Unplug From Work: Your Money Must Work Harder Than You Do

Some work cultures are genuinely all-encompassing and toxic. You get paid a lot, so you owe it to them. You alone have the knowledge and the skills to get them through the day. If you are not immediately available, even on holiday, you could lose your payrise and promotion, or even be fired.

Is that such a bad thing? You should have a non-zero, but limited tolerance. Sometimes on the path to financial independence, we need to sacrifice happiness to get ourselves back on track towards our investment goals. To put up with that toxic environment.

But set a cap on it, say max 5 years. There are many other ways to achieve or adjust your goals beyond that timeframe. Meanwhile shelter the other important things in your life from the fallout and try to create some space for yourself, even if it’s an hour a day.

If your business cannot survive without you for a week, there is genuinely a problem. You are not the President of the United States. What if you got hit by a bus? There is no resilience in the system. There should be processes in place and people able to step up to cover for you.

If you are worried nobody will miss you and those stepping up will take over your job, then you’re probably not the only one who thinks this. You’re in the wrong job and at risk of being fired anyway.

If I unplug, I will be so overwhelmed when I get back that it will cancel any benefits. Again, this is a process problem. Anything truly important will a) have been dealt with by your colleagues b) be raised again c) be flagged for you.

Wait, nobody else is reading your emails or knows what’s important? You have a process problem. Nobody else can approve that document? You have a process problem. Nobody else has the skills to fix this urgent issue? The client will only talk to you? You have… you get the idea.

So much of work is bullshit and the idea that you cannot unplug fully for a whole week with your world or business collapsing is toxic bullshit. Don’t put up with it. Otherwise it will seep into other areas, like compulsively having to check the news to gain a sense of control over the world, compulsively having to check your stock portfolio to gain a sense of control over your money.

There are many things out of your control and you are not the centre of the world. Almost everything will keep turning without you. That may dent your ego, but it is also incredibly freeing. Give yourself a taste of that freedom. It’s just a week. And by the way, this can equally apply to weekends… and evenings…

How I did it

Clients. Paying customers deserve rapid and quality support. I put in place systems to ensure that if someone bought my course, they would get access to it immediately. All the channels for answering questions were covered by my team of gurus or my outreach manager.

Automation. If processes are well automated, the client gets what they want without even having to speak to you. So you can be on holiday. They can speak to someone else, well-instructed by you, or they can wait a week. I set up an email reminding everyone that the next live Q&A session was delayed [ok, it didn’t send, so that was a bummer but the intention was there!]

An out of office response linking to other people who can help goes a long way to reducing the queue of emailers needing to speak to you.

Replacements. I made sure my outreach manager knew where key information and resources were, what queries would likely come in and how to handle them. She had access to client-facing email accounts and calendars, and then more sensitive accounts were covered by the out of office automation linking back to her. She would flag in the system any important emails requiring a response from me on my return.

As a final failsafe…

Emergencies. Both my outreach manager and my family knew they could always whatsapp or even call my other half if there was a true business or family emergency. My manager would not want to be hassling her, so that filters out everything but really important stuff. In the end, this was only triggered once in the whole week and only served to reveal another area my manager could cover next time.

The secret to my successful unplugging was actually taking the action to turn off my phone and laptop. If I ever had to turn them on to check the weather or a holiday-related item, I refused to allow my eyes to look at notifications etc. Being 100% faithful to unplugging (as with anything) is much easier than being 99% faithful. In future, having a crappy burner phone to contact baddies in Line of Duty check the weather and maps etc would be a good idea.

My reading list

After a day, I realised I didn’t miss emails, social or especially the news at all. When I returned, the news was predictably depressing and the stock market had been bobbing along. Even if it had crashed horribly, I wouldn’t have needed to take any action.

One of the true joys of the holiday was the amount of time I could spend reading books. Reading a book requires you to f.o.c.u.s and none of us are very good at that anymore.

Here’s what I took with me, all great:

Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Issacson
Inner Engineering – Sadhguru
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Investing Demystified – Lars Kroijer

It’s good to take a mix of books because you don’t know in advance what you will feel like reading. In the end, I spent all my time on Leonardo da Vinci and Sadhguru. Leonardo was so incredible, so fascinating and so far ahead of his time on things like anatomy and fluid dynamics. I highly recommend the book, especially as it ranges so widely across the arts and sciences.

You can do this

It’s a good to have a challenge. Try it. If the thought makes you nervous, try it with first an evening (or an hour, but that’s a bit weak), then a weekend. Life is more important than work. You are more than your work. You just need the space to prove it to yourself.

Any questions or comments? Add them below.