Full Time

I stopped working in the Corporate World in August 2014 (Spoiler alert – I returned in February 2021). The first thing I wanted to do was to travel. 

I had a close family friend’s wedding coming up on the opposite side of the rock (Australia), and I now had time available to accept the invitation. 

In the UK, standard leave entitlement is 28 days, with it being frowned upon to take more than two weeks in a single chunk. Australia is a long way to go for that kind of break, both from the expense and the jet-lag perspective. Leave becomes preciously allocated. 

Work becomes the default. What you do every morning. The way we structure work is typically “full time”. Work will be found. It is not a case of whether there is work to do. You never get to the bottom of the work container. Work is a deeply engrained habit. So much so that it is hard to do work when there is no structure. You can say to someone, “Yeah, sure, we must do coffee” but you don’t arrange a time, and so it doesn’t happen. 

So rules that remind us to do things are helpful, but the “full time” rule seems a little excessive. It can mean that you don’t end up doing a lot of the things that are important to you because work takes priority. “Sorry I don’t have time, I have to work” becomes a one-stop-shop wall that cannot be legitimately questioned.

Taking Time Down Under