A few days ago I asked you how you can work less by working more. My answer – when work is no longer work.

Let me explain what I mean.

For many, the beginnings of our lives are spent being groomed to go into the existing system. That system is linear and looks like this:

School – Work – Retirement

With the retirement age being pushed further out by the government and the economic environment, that “goal” is a lot further off for many people. But I digress.

Social proof is a powerful concept – many people saying something works must mean it works, right? The problem with this is that it isn’t true for everyone’s situation. Often times you have to test it for yourself and see if it will work. But we’re told by many many people over a period of years that if we want to be “successful” we have to follow this path. After all, there are millions of successful people out there that did this same thing.

This system is the 9-to-5 that we’re all familiar with. It’s the same setup that tells us to work 50 weeks and take, if we’re lucky, 2 weeks off, at certain times of the year. It is this that also tells us that work is work and family time is family time. It clearly denotes the difference between how we spend the time in our lives.

I call shenanigans.

As I write this I’m sitting in a hotel room with my wife and daughter, in Thailand. We’re going to be here for a year or more. Before this we lived in Minnesota for 5 months, and before that Florida.

Since my daughter was born 3 years ago we’ve spent a lot of time together. I started my MBA on the same day she was born, and almost 2 years later we all went to Vienna as part of the program, and stopped in Spain to visit friends. In between I spoke at conferences, and built businesses.

I say this not to brag, but to show you an example of what’s possible.

There is no separation between work you and personal you. Everything you do, be it business, going to a movie with your family, spending time with friends, is all a part of who you are.

Set yourself up for continuous productivity

Why divide up your time into discrete little chunks? Sure you’ve been told to do that for years, but I’m here to suggest you stop.

You want more independence? Stop dividing up your time. If you can do that, you can be continuously productive.

How? Here’s an example.

I carry with me 2 things at all times – my iPhone, and a notebook (yes paper and pen). On my iPhone, I have two apps that sync with my Mac – Things, and Evernote. I might be having dinner with my family and my subconscious suddenly puts together some dots and an idea appears. If it’s just a small idea I might put it into Evernote by recording a voice note. If it’s flooding in, I’ll open the notebook and jot it down mind map style. If it requires me to take action I put a to do into Things. After I get it out of my head and into whatever form I can get back to eating dinner. When we get back home, I open up the Mac and sync the apps.

Don’t get me wrong, my family is used to me operating like this. Without them and their understanding, this type of thing wouldn’t be possible.

Here’s another example – we don’t take vacations, but we do travel as much as we can afford to. Because I can operate from anywhere with an Internet connection (thanks to email, Skype, and IM), I can be in constant contact with my clients wherever we are. No need for a physical office or presence to do that. So if we’re visiting somewhere I can put in an hour or two of work, and then we can see some sights. I also don’t like to sleep – what a waste of time. So when my daughter goes to bed I can open up the laptop and start hammering away on those ideas that bubbled up at dinner.

Not having set hours for when things occur gives a much greater ability to pivot. The faster you can pivot, the more agile you can be, the better you can be positioned to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. And if you’re taking massive action, they will appear, all the time.

What do you think?

I’d like to know what you think about all this. Does it sound like a pipe dream or is this your reality too? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.

About Robert Dempsey

CEO & Founder of Dempsey Marketing, web developer, avid reader, proud father and husband. I get a lot of stuff done.

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