Recently, I’ve moved to a four-day work week. Dave started working four days a week a year ago. It’s all part of our plan to eventually transition into retirement.

I’ve worked a four-day week one other time during my career. It was a short span of three months when the kids were little and we had many doctors and other medical appointments. It was a lifesaver—the perfect mix of having a rewarding, vibrant career, but having enough time to focus on my family and friends and get things done at home.

I can tell you I already feel a difference in both my mental and physical health.

I feel more well-rested, my brain feels like it has more space to breathe, and I’m taking time more slowly.

I’m no longer rushing through the weekend, trying to squeeze in a million things before Sunday night arrives and I have to steel myself up to do it all over again.

I’m making more plans to do the things I want to do, whether it’s having a coffee on a Friday with a friend (a luxury!), tackling a project, a long weekend away, or just spending time with Dave on little day trips here and there.

I’m getting more exercise and already feeling the positive benefits of not sitting at a desk 8 hours a day which has increasingly become more difficult and painful over the past several years.

Yes, I’m liking this four day a week thing.

Now if only more employers would wake up and realize the benefits of a four-day work week and make it happen. The world would be a happier place.

The photo above is a picture of me and my girlfriend Barbara on one of my first three-day weekends this summer when I went to visit her in Thornbury. Read about our day at the Thornbury Cider Company to see the Clark Drag Show