'll finally do the things you've been putting off for years because you're too busy. You can have a wonderful work-life balance before retirement if you simplify and use the tenets of minimalism to reduce your income needs. Enjoy your life more by having less no matter what stage of your work life you are in: just starting out, mid-career, or retirement.

We all need money to retire, and yet, if we spend forty years working ourselves to the bone, we won't be able to enjoy those golden years. The answer to this conundrum is to be flexible and, again, align life with your values now. You'll have to live differently now if you want to live well during retirement. Here are several ideas for restructuring your work and retirement plans:

• Work less now but work longer. Push retirement back indefinitely and work less now so that you can enjoy life both now and down the line. Working part-time into your golden age will keep your mind sharp and can actually improve the quality of your retirement life. If you love your career, this can be a great way to slowly transition into not working. Working part-time in retirement could also be a chance to explore a new interest by taking on an entry-level job in a new industry or turning a hobby into a part-time job.
  
• Work less now and reduce your cost of living. With your new minimalist attitude about what you need to be happy, you can cut your expenses and still stay on track for retirement. In fact, you may even hit retirement age earlier because you'll need less money to live off of later in life.
  
• Take mini-retirements from work. Many employers offer sabbatical programs, allowing you to take unpaid leave. Some employers even have options to take a salary reduction for several years and then take a paid sabbatical. Mini-retirements could mean anything from taking a few extra weeks of unpaid vacation time annually to taking a full year away from the office. If you are in a very secure industry with lots of job availability, a mini-retirement could mean quitting your job and taking three months off before finding a new job.
  

For some us a paycheck, nice coworkers, and a desk near a window are enough to make the workweek enjoyable. We like our jobs, but they aren't passions. For others, a job is not just a job but also something that allows us to express ourselves, pursue lofty goals, and work very hard. If you are in a job that you don't like and you yearn not to work less or retire early, but to do something you truly love and that excites you, this next section is for you. Life is too short to spend forty or more hours a week at a job you really hate when you have dreams and ambitions for something bigger. So if you're itching to get out and start a business or make a hard right in your career, think minimalism! It helps to remind yourself that nothing bought in a store can bring the same happiness as following your dreams.

What was your dream job from childhood? Some of us wanted to be firefighters or astronauts or ballerinas. As we got older those dreams faded, or reality set in. We quit ballet in third grade or we realized only a few people become astronauts and we weren't going to be one of them. We saw that not every job was illustrated in a Richard Scarry book. Some of us replaced these dreams with more practical goals, but some of us never replaced them at all and merely fell into a job and career. The first place that hired us out of high school or college dictated that we would manage a retail clothing store (even though we weren't that enthused about men's fashion) or eventually become an IT project manager (because the job prospects looked promising). Our dreams became just that, dreams instead of goals, and we resigned ourselves to the jobs and industries we fell into or chose because they were safe.

Some people know just what job they'd love to do. If you don't, now is the time to explore different career possibilities. Ask yourself questions about what appeals to your interests and works to your strengths. Do you like working with and for people, or do you prefer working independently with infrequent interaction with colleagues or customers? Meeting with a career counselor or taking a personality test like Myers-Briggs can help you narrow in on your ideal career.

You may already have an idea of the work you would love to do, but you can't see how to make it happen. Your fourth-grade dream was to be a doctor, but now you work in finance and still have regrets about not pursuing medical school. Changing careers is a daunting task as you get older. Getting into medical school in your thirties or forties, though not impossible, is hugely challenging. After all, the realities of a career U-turn don't mesh well with life realities such as college payments or retirement plans.

Now that you've seen that you can live well and simply on a fraction of the money you once thought you needed, however, maybe you
can
take that big risk and completely change careers. The insurance broker can go back to school and become a medical technician. The administrative assistant can become a grade-school teacher. We've talked about living simply and reducing your cost of living, and there are dozens of ideas in this book to reduce your expenses so that you can make a career change. If that is your unfulfilled dream, go after it. It make take a few years of planning and saving before it becomes a reality, but if it truly is your passion, it will be well worth the effort.