193. What Will I Have to Give Up to Create a 3-Day Weekend Lifestyle?

Over the last few years, there's been a lot of talk about four day work weeks and three day weekends. And it's very exciting. You have companies that are trying this. You have people like Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart of four Day week global helping companies understand how they can offer this possibility through experiments to their employees. And then you have a lot of the acceleration of the process that's happened because employers now have seen that their employees can work from home.

All of the remote working that's come as a result of COVID people are seeing, okay, we can really get more to a results based environment. And so one of the questions that comes up is, well, Wade, let's say I decide to pursue this four day work week, three day weekend lifestyle concept, what am I giving up? And the best way I can answer that is to say, well, first let's look at what you're going to get. Because when I talk to my friends that work jobs they don't like and they say, wait, you know what? I don't like this job.

I'm making a lot of money. So I make sure I take care of myself on the weekends. I spend a lot of money on myself on the weekends. But during the week, I'm working in 50, 60, 70 hours a job. I don't like making great money, and so I want to make sure I enjoy myself on the weekend.

And then my question is, okay, well, then how much are you saving? What are you putting aside so you can kind of buy your weight out of this lifestyle? They say, no, wait, I'm living it up all the way. So, okay, let me get this straight. You're stuck now in this race of you have to keep working the 70, 80 hours a week or whatever it is to keep enjoying these things you want and you're never going to get out.

And the concept for them is, well, what am I losing? We do I'm going to lose these weekends. I'm going to lose all these different things. I'm going to lose the ability to go to this club or go on this trip, and I say, hey, understood, but then let's look at what you gain if you say, okay, I'm going to put myself first. I'm going to put my loved ones first.

I'm going to put my preferences, my lifestyle first. What you're going to find is there are going to be many things that you no longer are really into as much or you need to do. Because, see, when you're enjoying your default week, when every week you're saying, okay, I'm getting four days a week, even if it's work you don't fully love, but you're getting your work. And then you've got three days to disconnect, to enjoy life, whether it's work you love, whether it's work you don't love, whatever it is, but you have three day weekends every weekend and you get to fully enjoy that and fully enjoy time and decompress. What happens is by the time you reach work on Monday, you're usually ready to go.

And so you don't have to now spend all this money on experiences over the weekend just to get you to decompress. You can actually be a little more intentional. There's a certain pace you have, and I found if there's one variable that's most relevant to how people live, it's their pace. Are they rushed and hurried or do they have time to kind of take things a little bit at a time? And so when you have a slower pace, you don't always have to be on top of things.

You don't always have to rush. You can take more time. You can decide, do I want to do certain things or not? You can get really more present to your activities. And when you get to your activities, you're going to find that some of your activities don't require a lot of financial investment.

Some activities, some hobbies, are more expensive than others. But the more you're able to enjoy time with the people you love most, you're going to find that it doesn't have to be some over the top constantly trying to recreate an epic experience way of living. You're going to say, yeah, we're going to go do this thing, we're going to go to the park, we're going to go to the beach, we're going to hang out whenever it is. And life can take on a much more chill pace. And so now that pace very often doesn't require as much money to fund it.

And so I'm simply going to suggest to you that until you've tried it, you'll never know what you're missing out on by living in this way. And if you get a chance and you give yourself that opportunity to live in this way, even if you do an experiment, even if you say, you know what, you say to your boss, here's what I'd like to do. I want to take Fridays off for the next, let's say 15 weeks. I've got three weeks of paid vacation. I don't want him in a row.

So I just want a Friday off for the next 15 weeks or the next ten weeks or whatever it is. You don't even have to tell them what's going on. And you just enjoy that pace and see what it feels like and then decide, is that how you'd like to live? Because if you can do that, if you can create that time, you're going to really be able to understand that you're not giving up anything. When you get the time with your loved ones, when you get the time to do activities you enjoy, when you have the energy to do them, when you have the focus to be present with the people you love, and when you can do this every single weekend, it's more about what you can gain than what you're giving up.

And what you gain is presence connection. You gain a whole different way of living that then allows you to connect with other people who are living in a similar way. And it does not mean you're going to make less. In fact, very often you also give yourself space and you give yourself and your brain time to process things and think through things and create better decisions. So I hope you find this helpful.

If you have questions like this of certain things you wonder about living a three day weekend lifestyle or what it looks like, please feel free to email them to me or go to threeday weekendrepreneur.com. And there's an area where you can submit a question by audio and you can just simply read the question to me, record it to me and send it to me. As always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life. Thanks for listening.