Fuck Your 9–5, It’s Time You Embrace the 9–8

Concentrate your time

Photo by Nicholas Postiglioni

I suck at managing my time.

I could try and blame it on my kids, my job, or the fact that I’m such a busy person, but that isn’t the case. I just suck.

I’d make Mia Khalifa blush.

A few months ago, I put a digital sticky note on my home screen and packed it full of all the things I want to achieve every day/week:

• Get up two hours before work and 6 am on days off
• Read and respond to 10 Medium articles
• Write for 30 minutes each morning
• Post on LinkedIn
• Tweet 3 times
• Brainstorm 10 headline ideas
• Workout 4 times per week

In an ideal world, I’d accomplish these most days, if not every day. After all, it’s better to be consistently good than inconsistently perfect.

But we don’t live in an ideal world.

In reality, I wake up an hour before work, grab a quick shower and a coffee for the car journey, and maybe a banana if my stomach growls loudly enough.

No reading. No brainstorming. And no writing.