Auto-generated transcript:
Hello, Patrick Sherriff here with the Staffroom podcast and you might be able to hear it's a bit windy where I'm recording this.
I'm sitting on a bench drinking ice, not ice, but a cold coffee can, canned coffee from the machine while looking out on the, I guess, beautiful Teganuma.
It's a big sort of marshland just on the outskirts of Abiko.
Anyway, I'm on my bike ride and you may wonder, what?
Riding your bike on a Friday afternoon?
Aren't you busy teaching?
No, I'm not.
I took a week off.
A planned week off.
And this is part of what I wrote about last time on the freetalktefl.substack.com blog.
And that is that I have 42 weeks
42 weeks a year I'm working which means I'm 10 weeks a year I'm off and some people may think well if you're a public school teacher you may think well that's not very good but if you like me you came out of private industry, newspapers can be called private industry, you know getting four weeks was pretty good in England
Unheard of in America, you only get two weeks.
So I feel quite lucky that I have 10 weeks off a year.
And I guess I'm kind of justifying it.
I guess it's that puritanical belief.
What?
10 weeks off?
What are you doing?
Riding your bike?
Enjoying life?
Stuff like that?
Shouldn't you be working your socks off for the little kids?
Well, yes and no.
I am 52 years old.
As many years as there are weeks in a year.
Is that right?
Yeah.
But, you know, what I wanted to say was actually from a teaching point of view, having 10 weeks off, I'm not really, although I was completely off this week, no teaching this week, well, I was working on these websites and these newsletters that I do.
and I was editing two short stories that I'm going to release as books for kids in my school and been working on a tour to England so booking properties in London for next year Airbnb for a tour of London so you know yeah okay I had the week off week off from teaching but it wasn't completely off work was still going on in the background
Or even in the foreground, I guess.
So my point is, having those 10 weeks off is actually really important.
And you get to do a lot more for your business.
There's a very good book called, it's called The E-Myth, I think.
E stands for Entrepreneurial Myth, by some American guy.
I say it's a good book, it's not.
It's a terrible book.
Terribly written.
But it does have a very good point in it, which is that sometimes in business you should be working on the business, not working in the business.
In other words, perfecting it, you know, making it better for the customers.
And if you have that attitude, your business will go far.
You know, when I first started teaching, I must admit,
I was a bit jealous of my newspaper colleagues.
I thought, oh, they've got a much more fun job than me.
Mine's actually hard work.
And a bit jealous of public school teachers because they get longer holidays and better pensions and all that.
But now, the business is going pretty well.
I've shaped it the way, well, myself and my wife have shaped it the way we like it.
I wouldn't go back to newspapers now.
Not that they even exist.
The job that I had probably doesn't exist, being a sub-editor in the print section.
I don't think that exists.
So it's not even an option.
And also, it's working for the man.
So I wouldn't even want to do that.
And working for a Japanese school, public school, no thanks.
It's a pseudo.
Yeah, no thanks.
You'd have 40 people in the class, plus you'd have to be subordinate to the Japanese teacher, plus do all the stuff that you have to do in a Japanese company.
No thanks.
If you can stick that for 40 years to get your wonderful pension, you're a better man or woman than I. So, yeah, I'm not jealous.
Not anymore.
I'm quite happy to ride around this lake, do a bit of work on my week off, think about the future, write my blog, self-publish some books.
Life's good.
And that is the point.
You don't have to work every week that God sends or whatever.
You know, carve out a workable schedule that's good for you.
Have no guilt.
Do a good job.
Enjoy your life.
Teach the kids.
And that's about it.
Right, I hope you can hear all that amongst all the wind.
If it's legible, hearable, I will post it.
and by the way I keep asking for people to comment on the blog and thinking why is nobody commenting on the blog and I realized I didn't have the comments enabled so even if you did try to write on my blog leave a message you wouldn't have been able to well I fixed that I think so please send me a comment next time you see a blog post well you know it goes to the email inbox anything that you've missed or want to check in with go to
What's it called?
freetalktefl.substack.com And as you should know by now, I put out a lesson plan with all the materials every Monday that you can use for free.
Every Wednesday is The Bulletin, proper newsletter.
And every Friday there's these musings where I talk about what I've already done this week.
We'll see how that develops.
I do it because it's easy, basically.
If you like to get your news audibly rather than in visual, this is the place for it.
Don't be a stranger.
Send me a message or a comment on any of the posts.
I don't know if you can comment here, but certainly on the blog post, on the email to you.
Have a good week and don't work too hard.
Go for the marathon, not the sprint.
Alright, have a good one.
Talk to you next week.
Bye.
20. How many weeks do you have off a year?