20/08/2026
This morning, in “Just Five Minutes” — A Chat from the Mat and beyond”, I talked about why I’ve deliberately chosen to have one behind-the-scenes admin day during my holiday.
Because I know myself.
I give my organic brain a timetable, a few lists and some structure and I can get an extraordinary amount done with less distraction.
Give it a completely blank canvas and tell it to “get back to work” after a holiday and I can spend half the morning wondering what the f💖c I’m supposed to be doing first. 😂
So today is actually a gift from future me.
I’m sorting the boring-but-important stuff, looking at September, putting some structure around my working week and making my return to work feel spacious rather than overwhelming.
And it got me thinking…
If you work for yourself, particularly if you’re at a stage of life where children are independent and you’re not having to organise your working hours around caring for people at home, why wouldn’t you first ask:
When do I actually LIKE working?
Not when am I supposed to work.
Not when everybody else works.
Not when somebody on Instagram says the most productive people work.
When does MY brain, body and energy work best?
For me, it’s early mornings.
I don’t set an alarm for 5am. I wake up naturally, get straight out of bed and LOVE those quiet hours when much of the world is still asleep.
That’s when some of my best work happens.
You might be bloody useless before 10am and come alive at 4 in the afternoon. Excellent. Becoming aware of this can redefine your choices
The point isn’t to copy my timetable or system but ti create your own.
Start with YOUR ideal working rhythm.
Then look at what gets in the way of it.
And where you genuinely have choice, start removing those obstacles.
The point is to stop automatically inheriting someone else’s .
I’ve spent years creating a life where I have enough time and space for the things I love. I live close to the sea, the forest and the dunes. I can walk out of my door and be somewhere beautiful very quickly.
So I don’t particularly want a life I desperately need to escape from for a few weeks every year.
I want work to belong inside my life, not my life squeezed around my work.
Which is why, somewhat paradoxically, choosing to work today feels completely in keeping with my holiday.
I chose it.
And tomorrow I’ll choose something else.
And this is what Freedom means to me
The freedom of choices and the capability to choose!!!!
So here’s my Chat from the Mat question for today:
If nobody else got to decide what a “proper working day” looked like…
when would YOU choose to work?
