happy bissextile day—and happy 5th week!

Happy Bissextile Day—AKA Leap Day! And Happy 5th Week!

(Yeah, that bissextile word caught my eye, too—and yeah, I totally went a different direction with it.) It’s got me thinking about 3 lessons we can draw from the creation of the Julian calendar, which is the reason we have this day.

what the julian calendar did

• It continued to acknowledge that our lives are intimately tied to Mother Nature’s: You could use the moon’s cycle as a reliable measurement of time passing. The lesson? A great reminder to tune into how our bodies respond to the cycle of seasons as well as the smaller cycle of night/day and darkness/light. Acknowledging these rhythms, especially by slowing down and turning inward in the colder/darker times instead of pushing through can bring about huge changes in our health.
• It was all well and good to have a 4-week month, but then a 10-month calendar didn’t quite work because of the seasons. Enter the intercalary month (February), inserted every few years before the appearance of the Julian calendar “to ensure that agricultural festivals and holidays remained at the appropriate time of year.” The lesson: Something not working? FIX IT! (Even if the fix isn’t perfect or might be temporary, simply taking action is a way to reclaim our agency.)
• The Julian calendar’s real gift: adding extra days to existing months rather than adding months every so often. Because sometimes, you just need an intercalary day (or 3). This final lesson is probably the most important: It’s okay to adjust the calendar/clock to make it suit YOUR needs.

welcome to the 5^th week

If I could remember where I got the concept of “5^th week,” I’d give the creator full credit: whoever you are, know that you have had a huge beneficial effect on a lot of lives. In the meantime, if you Google “5th week” you’ll learn a lot about the 5th week of pregnancy and not much else.

I recognize that the idea of 5^th week is a privileged perspective: not everyone can rearrange their work week/day.

And there are also takeaways for our personal lives, irrespective of our work! In my business and personal life, I practice “5^th week” At my PT job, not so much.

what is 5^th week?

Let’s go back to the calendar when a month was based on the cycle of the moon: you had 28 days, a nice round number. (Please forget where you heard that last—we’re not going to get political here today). Yes, nice round numbers are pleasing us.

And with the Julian calendar, a month now has 28 (or 29), 30 or 31 days. It took me a long time to figure out how to count those months out on my knuckles and even longer to memorize them.

That’s messy, isn’t it? Especially if you have control issues. (There’s that word again.)

If you do the math, each month now has approximately 4.33 weeks. For now, let’s ignore the fact that February throws a wrench in the works.

what does that look like in practice?

As I said, if something’s not working, take steps to adjust it. You can change course later if you’re headed off in a direction that’s not serving you.

If you’re trying to reclaim time in your life for a particular activity (or for rest!), why not use that “extra” one third of a week?

• Every month has 28 days: use those for business as usual, which probably means you’re running around putting out fires rather than seeking out and addressing the cause(s) of those fires.
• Use the remaining 1–3 days differently. Essentially, you’re creating a to-don’t list for those days: don’t have calls, meeting, travel,

Whether you handle your own calendar or someone handles it for you, block off 4 weeks for calls, meetings, travel, and smaller projects, the myriad tasks you do to keep things on track. These would be Covey’s quadrant 1 and 3 tasks.

Set the remaining 1–3 days aside for Covey’s second quadrant: tasks that are not urgent/important.

I try to reserve the 5th week for two types of activities:

• Monthly administrative tasks, such as financial upkeep, website updates, and reviewing important metrics.
• Larger/more creative work, such as strategic planning and developing new workshops and programs.

If you’re thinking, “I can’t possibly do that—LOOKATMYTODOLIST!” I suggest you take your own advice and look at your to-do list.

If it’s ginormous and is never going to be a to-done list, then a few days per month are not going to make a difference. I promise.

wait—what about February?

Well, I leave that up to you.

I usually block off February 27–28. Because I can….

make the connection

If your team could benefit from some new ideas on how your energy is invested (NOT how you are managing your time!), consider how you might implement a 5^th week practice/policy in your place of work. With more and more talk about the lasting benefits of a 4-day work week taking place around the world, the move to a 5^th week practice might be a way to compromise—for you Stranger Things fans, “halfway happy!”

It’s important to tweak this concept to be right for you, right now.

• It may be easier for you to schedule 1–3 days off from business as usual at the beginning of the month or in the middle.
• I do encourage you to schedule them consecutively—and I have clients who have found that sprinkling them throughout the month works for them.
• And remember that this practice may need to be adjusted at some point in the future. Kinda like the Gregorian calendar did to the Julian.

  Want more tools like 5th week for your team? Let’s talk.