In an interesting Zoom meeting yesterday, I was talking with a man from Toronto who has set his life up so that he can take multiple month-long vacations a year, work 3-5 hours a day, and never work on a weekend.
Describing my own life to him (working seven days a week, never quite catching up on my work, vacations a distant memory) made me sound like a lunatic. But to his credit, he didn't call me out, or tell me I was insane. He understood that I'm doing this on purpose.
Right now, I'm running with the throttle wide open, building my consulting practice while working to delegate a ton of work at Legion. (And anyone who has delegated work knows that the delegation process takes more time than just doing the work yourself, but it has to be done.) I know this is short-term pain for long-term gain.
Soon (or soon-ish), I'll have handed off a lot of the day-to-day work at Legion, and I'll have built out some serious systems at Starling Consulting that will allow me to breathe again, and maybe take a vacation. I'll have finished the first draft of my book, launched my first online courses, and developed process around my coaching and consulting work. I won't be this harried forever. (Because if I were, I'd drop over from exhaustion. This pace is unsustainable, even for a workaholic like me.)
And some day, I might even be like Dan, the man from yesterday. I might take month-long vacations and work five hours a day. (Although, knowing me, I'll take on some other crazy project and go right back to working 17 days a week.)