Offline on the Holidays

One thing that I love about the holidays is the concept of the world going offline for a couple of days or three or four. This year, with Christmas Eve on a Thursday, it seemed as if lots of folks were softening their schedules starting on Monday, and what a delight it was. My inbox was surprisingly empty, as if the concept of the “inbox” became the Ten’s version of the freelancer’s mind / body / soul which must be periodically emptied and sharpened after times of total “crazy busy-ness.” If you’re a freelancer or if you work a few jobs, as I do, you know that there’s really little “down time” in your life of 9 to 5 freedom. Response time, speed and follow-through is often a freelancer’s best method of origination and client retention, and it’s only during times like “the holidays” that the nomads can really turn it off and breathe for a few days. It’s as if “the holidays” is becoming an annual stateside land-locked retreat opportunity, much like when you’re flying on a plan (which, if Richard Branson has his way, will soon stop becoming a 2-hour safe haven free of incoming pings). Freelancing is full of contradiction: people want to be free of the regular corporate life but require it’s existence to pay the bills. People want to work from home, yet working at home quickly blends work life and home life into one big mesh of worky-livvy jello. I wonder if the key to true productivity is to redefine what it means to be “productive” — I think it’s perfectly fine to do 3x the amount of work in a third of the time, and to spend the remaining 2/3 of that time training for the big race or planning the next “fun only” project. It’s easy to fill that remaining time with more work, especially if you’re addicted to working, because it’s (not surprisingly) fun. But forcing yourself to “not work” might make the actual work more fun — and might allow everyone to invite-in the right kind of work. And not the filler kind of work.