I Left Work On Time For A Month. What I Found Out About Myself Was Worse Than Any Deadline.

I didn't have some grand wellness experiment planned out here.

It mostly began because my partner got pissed off that I was consistently missing dinner, I got defensive, felt stupid about how easy a reason it was to get defensive over, so I said fine I'll leave on time for a month and see what happens.

Figured it would just be a bit awkward for the first week and then return to normal.

I thought the story would be about time management and maybe a few time management tips for me and the reader at the end of this piece.

It was anything but about time management, it turned out to be about something I was just holding on to without realizing I had it and that part wasn't really fun to find out by week three.

Week one. No one seemed to notice. It made me more unhappy than it should have.

The first couple of days I actually felt guilty packing my shit up at 5:30.

I couldn't stop looking around hoping someone would notice or at least say something like "you leaving?".

Nobody said a thing.

No one looked up.

Nothing was more boring, and frankly more disturbing, than to find out it just didn't matter to anyone.

I'd expected, maybe even welcomed, a reaction.

Something, anything.

And there was nothing.

I think I had been stuck thinking that if I left early something bad was going to happen, the sky was going to fall or something but it seemed as though I was the only one who was testing the bounds of the normal workplace schedule.

Kind of disheartening if I'm being honest.

My years of internal, low-grade anxiety surrounding staying until 5:30 was nothing more than my own invention.

Week two. The emails that came after hours started rolling in later. This I didn't expect.

The interesting part of the experiment for me was that by week two of leaving the office at 5:30 on the dot the emails that I was accustomed to receiving from people that typically sent them to me right before they were done for the day, around 6 to 6:30, started coming to my inbox closer to 8 or 9 pm instead.

I realized later it was because I wasn't available to respond then so whomever was sending them sent them at whichever time was convenient for them in their own evening.

So they weren't necessarily urgent or time sensitive emails they were just emails that came when my inbox was accessible and whomever sent them had a chance to type them out.

And now it seems people are adjusting their own routines as I adjust mine and will send emails when their workday actually comes to a natural close.

I don't think anyone has actively done this either it just happens, as many things tend to do, and I've spent two years in this job creating a routine of myself by consistently sending emails well into the evening or being readily available to respond when the ones that came in were urgent; however, after a few weeks people have adjusted their expectations of my responsiveness.

The dinner conversation (which was the whole reason behind this experiment).

Almost forgot that this whole ordeal was supposed to be about the dinner conversation due to how much this email thing consumed me.

But anyway, as I mentioned, the dinner thing was way better almost right away since I was actually there for the conversations that happen.

But even when I managed to make it home for dinner prior to this experiment, I didn't realize how much of the actual conversation I was missing.

I would still be so wrapped up in whatever I was doing at work that even though I was at the table and physically present, my mind was still there and working out some problem or composing some email.

I didn't actually realize how much that was occurring until about week three of leaving work earlier and then I really noticed the improvement.

It was really a bit sad to realize, not necessarily the leaving early, but the fact that I was so absent in the lives of the people around me for so long without noticing, and accepting that as normal behavior.

Week three. Where the clock aspect finally faded away.

At about week three on a Tuesday I left at 5:30 again, which has been the normal for a while now.

As I walked home, a vague sense of guilt and apprehension washed over me.

There wasn't anything pending, there wasn't any immediate crisis in the office and I hadn't had any kind of interaction with anyone that should have prompted any of these feelings.

Yet, it still felt like something was wrong.

I sat on this for a few days trying to pinpoint where this was coming from and concluded, ultimately, that I had, without conscious thought, developed an identity around being the person who was always there, who would stay late, who would respond quickly.

In taking that away I felt like I was losing something when really all I was doing was returning uncompensated work hours that no one had actually demanded that I spend with them; however, to me it felt like something else was being taken away.

It was me that was clinging onto that false image of my identity.

No one ever made me feel like I should stay late or get emails done after hours.

I did that to myself and that was what was most upsetting to me-the fact that I could go about my days, thinking I was busy and important, and completely miss all of that.

Week four. Someone said something, but not what I expected.

At the very end of my month I was getting coffee in the kitchen when a co-worker said, seemingly offhand, "You're always out of here right at 5:30 now, good for you" and it seemed as though they really meant it but there was also a hint of sadness or perhaps even longing in their voice as if they wanted to say more but weren't quite sure how or were worried about the consequences of saying so.

When I followed up they stated that they had been trying to leave on time for years and felt that if anyone was going to be "the one" to leave early consistently then someone had to be the first and they clearly did not want that title.

As it turns out she knew of absolutely no one that has ever truly been reprimanded for leaving at 5:30 so she too had been operating based on unspoken, irrational expectations.

I think the most meaningful experience in the entire month was that single interaction.

So many people are staying late simply because everyone assumes everyone else is and no one has bothered to ask or even confirm that this assumption is correct.

In the end, here's what I discovered about myself.

I didn't discover anything totally groundbreaking and new.

Leaving the office at the proper time is hardly a revolutionary act.

What I actually uncovered was how many of my actions at the workplace weren't prompted by my job in itself, but instead by me, internally creating and maintaining a role for myself that didn't actually have any requirements that demanded such an image, based on assumptions about what would happen if I stopped doing them that turned out to be completely false.

The emails stopped coming at the hours they used to, the world didn't end for two weeks, and one of the other employees actually told me she wished she'd been bold enough to leave early at the same time I had because she thought my confidence in doing so might give her permission to finally leave before the clock strikes 6.

I'm not sure that I'll leave at 5:30 every single day from here on out, sometimes there are tasks that simply need an extra thirty minutes to an hour and honestly that is okay.

However, the difference is I'm no longer leaving simply because it's expected of me or because I believe it is, it's because I genuinely have work left to do.

It turned out the real thing keeping me in the office wasn't my workload at all, it was me.