The first memory I have of rebelling was as a 7-year old Baby Boomer girl. My mother’s new boyfriend, who was about to become my stepfather, was attempting to bond with me in our flat on the South Side of Chicago.
I showed him the picture I had just colored and his response was to help me make it better—by showing me how to color inside the lines.
I think that was the moment in my life that I decided I did not like coloring inside the lines. I became the one in the family that heard a different drummer. Coming of age in Northern California during the sixties took that tendency to new levels. It did not end when I married a Nigerian and went off to live on what seemed to my parents, and sometimes to me, a different planet.
I’ve lived quite an interesting life so far. The four adults I raised are quite remarkable, each in their own way. I have taught in universities, managed in an oil company, and coached and trained literally thousands of leaders.
However, I recently hit a wall. As an entrepreneur attempting to grow my business, I realized that I had created a prison of sorts around me that has kept me from the level of success I desire.
The difference between me and another entrepreneur I know who is very successful in her training and educational business? She has a work schedule, systems and processes in place. Monday through Friday, she focuses. I always thought m-f/9-5 was, frankly, boring. I’ve worked hard—but usually in jobs with a flexible schedules and workloads, like 8 day teaching marathons followed by weeks of flextime.
However, in my desire to “go with the flow,” “be spontaneous,” do “what I feel like when I feel like it,” I am so much farther away from real freedom than she is.
I’m writing this because a friend, a published novelist who would like to be more prolific, urged me to. She could relate. She felt there are others out there who might also have this challenge.
The good news is, as part of the Baby-Boomer generation, I am greedy for new experiences of life. Living beyond boxes or coloring outside of lines is right up my alley.
So here I go—I’m learning to get past the undisciplined “freedom” I’ve cultivated and bring more structure to my life so I can truly be free. I joined a gym and I go at least 5 times a week now. (Of course I go at different times on different days-but what can I say.) Just as remarkably, I’m writing this during my new “No interruptions-I’m working” time of the workday.
I am also reading books like Work the System by Sam Carpenter to get my systems and processes in place. My goal is to create a happy medium between what I call the “work yourself to death” ethic and the limiting freedoms I’ve created for myself. Can you relate?
In my opinion, being an entrepreneur is a perfect way to bridge that divide. To transform a “practice” into a real business that contributes my special gifts to the world and rewards me with success and true freedom. Is that true for you as well?
Oops! Writing time is over. Time to go to the gym. I’d like to hear from you.
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As a one-time freelancer/student who now has the 9-5 day job, I can relate to the difficult balance between creating the structure to be productive while retaining the freedom to be creative.
Culturally, I think we tend to get ourselves into an economist’s mindset with work. If we take out two hours a day for ourselves this somehow translates into two hours “lost”; two hours that could have been “productive” had we just been disciplined and focused. But this is a false premise. This construction assumes that any waking mental or physical state is like all the others; that we are some sort of work automaton – put food and sleep in, get disciplined worker out.
True productivity does not come from working harder and longer but through finding a sustainable pattern that allows for both structure and spontaneity. I think you have exactly the right idea by giving yourself “No interruptions-I’m working” time (what I like to call “me” time) AND gym time – work that strengthens you in mind and body.