Here’s my guilty secret - While I’ve fundamentally enjoyed every job I’ve done, I’d never before gone a month in a job without a day where I considered packing it in. Since converting to doing half-days (same activities, same people) I haven’t been to that place once, and I have an inner confidence that this is much more than a honeymoon period.

Peter Fayle on taking his career satisfaction into his own hands: “I didn’t much fancy seeing out a whole four decade term. So, I started preparing for a “sabbatical” strategy.”

Overview of earlier career.

After a degree in Mathematics and a couple of years exploring teaching and insurance, I went for a software career, starting out small and then embracing (some of) big corporate life.

Triggers for change?

I’d known I had a fundamental problem with the 9-5, 21-65 career model since school. The most inspiring people I knew had all found ways for their multiple talents to reinforce each other and help them innovate, while honing a single talent always seemed wasteful and individual-centric.

I found bigger fundamental problems with all the obvious alternatives, so combining a professional/corporate route with developing a craft made as much sense as anything.

I didn’t much fancy seeing out a whole four decade term. So, I started preparing for a “sabbatical” strategy - once every five years - to take a year out for myself.

To prepare for a whole year out, I became fairly cautious with spending. I fully understood that being in a strong financial situation makes the difference between a career you enjoy and a career you tolerate, so it wasn’t so hard seeking out and embracing ways to enjoy life more cheaply.

Similarly, I understood that getting on the housing ladder meant not worrying about cash flow while trying to experiment. I planned my first sabbatical year for when I’d paid off a short-term mortgage on a small home. I relocated to Warrington and found a suitable place.

I stepped away from my first big corporate, increased my market price and saved faster than I would have if I’d stayed. But an experience of poor cultural fit meant that I decided to begin my first sabbatical experiment - two years earlier than planned.

Three months into that sabbatical, I knew that taking regular sabbaticals was not going to be enough for me.

I understood that I wanted a future with a much shorter working week – but also one that didn’t involve slowing down or doing less valuable or less interesting work.

I began looking for two things: a good job with, at most, half-time hours that would pay the bills (achieved), and a community focused on making similar jobs more common (I’m still working on this).

First steps?

Reflection: what should my work look like for the next five years and beyond, and how can I make it happen? I started with a lot of exploratory thinking and designing - I had a sense that the floodgates were opening and that life would never be the same.

Writing: If you can’t write down what you want and why, it’s a good sign that you haven’t joined all the dots in your head yet.

Networking and idea sharing: I got lucky in finding three months to network in person and share ideas with people just before the Covid lockdowns hit. In some career paths (notably highly technical ones) you can get by and keep progressing without having to network and explain yourself. It’s a skill that takes practice, and an experience that shows you a lot about what other people need. I experienced an underlying sense of solidarity that most people have similar difficulties in being there at all, and people try their best to help each other when they can.

Flexible job hunting and skills refreshing: Particularly when Covid hit, I kept time allocated to job hunting and keeping my technical skills fresh. If there’s more than one path that might take you where you want to go, choosing early isn’t always the right approach. I had a couple of options that supported my goal of reducing hours in the medium term, including working on short-term contracts to rebuild savings quickly, and taking on part-time opportunities. Even full-time, permanent opportunities were still on the table, and this was how I ultimately created a path to my current half-time job.

Learning and exploring different communities: It was striking how quickly my career reflection ran into problems that research and public debate didn’t have good answers for. Although our familiarity with problems around work isn’t new, our collective understanding of them remains at a basic, reductive level, and we do relatively little in the way of experimenting and building solutions, even though opportunities to do so are often there. This makes what I want to do feel a lot harder, but still possible.

Learning from early-stage entrepreneurs and freelancers: I wasn’t committed to starting a business, but I did want to get familiar with what people go through when they start their businesses. I went to business seminars, joined book groups and accountability networks, put together business plans and made mock investment pitches. This was a further step away from my comfort zone, as there’s often an intense focus on sheer energy and getting things done with a very low level of analysis.

