One Decision I Wish I had made Earlier: “Not Working for Others on Wednesdays.”

Put the Family and your own business/sidework first.

During my long software contracting period (2000–2021), I made one unusual decision as a software contractor, “not working on Wednesdays” ten years ago. I called it “unusual” because I have never met any other software contractor who does that. There are a few part-time contractors, but from my memory, none with “a fixed rest day”.

This is one of my best career decisions, as this article explains.

Nowadays, I still accept short-term contracting, but only interesting projects, and I don’t renew contracts.

Table of Contents:
· This is totally different from “4-day work week” policies in some companies.
· How I start “Not working for others on Wednesdays”?
· The Benefits …
· The Loss is quite minor, relatively

This is totally different from “4-day work week” policies in some companies.

“4-day work week” is a company policy (rare though), while “Not working (for others) on Wednesdays” is my personal decision.

• My Wednesdays are pure rest days (in terms of jobs).
  In the “4-day work week”, the fifth day is still working for the company, with some degree of freedom. The purpose is to encourage creative ideas (the IP belongs to the company). If there is so-called ‘urgency’, you must stop the ‘other work’.

• Loss of income.
  As a software contractor, I get paid by hours. Not showing up one day simply means a loss of 20% of my weekly income.

• Fewer contracting opportunities
  This is quite understandable. The software team has to accommodate that in planning, “Zhimin is not on Wednesdays”.

A quick background: I started working as a contractor Software Engineer in 2000. As the only income earner, with two young children and no parent/relatives around, financial stress has been there (paying for my son’s treatment consumed a large percentage of our savings, and this lasted a few years). In summary, Money is important to us, very much so.

How I start “Not working for others on Wednesdays”?

The reason was simple: to accompany my parents. Before 2013, my parents (from China) visited us a couple of times, staying six months. I felt guilty about not spending enough time with them. At that time, there was little entertainment except renting video tapes and borrowing Chinese books in libraries. I could sense their happiness to see me when I came back home from work.