How You Spend Your Free Time Is More Important Than Your 9–5 Job

Most people don’t have control over what happens between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm.

An employer tells you what to do. You do those tasks. Clock in, clock out, right?

If you let those eight hours define you, your employer is truly controlling your life. You’re living to work rather than working to live.

You still have 16 more hours in your day. If you make the most of those hours, you can flip the script — whether it’s spending more time on yourself or preparing to leave your 9–5.

Follow a schedule that’s best for you

Flexible work is on the rise, especially for people who work from home, but most people can’t break free from a 9–5 mindset.

And I get it: it’s a routine. It’s comfortable. Maybe you’re worried that if you work non-standard hours, you’ll end up working all the time.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if you follow your body’s natural rhythm, you’ll end up being more productive and working fewer hours.

I’ve always been a morning person. I wake up before the sun rises. It’s quiet and I can get a lot of focused work done without the constant distractions of emails, texts, and other messages.

I don’t work 40 hours because I’m so productive early in the morning that I can get everything done in a shorter day.

If it’s hard for you to think about stretching beyond 9–5 hours, schedule something for yourself in the middle of the day. Go to a class at your gym or to a movie — something with a scheduled time. Force yourself to break out of your 9–5 routine.

Set boundaries around your 9–5

The tricky part about working non-standard hours is that you risk working all the time.

If you start working at 5:00 am, you might fall into the trap of working a longer day. That’s a bad outcome: you want to simply shift your working hours.

You need to define your working hours. I don’t work past 3:30 or 4:00 pm each day. I’ve already put in a “full day” by that point.

But I also have a defined stopping point: my kids get home from school. It’s easy for me to walk away from my computer.

If you don’t have obvious stopping points, create them. Turn off your computer. Set up a space in your home dedicated to “working” and leave that space at the end of your day. Remove work-related apps from your phone, if you can, or use the phone’s built-in features to limit your access to those apps.

My email signature also helps people understand my availability. It reads:

I work asynchronously, so my response times may vary. Please do not respond outside of your working hours and I’ll do the same.

Invest in yourself

You can’t rely on an employer to care about your career aspirations. Many companies fall far short of dedicated learning and development programs. On top of that, any continuing education provided benefits the company — not necessarily you.

Your life outside your 9–5 might feel chaotic, especially if you have kids. But if you don’t take time for yourself, you’ll feel completely drained, all the time. You’ll feel like your life is dedicated to other people’s needs, rather than your own.

Set aside at least an hour per week to learn something new. Maybe it’s reading or listening to a podcast. Maybe it’s taking an online course. Maybe it’s something completely unrelated to work, like spending time with your hobby.

I’m a big fan of time-blocking, so I have this time on my calendar. I have an hour blocked off on both Saturday and Sunday just for me. It doesn’t always happen (because life happens!), but it’s a reminder that it’s important to carve out time for myself.

Prioritize time to recharge

If you’re always running on fumes, it’ll have a cascade impact on how you spend your time. And chances are, you’ll dedicate energy to your 9–5 job, which leaves no energy left for your 5–9 time.

I used to be a terrible sleeper. My sleep was inconsistent and I was exhausted all the time. I’d toss and turn at night, worrying about how I was going to function the next day.

The best piece of advice I ever got was to stop worrying. I was capable of functioning on little sleep, even though it wasn’t ideal. This removed a lot of the pressure.

Then I realized that although I was bad at sleeping, I hadn’t really tried anything to make it better. Sleep hygiene matters, a lot. It’s different for every person, but now I:

• Sleep with a weighted blanket
• Use a face mask and blackout curtains to remove light
• Lower the room temperature before bedtime
• Listen to white noise
• Maintain a consistent bedtime
• Don’t drink alcohol in the evening

I’ve also trained myself to take naps during the day — another thing that fuels my asynchronous working hours!

The results have been astonishing. I was convinced that I had “bad sleeping genes” because I’d slept so poorly for most of my life. Now I consistently get 6.5–7 hours of good sleep per night. And my FitBit informs me that my sleep quality ranges from “Good” to “Excellent.”

Identify what’s most important

Your life will always be a division between “work” and “life outside of work.” Even if you set boundaries around work, you still have a finite number of hours per day.

And no matter what, there will always be something else on the never-ending to-do list of life. That means making choices about how you spend your time.

I opt to “buy” myself time. I pay for a bi-weekly cleaning service to come into my home and clean. I hate cleaning, and I would rather spend my weekend time with my kids. Could I spend that money on other things? Absolutely; I don’t have an unlimited budget. But I’m trading money for more time in my day.

Next time you find yourself saying, “I don’t have time” replace it with the words, “It’s not a priority.” Because every time you choose one thing over another, you’re prioritizing. How does that feel? If you shrug and move on, you’ve made the right decision: your priorities are aligned with what you feel is most important.

But if “It’s not a priority” makes you uncomfortable, you need to re-examine how you’re spending your time. What else can you cut (or outsource)? Can you buy yourself more time in your day? What is an unnecessary demand on your time?

Prepare for what’s next

I spend a lot of time thinking about the future. How I spend my time today won’t be the same as how I spend my time in one year, five years, or ten years.

Routines are good but my priorities shift. My kids are older, so they’re more self-sufficient. But that also means they’re involved in more after-school activities.

I used to work for an employer and now I’m self-employed. That has had a dramatic impact on how I spend my time.

Plus, I’ve gotten older. I’ve never prioritized exercising, but aches and pains remind me that I need to take care of myself.

So it’s ok to look at how you spend your time today and know that it won’t be forever. You may de-prioritize something now, but know you’ll come back to it in the future.

It’s important to check in with yourself. Occasionally review how you’re spending your time. Little things can creep up on you, demanding your attention. Otherwise, before you know it, your 5–9 is controlled by what other people want from you, rather than what you want.

Check out my guide: Manage Your Time + Content Across Multiple Platforms.