I’ve been thinking about downtime.
I read this blog post by Fred Wilson – a venture capitalist – musing about when does he stop? At what point does he allow himself some down time?
Hell, I don’t know. Both my parents are in their 60s and working a ton at jobs they love. I have no role model for retirement. But that’s probably ok, because I don’t think retirement will look the same when I get to my 60s as it did back when people could actually afford to retire.
Whatever, downtime: From Fred’s blog:
For the past twenty years, I have been in a zone where I work all the time. It has allowed me to stay on top of things and help build two venture capital firms. While I don’t take meetings or go to the office or travel on the weekends, I work a lot on saturday and sunday. The same is true of our family vacations. I find a few hours every morning and in the afternoons where I can do calls, do email, and stay on top of things.Taking a couple days off and a view like this certainly makes me wonder how much longer I can and should keep up that kind of lifestyle
The comments of the post descend into people musing about when they’ll burn out from working 24 hours a day, stop waking up with anxiety dreams about work, etc. I’m so slammed at work right now that I’ve got three straight weeks dreaming about work problems I have to face in the morning, so I get it, but I think, arrogantly, this is where runners have a leg up (pardon the pun, and the assholic runner-centric tone this post just took.)
My favorite thing about working out in the mornings – or at any point during the day – is that it’s perfect me-time. It clears my head. It’s enjoyable. So much of my day is dictated by choices other people make for me – this meeting at 10, the project due at 1, etc. – that it’s nice to be up early enough to feel like I have a part of the day that is mine. By the time I get to work, I’ve already checked off stuff that I want to do from my list. It makes the demanding nature of my outlook meeting reminders – and the stress I feel when I wake up thinking about work stuff – slightly less oppressive.
I don’t know what retirement will look like. I can’t really imagine it, frankly. But I feel like if I can keep carving out that hour for myself in the mornings (and, let’s be real, the bedtime required to make that early morning possible) – the point in time when I’ll feel like I need to cease working entirely keeps getting pushed further out.
