Cherish that weekend

When you’re self-employed you have to do everything yourself. And that’s fine. Because having to do everything yourself comes with the benefit of nobody telling you what to do and when to do it.

You’re in charge. And thats fantastic. But there are still some things that you need to pay attention to. Spare time and how to get a decent balance comes to mind. And this is where it catches my interest, when I read Tammy Erickson’s piece on the declining need for weekends.

Tammy’s point is that technology have made it possible for us to get together less psysically and thus provide for more flexibility in planning of work. But I think she fails to address one crucial point: Management.

It would be great if people in jobs could plan for themselves. But in reality what I think would happen would be an increase in pressure to work more in order to make your deadlines, your budgets and your promotion - not to mention your bonus.

If we allowed for total flexible planning and abondoned weekends it would be a free-for-all for managers looking to extort even more work out of the workforce. And it would lead to unhappy, burned out employees.

Some things are just so sacred that you need to have some basic rules for their governance. Weekends - and thus the protection of your spare time - is one of them, I think.

Having said all that I realize that for us self-employed the matter may be entirely different. But thats another story.