The 7 Day Life

I was born into a world that operates on a 7 day week and accepted it as normal. Kids went to school for 5 of those days and adults went to work. 5 days on, 2 days off. And that's just how it is.

When I was eventually forced to join the full-time workforce, I questioned this structure.

Why grind away for 5 days only to enjoy 2? Working through the week to afford ourselves a weekend? The 5 day grind costs so much there's often nothing left over for the weekend. Time and money spent travelling to and from work, overpriced but convenient caffeine and takeaway food to keep you going. Some of us buy expensive cars to travel to and from a place we don't even want to go.

It's fucking crazy.

Then I tried scaling that 5-on-2-off ratio up from days to years. Imagine grinding 5 years just to earn 2 years off. Now stretch it further — across your whole life — and it plays out something like:

Phase	Ages	Years
Work	20 to 55	35
The "weekend"	55 to 60	5
Retirement	60 onwards	~30

A whole life spent working, with a five-year window to enjoy it before your body starts failing you.

Again, it's fucking crazy.

I started to treat each week like it was my whole life. If how you live one week is a snapshot of your life then there's no way I was signing up to work 35 out of my 70 years. My only goal initially was to claw back 1 day, just to see if I could. By going from working 5 to 4 days a week I'd be gaining back 10 years of my life. I was working full time but living alone in a 2 bedroom apartment, I rented out the extra room reducing my cost of living and told my boss I no longer wanted to work more than 4 days a week. That taste of freedom got me. I cut more costs and eventually realised I could get away with 3 days a week. I'd officially tipped the scales to the point I'd now work less than half of the week.

3 days on, 4 days off. 30 years of work for a 40 year weekend. Way less fucking crazy.

Reframing the 7 day work week into an expanded view of your whole life helps to illuminate the absurdity of our accepted norms.

It's all well and good to say "suck it up" and grind it out for 5, 10, even 50 years, and then reap the rewards. But what if you die? Imagine working from 20 to 30 then dying at 31. Would you be stoked to have spent the last decade working 5 out of 7 days? Fuck that!

You need to love your life along the way. You need to live as you go.

If you're truly ok with working most of your life to enjoy the last stretch of it then you'll have no problems finding work and getting by in this world.

That's your choice, but it is exactly that — a choice.

But if you want to live more, and work less, like I think most people do. Then it helps to look at each week like it's your whole life and start finding ways to claw back 1 day a week, or half a day, or even just an hour.

But how can you do this without renting out your spare room? What if you don't have a spare room to rent out? How does someone working full time to support dependants start clawing back decades of their life?

That's what Formulate Freedom is all about. Almost every article on this site speaks to that sentiment.

Unfollowing Freedom will help you cut social media out of your life completely and gain back valuable time you can spend actually enjoying real life or channeling into a business you love.

Don't Stop Yourself From Starting illustrates how important it is to just start, even if you don't know what you're doing.

Fortune Favours Freedom speaks to the life changing opportunities that find their way to those who are open to them.

Just Add Value gives a realistic framework for finding something of your own worth starting.

Finding Freedom breaks down my 10 year entrepreneurial journey into bite sized pieces that might shed some light on why I feel qualified to speak on such topics.

Have a poke around and see where the site takes you.