{"id":8476,"date":"2013-09-02T13:57:17","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T20:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=8476"},"modified":"2013-09-02T13:59:11","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T20:59:11","slug":"day-of-rest-5-months-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2013\/09\/day-of-rest-5-months-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Day of Rest, 5 months later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in April I wrote the blog post “Day of Rest”<\/a> about my intention to take a day off from “things that feel like work” once a week. Since I’m studying Judaism and have joined a synagogue with MJ the logical selection for the day was Saturday.<\/p>\n

The following are some take-aways I’ve had since starting this.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t work when I’m traveling<\/h2>\n

When I’m traveling it usually means that my working day is significantly longer than 8 hours when you take into account commuting, socializing and dinners out. I also rarely have access to the solid internet connection I have at home or the computing power there. In all this means I’m stuck with a laptop, a sub-optimal internet connection and limited time for actually working on it. While I do try to plan accordingly, I still highly value any down time I get and often find that moments I can sneak online even on Saturdays to get work done are important. Additionally, it’s quite common for me to be presenting or otherwise engaged in conference activities on the weekends I travel for work.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s hard to avoid scheduling work on Saturday<\/h2>\n

I’m a systems administrator, and although I now work on a larger team there are times when we have to schedule work on weekends, sometimes that lands on Saturday. There are also times like in a couple weeks that I’m working to do final prep a workshop with an out of town colleague and our available window for that is between a business trip with return from on Friday and the workshop on Sunday. Local conferences and events sometimes land on Saturdays too.<\/p>\n

I had to define for myself what is work and what is not<\/h2>\n

This was perhaps the hardest thing of all. Jewish teachings have lists and rulings and such that give guidelines, but it didn’t really work for me so I really played it all by ear. My strategy was “if it feels like work<\/em> I won’t do it” and that seemed to serve me well. I quickly had to put all OpenStack and Ubuntu work into the off-limits category, as much as I enjoy it all, it was work. I tend to stay away from dishes and laundry, and things like cleaning up storage. I will sometimes bank on Saturday just because of logistical limitations, and we do shopping sometimes but I try to avoid things like grocery shopping and lean toward the more fun types of shopping (or at least which takes us somewhere interesting).<\/p>\n

There is a lot I want to do in my life that is not work<\/h2>\n

I live in an amazing city and there are so many things I want to see and do! Saturdays have become my go to day for visiting museums and spending leisurely lunches with MJ. There’s also a lot I want to learn, so I’ve started using Saturday to catch up on reading personal and news blogs, magazines and books. This Saturday I also took some time to play with my electronics kit.<\/p>\n

People understand<\/h2>\n

I was a bit worried that my work would suffer if I wasn’t hovering over my keyboard all day to work with those weekend community members, but it turns out that people understand more than I thought they would. After a few months in some of my communities it became accepted that I’m away on Saturdays and will be back in full swing on Sunday to help out. Today I even get messages from colleagues I work with that end with “but look at this tomorrow, I know it’s your day off!”<\/p>\n

It gets easier<\/h2>\n

The first few weeks I did this it was really hard to let go. I made a lot of exceptions (“well I have to<\/em> do Ubuntu Weekly News prep on Saturday morning”) and doing something as drastic as not checking email all day seemed completely unnecessary (“not all<\/em> of my email is work”). But as I started cutting back in some areas, it naturally became easier to cut back in others. I never intended to stop checking email and obsessing over social media on Saturdays, but this Saturday I decided to do just that and found a comforting liberation in not checking my phone all the time, and every moment I reached for it I was able to become mindful of what I was doing and keep myself in the physical present instead of checking my phone.<\/p>\n

It’s awesome<\/h2>\n

I work a lot because I truly enjoy what I do, but even I needed a break. I’ve noticed that not only do I enjoy my day off, but it brings me back to my work projects energized and excited to get on with work. I also get the satisfaction of having visited a museum for an exhibit I really wanted to see or finally finishing a book I’ve been enjoying because now these things aren’t just scattered among the “more important” work items. I had honestly feared that taking a day off would mean the lost of productivity, but it’s actually had the opposite effect since I’m more productive on the other 6 days and I’m happier and better rested in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in April I wrote the blog post “Day of Rest” about my intention to take a day off from “things that feel like work” once a week. Since I’m studying Judaism and have joined a synagogue with MJ the logical selection for the day was Saturday. The following are some take-aways I’ve had since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8479,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8476\/revisions\/8479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}