In 2000, a New York designer recorded a new message for his studio's answering machine...
...and it said: "Call us in a year."
His name is Stefan Sagmeister. You might know his work from album covers for the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed.
At the time, his studio was about seven years old.
But something was bothering him. In his words, "our work started to look the same."
So he decided to close for a whole year, with no clients and no projects.
And he was scared.
Properly scared. He worried the studio would be forgotten, that clients would be angry, and that it would look bad, especially to his family. The economy was booming, and turning work away in a boom felt, as he put it, "a bit unprofessional."
He admits he didn't have the guts at first.
So he did something clever (and worth stealing). He told loads of people, and wrote it in his planner, so there was no way he could chicken out later.
I recognise that fear. Maybe you do too.
The first few weeks went badly. He'd planned to have no plan, and other people filled the gap for him. He spent his days reacting to little requests. He said he'd become "my own intern."
So he sat down and listed everything he was interested in. Ranked it. Split it into blocks of time. Then he wrote a timetable, like being back at school. Story writing on a Monday morning, and so on.
As for the fears...
None of them came true. Not one.
The reaction he got most often was a bit of jealousy.
The payoff came later. He says most of what the studio did over the next seven years came out of thinking from that one year. The work got better, so they could charge more for it.
He's taken a year off every seven years since. One of them was spent in Bali, and the work from it ended up shaping the studio itself.
Here's why I share this...
The fear he had is the same fear that keeps most of us working on Fridays. If I'm not there, they'll go. When Direct Line asked small business owners about time off, a third said they find it hard to turn down work in case customers go elsewhere. A quarter said they often feel guilty taking time off at all.
I had a smaller version of it myself.
I stopped answering my business phone in the evenings and started telling clients "I'll call you tomorrow."
The first time I said it, I was settling down for a film night with the kids.
Not one of them pushed back.
One even told me it showed him he needed clearer boundaries with his own clients.
A free Friday is a tiny version of what Sagmeister did. One day a week, not twelve months. Same fear, though.
The fear of being forgotten is much louder than what actually happens.
So hit reply and tell me, even if it's just one line...
What do you think would happen if you didn't work this Friday?
Aaron