The 4-hour workweek sounds attractive but is it realistic to be able to survive and live off of?
If it isnât, it will be more painful and anxiety inducing, defeating the whole point of working less.
Instead, strive to work smarter not harder for ultimate results. Many high-achievers and world-class performers only work roughly 5 hours per day since after a point, theyâve already expended all their energy on high-intensity focused work that the rest would be a waste of time.Â
Less = More here.Â
They also prioritize productive exhaustion. Rest is fuel and as important as moving.
Keep that in mind with investing as well. No wonder passive investors historically beat out active investors. Less movements, charting, pricing, swing trading, wash trading, and churning yield higher returns and more time in the end.
Iâve always wondered how people work part-time let alone less than 30 hours per week until I tried it myself and got far more done in less time.
Just like in finance, everything is mental and relative. 30 hours seems like a walk in the park to someone who has worked 60+ hour weeks for the past 20 years and to someone else 30 hours can seem impossible.
When in doubt, assume everything will take longer than it seems because it always does. Itâs better to come in with low expectations because then youâll always be satisfied and pleased! As they say, under promise, over deliver to seal the deal!
As a student, I was always convinced longer hours + signs of burnout= stronger. Yet being busy is not a badge of honor. It means you donât have your priorities straight and cannot set up a schedule for yourself that is conducive to learning, growth, and repair.
Thankfully remote and hybrid lifestyles have helped many rethink their decisions, ways of working, energy expenditure, work life balance, and how their time = money are used to get things done. Thereâs a price to pay and opportunity cost with everything yet if you have more control and are more productive, healthier, happier, and wealthier, working the way you need to, when you want to is a no-brainer.
Now I cannot see myself ever working longer than I really should or else up to a certain point past my flow zone state which tends to peak after 5â7 hours, it goes downhill from there. Unless I take a a break or 30 mins nap which isnât always possible. Instead, Iâve really focused on working smarter not harder to confirm Iâm receiving the most out of my time and at the same time donât feel guilty for working less as well.
Since we are our worst critics rather than our loudest chearleaders, we tend to pressurize ourselves into working a set number of hours instead of focusing on the result and outcome.
If youâre feeling guilty for working less or want to learn how to maximize your time and energy flow states better to get back your life, letâs observe the companies that are proving how powerful working the right amount of time really is.
Human Lifecycle of a Company
Startups are hot, in trend, and addictive right now, similar to quitting in 2022. It will all pass once valuations and fundamentals take the spotlight once again.Â
Since the dotcom bubble, theyâve had their boom and bust moments as they are meant to but today, the startup world couldnât be more prominent. Not for their profitless promises, rather for their culture, lifestyle, and ways of working. When you think of a startup, the first things that come to mind may be scooters, free food, and or exposed brick? Thatâs so pre-pandemic.
With the record number of SPACs, IPOs, and direct listings in the markets last year along with over 100m self-employed Americans taking advantage of billions offered from the hands of VCs and PE firms, thereâs no better time to learn from the golden geeses themselves that are transforming the way we feel and work.
When you work at a startup, you are reliving your teenage years again. First you are a baby learning to crawl and test things out. Then you are in the seed stage, finally seeing some proof and validation for your product and or service and want to try to convince investors and the greater population that they need it so you go out and start fundraising and pitching to investors and getting rejected while feeling socially awkward as all kids feel at one point or another.
Soon enough this leads to the teenager stage where you are drinking Red Bull working day in and out on a more than likely profitless lottery like company still in hopes of it going public perhaps or just for it to make you a sizable living so you can pay your employees their wages.
Then comes the adult stage where margins are higher, customers are promoting your own product and you can breathe a sigh of relief a little. Soon enough if you make it this far, itâs retirement stage. Only a select number of defensible companies that have stable earnings and pay consistent dividends get here since they offer a stable product and donât know where to invest their retained earnings at this point since they have enough market share and have been in business long enough that it is a household name.
Throughout this process, you are losing more than yielding. Iâve always admired people who are willing to put the greatest investment in themselves just to see what they are capable of. Wouldnât it be boring if we already knew what we were made of? Thank goodness we donât right?!
Although nothing is guaranteed to last in life, whatâs most common is that in a startup, you must keep one eye open at all times. At night, during the day, on your lunch break, in a meeting, you name it since you never know when your co-founders will flock away with their stock options leaving you behind. This has happened dozens of times. Cough cough WeWork.