What you learned

Peter on networking: “In some career paths (notably highly technical ones) you can get by and keep progressing without having to network and explain yourself. It’s a skill that takes practice, and an experience that shows you what other people need. I experienced an underlying sense of solidarity that most people have similar difficulties in being there at all, and people try their best to help each other when they can. — **Peter on networking:** **“In some career paths (notably highly technical ones) you can get by and keep progressing without having to network and explain yourself. It’s a skill that takes practice,** and an experience that shows you what other people need. I experienced an underlying sense of solidarity that most people have similar difficulties in being there at all, and people try their best to help each other when they can.

What you knew?

Changing how we work makes people very defensive - after all, they’re heavily invested (and that’s part of the problem).
The side-hustle approach is best for solo projects. It’s a big ask to bring people together regularly for evenings and weekends.
I trust my gut on the what and the why, but less on the how and the how to explain.
Part-time working has a lot of business advantages and an increasing amount of supporting evidence and precedents, but a number of obvious difficulties.
There is a lot of room for trying new ways of working, and a lot of people in a financial position where they could afford to.

What became clear?

It’s hard for people to commit to the unknown.
Many people want you to succeed, and want to know how they could help.
It’s hard to negotiate for something that appears frivolous and inconvenient at first glance. But it’s possible to offset that with personal integrity, research and considerateness. My route to half-time by building trust in a full-time job was about as smooth as I can imagine, thanks to clear and honest conversations and decent people.
Though weekends weren’t enough, back-to-back 40-hour weeks for deep reflection were more intense than helpful. Simple, guilt-free downtime - doing anything or literally nothing - provides effective balance.

What you wasted time on?

Explaining complex ideas to too many people individually - instead of working on a pitch.

What you invested time well in?

When talking about complex issues that have a big life impact, measuring (more than) twice and cutting once is a good strategy if you can afford the time.
Talking to lots of people and getting a feeling for how different people executed their ideas successfully.

If you could do it all over again, what would you change, if anything?

Having open conversations about reduced hours and networking “just for the sake of it” right from the start of my career would almost certainly mean I would have much more advanced conversations and opportunities to work with now.

What became important that you didn’t think was important in the beginning?

Keeping people happy (selling and relationship-building). The pool of people who will buy into your idea purely on its own merits is vanishingly small. And impossible to find without extreme luck or arcane knowledge. However, sometimes that still has to come second to getting the technical details right.

What you discovered about yourself that would have helped if you discovered it earlier?

I discovered that only my deepest needs mattered in the big picture, and failing to satisfy them undermines everything, however fun, interesting or meaningful your work is. I can simply ignore a long run of bad days, months, and setbacks if, and only if, I’m confident I’m going in a positive direction overall.

Anything else that you think might help others thinking of making changes?

There’s a whole industry specialising in what is essentially rewiring people’s brains to prepare them for entrepreneurship. A lot of the people who go for this are stressed or desperate.

It’s a bastion of hustle-culture, and I don’t believe it’s the future of entrepreneurship, but it is an approach that people from poor backgrounds or stuck in terrible working conditions have used to secure their independence, which is life-changing. And I’ve yet to meet anyone who says they regret it. Go in with your eyes wide open, because it is a brutal process.

Peter on the future: I’ve got much further to go, but right now I have control of my time, my energy, and my mental focus, and for the first time ever I’m working in a way I can believe in. That gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me the drive to perform at my best for everyone.

How it feels on the days you wake up and know you have made the right decision?

Here’s a guilty secret: While I’ve fundamentally enjoyed every job I’ve done, I’d never before gone a month in a job without a day where I considered packing it in.

Three months into my half-days (same activities, same people), I haven’t been to that place once, and I have an inner confidence that this is much more than a honeymoon period.

I’ve got much further to go, but right now I have control of my time, my energy, and my mental focus, and for the first time ever I’m working in a way I can believe in. That gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me the drive to perform at my best for everyone.

Learn more about Peter

Quartermastery Substack https://quartermastery.substack.com - my newsletter about reduced hours and multiple employment - subscribe to receive new editions via email

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterfayle/

Peter Fayle - Full-time Discontent to Quartermaster