Using leisure time to create career change.
Maximise Sundays to avoid dreading Mondays. Leisure time can easily be squandered. After back to back days on the relentless rota of work, Sunday is especially precious. Ironic then, that this unstructured time of autonomy and balance can be overshadowed with the feeling that the day just isn’t long enough to make a difference. Leisure time has a unique quicksilver quality which can flow away if you’re not careful.
Start focused, stay flowy.
The big picture is daunting, so stay focused. Every 1000-piece jigsaw begins with just four corners. And lots of other wisdom. To-do lists. How un-Sunday is that! So here is the philosophy: if work-life balance is poorly weighted and Sunday is a tail-chasing seventh of your life spent miserably on the hamster wheel — use it differently. Intelligently.
Manifest a vision of what success looks like.
A list of words scribbled in a notebook, a picture taped to a wall, a mind-map of half-formed thoughts. Get those chattering thoughts out of your crowded head and onto a physical plane so that you can get started. Prioritise the process of giving form to your dreams and then pat yourself on the back. You’re off!
Exiting teaching, heading to writing.
A great place to start on the journey to have more Sunday afternoons than Monday mornings is to determine the lifestyle you want to live. Get concrete. In my case it helped to begin by defining what it is about work that I want to change, and in so doing, turn dread on its head. Using the Power of Three (in teacher-speak: triadic structure) I made my list: replace rigid timetables with flexible working; stifling bureaucracy with autonomy; non-negotiable conformity with productive creativity.
Do. One. Thing.
In my case it was ‘learn HTML’. That has been one piece of advice from a recruitment perspective. “Look at the specs for jobs you are aiming for and begin to learn those skills that you’ll need.” So I had a look. The jargon can be daunting — that is the nature of jargon though, to mark out territory for those in the know, and exclude those who don’t. I know that from teaching. I’ll bet you can’t guess what a ‘WAGOLL’ is…An infantile acronym, go on, say it aloud.
So with the likes of acronyms such as HTML and SEO, I found myself in discomfort zone. What job ads for content writing don’t tell you is that you can hit https://www.w3schools.com/ and begin to learn for yourself. Learning a new skill like HTML is within your grasp.
What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages
HTML describes the structure of a Web page
HTML consists of a series of elements
HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content
HTML elements label pieces of content such as “this is a heading”, “this is a paragraph”, “this is a link”, etc.
Sunday morning well spent
So it is possible to maximise Sundays to avoid dreading Mondays. Make time to learn or practise, to research; to create your own future. I know now that HTML is a tool I can use as part of a career change. Sunday morning has been empowering. Psychologically motivating, practical and completed at my leisure. No doubt there will be many slips ‘twixt cup and lip in forging a change in career direction. Start with one productive hour of golden Sunday time, though, and stop dreading Mondays.