You must be nimble, agile, and adaptive. Question everything. Double check. Triple X. Being able to deal with uncertainty and keep an open mind on next steps is your best bet since you should only watch out for yourself.
Buffer.com
Although the startup world is hot these days, there are far more startups out there that we havenât heard of than those that we do know of. Iâm sure someone reading this has one. Guilty! I couldnât help myself!
When you think of the products you use on a daily basis, the FAAMGs, consumer staples and discretionary probably come to mind.
Yet what can we actually learn from them? When it comes to our lifestyle and mindset, not a whole lot. These cash cows profit off of us since the majority of tech platforms are in fact free.Â
When the product is free, the user is the product after all. In terms of our mental health, we become addicted and accept our precious data is being monetized for far more than what we can fathom and for the most part are fully aware we are completely wasting our time and feel worse about ourselves. Yet despite all of this, these addictive platforms are still able to suck our data and sell us personalized ads through a destructive weapon in our pockets.
Out of the startups that are becoming popular for different reasons, Buffer.com is known for being a leader in promoting a balanced life. For realââânot just for marketing sake. And as an FYI, this isnât a promotion. Just like we must learn before we earn, to be wealthy we must be healthy. It can be hard to believe or accept working shorter hours after a booming record year in the markets yet it is really the secret sauce to long-term profitability and hitting the legacy stage as a company.
Buffer is an 84-person social media company that has always embraced remote work, salary transparency, and various other perks and workplace flexibility options. Founded more than a decade ago, the co-founder Joel noticed employees were stressed and gave his team three-day weekends for the month of May 2020. This experiment slowly proved a major success and laid the groundwork for a major change. At the end of 2021, an employee survey found 91% of workers were happier and more productive with a four-day workweek.
To the preindustrialists and corporate America, this sounds foreign, especially the idea of public salary postings next to an employeeâs profile yet in reality, is the path towards a more equitable, sustainable, and bright future.
After these incredible results, the company switched to a 4-day workweek and never looked back.
How to Seriously Work Like This
I did a little 5 month experiment and all Iâll say is that Iâm never looking back.
Most of our days carry the routine from the preindustrial ancient ages of working from 9â5 chained to an office chair. Yet in reality, we cannot work forever and up to 5 hours of deep focus, we start to feel depleted, tired, drained, and our productivity dips.Â
Why waste your time sitting somewhere tired and exhausted when you can get your world-class work done in half the time and not waste the rest? Our best ideas come when weâre not working. Contrary to popular belief, most people work best when they work less and have more fun and time to explore and live.
To get workers to a 32-hour four-day workweek, Buffer.com had to change the way leaders viewed work. First order of business was to cut down on meetings and move to asynchronous communication tools like Threads and Slack to adjust the expectations of the workload. In addition, focusing on the mindset shit of senior leaders through quality not quantity and adopting the realization that people work best when they arenât glued or tied to a certain schedule or until fatigued.
You should work until you need to, when and how you can.
To Bufferâs 2021 survey, 84% of employees were able to get the work required of them in the new four-day work week and productivity ever since has remained steady while meetings declined. If leaders are committed to making it work, it can work anywhere and change everything.
This all reminds me of the Sunshine Protection Act that was unanimously approved by the Senate last week. Although scientists argue permanent Daylightâs Savings would throw off our hormonal and chemical imbalances with not enough sun in the morning with delayed light cues to regulate metabolism and lack of darkness to enduce melatonin at night, it doesnât have to be permanent everywhere.
If it does get approved by the House, companies and businesses wonât have to follow Congressâ time measures and ways of working. They could simply move start times for school later or businesses could close earlier or later depending on the season or location.
It doesnât have to be rigid and as humans, if thereâs one thing for sure, we arenât good with change and want it our way.
Congress is a guide. Personalize it to suit you to get more done in less time to become a titan in the business world and conquer retirement stage with strength. Our well-being is on the line.
We spend more of our time working than playing, experiencing the great outdoors, reading the endless books on our shelves and enjoying the pleasures of life outside of the screen. This way of life will not only serve us better but also boost our output for the better later on. Going for the cheapest will turn out to be very expensive later on. We only have so much fuel in our tanks.
Anyone can adopt this system of work because it works. Itâs whether companies and leaders are willing to embrace change. More than ever before, people are ready.