Last week I met with a colleague for a brainstorming session regarding a new project. We were in the midst of kicking around a few ideas when our discussion took a weird turn, as it often does. We somehow found ourselves engrossed in strategies for ramping up productivity. All in all, it was a rather benign conversation until my friend asked me, “How many hours a week do you work?”
His jaw dropped when I gave him my answer. Here’s why.
In the past, it was not uncommon for me to put in 50-70 hours a week, and the reason was simple: I was passionate about performing at a high level, and driven to push myself as hard as possible to achieve the best results possible. And when you’re an ambitious business owner, 50-70 hours can actually be a slow week.
Most successful entrepreneurs, salespeople and CEOs approach their work in this manner because “more time spent working now means more money later,” plain and simple. It’s a hard and fast rule, and I would be a liar if I said it doesn’t yield results. But it also comes at a very steep price.
Any time you devote 60-75% of your attention to any endeavor in your life, (even a hobby) something else must inevitably take a back seat, and the imbalance will be all the more amplified if it spans a few months—growing exponentially if continued for years.
The upside, of course, is that focusing your attention in this way is bound to result in significant progress; however, you will be left with far less time and energy for everything and everyone else in your life.
I am well familiar with this syndrome—I used to work insane hours, pushing myself hard to achieve my desired results. In the process, I lived in an ongoing state of stress; I failed to get adequate sleep or proper nutrition, and my relationships with the people I cared most about were growing distant.
When Will Turner and I first started this business four years ago, I approached it with my old familiar pattern of putting in as many hours as was humanly possible. That all changed, however, when my wife and I learned we were going to have a baby. I decided to place the people and activities I most cared about at the top of my priority list, and made revolutionary choices about how and when I would work.
The challenge, at that point, was to also remain committed to the success and momentum of RefuseOrdinary. Here‘s how I did it.
I deliberately chose to only work 27.5 hours a week, which, of course, doesn’t meet the criteria of full-time job status, but that’s based only on the quantity of time spent working—not the achieved results.
The fact is, I was required to perform on an even higher level by cramming what normally would take 60 hours into a 27.5 hour work week. I needed to optimize my daily itinerary, find ways to scale up my services, identify activities to increase my client base, and hone my skills in the area of maintaining focus for extended periods of time. It was a tall order to fill, but in doing so—my productivity soared. (Tim Ferris, serial entrepreneur and productivity guru, wrote the book on this topic entitled: “The Four-Hour Workweek.” Here’s a link to his podcast.)
If you were able to drop your workweek hours from 55 down to 40 while still keeping your current income level (or perhaps even increasing it) how would your day-to-day decisions be different? What would be the ripple effect of those decisions?
If you reduced your work week hours by 25%, how would this affect:
- Your choice to meet with someone face-to-face vs. a phone meeting
- The way you map out your workday
- The time you spend on non-productive things like surfing the web, browsing Facebook, responding to texts, getting lost in email, etc.
- Your choices to outsource and automate (e.g. to use a virtual admin and time saving software like CRM)
- The fees you charge for your products or services. (Do you want a jar full of one dollar bills or a jar half full of twenty dollar bills?)
- The choice of clients you take on
And lastly: What innovative products and services might you come up with if your chief aim were to make more money without adding more time to your work week?
This last question really unlocked my head and got me thinking creatively about how to increase my revenue-driving potential. By reducing the amount of time devoted to working, my productivity ramped up, not down. Currently, my revenue for 2016 is on track to triple from 2015.
The greatest benefit, however, is the time I’m now afforded to spend with my daughter and family, to volunteer for local organizations, and to take better care of myself overall, eating and sleeping well—and all the good things those choices bring.
The point I’m making is not at odds with the idea of devoting vast numbers of hours to one’s professional endeavors in order to achieve greatness; I am simply sharing with you that somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that I could achieve the same results (if not better) by working smarter, not harder.
I’ve definitely grown wiser with age, realizing I’m only on this Earth for a brief period. I’ve come to think of time as both a commodity and an investment, and in that light, I intend to get the biggest return on that investment—making deliberate choices in terms of what, where, how, and with whom I spend the precious hours of my life.
So how would your life change if you chose to work for only 27.5 hours a week?
