I think this is an important comment. Work (and life) doesn't have to be a grind. Grind is surprisingly ineffective.
The number of hours we spend working is arbitrary. It's 8 hours in our world. On another planet it could have been 186 hours. I remind myself of this slightly tongue-in-cheek idea regularly when I'm trying to carve out another 20 minutes of work on the weekend. There is a clear upper limit to how many tasks one can get done in a week. However, the impact of a week's worth of work can be almost limitless. I can spend the entire week frantically answering emails and putting out fires (that often come from the fires I frantically put out last week), or I can dedicate the week to, say, rebuild my website's front page to be clearer and more engaging and taking my daughter camping. I know which week I'll look back on with more satisfaction.
It takes a while to let go of quantity and accept that I don't need (and, indeed, shouldn't) fill every waking hour with work and focus on important outcomes instead, but whenever I've been able to do it, I find it more relaxing and that is has yielded better results.
The number of hours we spend working is arbitrary. It's 8 hours in our world. On another planet it could have been 186 hours. I remind myself of this slightly tongue-in-cheek idea regularly when I'm trying to carve out another 20 minutes of work on the weekend. There is a clear upper limit to how many tasks one can get done in a week. However, the impact of a week's worth of work can be almost limitless. I can spend the entire week frantically answering emails and putting out fires (that often come from the fires I frantically put out last week), or I can dedicate the week to, say, rebuild my website's front page to be clearer and more engaging and taking my daughter camping. I know which week I'll look back on with more satisfaction.
It takes a while to let go of quantity and accept that I don't need (and, indeed, shouldn't) fill every waking hour with work and focus on important outcomes instead, but whenever I've been able to do it, I find it more relaxing and that is has yielded better results.