A New Perspective – Adam Stupi After selling my business in 2018, I’ve
had a difficult time adjusting to both being an employee and a member of a team. Throughout my entire career, I’ve been very independent and have typically worked either by myself or with a very small crew. With the transition to my new job at ARV, I developed an overwhelming amount of regret and resentment. As time went on, I knew something needed to change.
At the beginning of 2022, after some unsettling arguments (at home and at work) it was more evident than ever my negativity was affecting everyone around me. I had been losing sleep and felt consumed. I felt that something outside of myself was to blame. I was encouraged and decided to seek therapy. After several months of meeting with a therapist, some issues became clear. I was “hearing” things as personal attacks, and I reacted in kind: always argumentative, always agitated, always negative. My behavior went much deeper than the recent changes. I was faced with altering a pattern of response that had always been there. In April of ‘22, we entered the 4-day work week experiment at ARV. At first, everyone was very skeptical. “There’s no way we’re going to get the same amount of work done in less time, let alone more work!” At the time, the only silver lining was an extra day off. I then shuffled my weekly therapy appointments to Fridays, my off day. This began a soft start to the long weekend. We had split the shop, half of us off Mondays and the others off on Fridays. Ultimately, what this permitted was a veritable release of stress and anxiety about the upcoming week. I had only half of the people in the shop on Mondays. This freed me up to focus on the work ahead in a calm manner. I could
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