During my consulting stint in New York, I had two Jewish colleagues who observed Sabbath and would leave office sharp at 5 pm on Friday. And for the next 24 hours they were unreachable.
And this was in a firm where late nights, long hours, and fast email response was the norm. So did it disrupt our work or their careers? Not at all.
And it is not that they did some extra work to compensate for it, other than making some noise about responding to emails after the Sabbath.
Even when I had to leave early for a doctor’s visit, it never disrupted my work — I just moved things around and prioritised differently.
Here is something we don’t realise: We often work long hours simply because we can.
When some contingency forces us to stop work early, we cut out the low value work, stop surfing ‘interesting blogs’, and are less distracted by our phones.
The work somehow always gets done. 😊
Here are some universal truths: You will ALWAYS have more to do. You will never have enough time. And the answer is not to work till 1 am, but to draw boundaries, prioritise, and focus.
Your work will end when you decide that it ends (within reasonable limits). You get what you optimise for.
– Rajan