Ironic?

I’ve decided that in 2018 I’m going to work on working less.

For years I’ve been hoping to put in fewer hours, leading (ever so gradually) to my retirement in June 2019. It’s been a long process, and over the past few years I’ve successfully reduced my average hours at work. Yet I’m still a long way from that magical zero that means retirement, so I need to step up my game.

This year I figured I’d leave the office around 3pm. That would more or less force me to work fewer hours. As a side benefit, it would give me time to work on my seminary lessons in the afternoons, meaning I’d actually have my evenings free. (For the past two years, every school night has meant I’m spending two hours after dinner working on a lesson, and then basically going to bed.)

Two weeks into the year, it’s going well. I think I left at 3:30 yesterday, but the other work days were right around 3:00. Success!

However, both yesterday and today I skipped my lunchtime ultimate games, because I was really busy at work (servers to patch for Spectre and Meltdown) and figured if I wanted to stick with my 3pm target I couldn’t take an hour or three to play ultimate.

This afternoon as I clacked away at my keyboard, it occurred to me that the biggest reason I want to reduce my work hours is so I can do non-work stuff. Like… ultimate. Why, then, was I giving up playing ultimate so I could put in the hours to leave early so I could do things like play ultimate? Argh.

Clearly I’ll need to refine my goals a bit.