4-Hour Workdays: How to Pull It Off
Recently I came across a couple of articles that try to explain why since the 1970s we keep working the same hours, despite the drastic increase in productivity. If the question on its own sounds nonsensical, here’s some background.
In 1930 the famous economist John Maynard Keynes published a short essay titles Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”. In it he argued that if progress and industrial development continue at the same pace, at some point in the next century the economy will be so productive that people won’t have to work.
Rebecca J. Rosen in her article Why Do American Work So Much (The Atlantic) points out that Keynes was mostly right. In the 1930s when he published his essay, the average work week was 47 hours. Since then the work week had been shrinking until the 1970s. At this point it flattened out at approximately 39 hours a week.
While Rosen and Nathan Schneider (Vice News) grapple with the socio-economics of why the work hours stopped shrinking despite the growth in productivity, I am more curious if we can actually pull off 4 hour workdays. I think the answer is yes but in order to do it, we need to do the following things.
1. Focus Only on the Absolutely Essential
Productivity in the office is a little bit of a joke today. We obsess over gadget, apps and techniques how to be more productive, and yet the majority of our time at work is spent putting out fires and de-tangling bureaucratic web. Don’t believe me? Take this challenge then: download one of those nifty time-tracking apps and track your time for a week. You’d be surprised how much time you spent responding to non-essential emails, getting coffee, and going to meetings that shouldn’t take place in the first place.
For the four hour workday to work, we need to focus only on the most important things that need to be accomplished. You have to enter the office with a clear idea of what is the one thing you must do today and do just that until you are finished. The One Thing (Amazon) by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan will teach you how.
Use this approach to your work and you will accomplish a lot more in a lot less time.
2. Lock Yourself Down
Doing focused work for a prolonged period of time requires you to spend some time in isolation and without any distractions. Such an isolation can be hard to achieve in an open-concept office environment. Therefore, I suggest you book a meeting room or hide in an empty office and work away for several hours straight. Even if you have your own office, it’s a good idea to lock yourself somewhere else. If people see you in your office, even with the door closed, they still will be tempted to barge in and distract you with their super urgent thing that needs to be addressed asap.
In the 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss suggests that during such periods of intensive work we set our email to auto-response advising our colleagues that we won’t be able to get back to them until the afternoon or the next day. You’d be surprised how this approach will weed out many of the “important” requests just by forcing people to find the answers themselves.
3. Learn to Say No
In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Amazon) Gregg McKeown says that walking the path to doing only what’s essential requires you to learn how to say no. A side effect of being very productive is that people will start coming to you for more help. While this is great for your career, saying yes to everything is a sure way to burn out and never see a natural daylight. Politely but firmly turn down work, which doesn’t meet your criteria of “essential”.
Turning a request down doesn't have to be a negative experience. If you clearly and emphatically explain that despite all your desire to help at this moment you can’t take on the given project, most people will understand.
Saying no may take some people aback but ultimately they will respect you for knowing and sticking to your priorities.
4. Avoid the Trap of “It Will Only Take a Second”
This argument reminds me of the high school days when boys used to plead to girls that “it’s just the tip”, so it doesn’t count as real sex.
Here are two truths about things that will always take a second:
1. They always take longer;
2. They are usually unimportant that the person asking for help can do them herself.
The true cost of doing such one-second things is bigger than you think. First, the person will distract you explaining what it is exactly they want; second, you will have to do the thing that will take only a second; third, since you are at it, you may as well do this other thing that will also take only a second. Before you know it, you’ve spent half an hour dealing with non-essentials.
Instead of agreeing to do one-second things, a better response would be “ I can’t do it right now but I will get to it as soon as I finish working on this project”.
5. Make Arrangements with Your Boss
Being super productive is not much use if you have to spend the rest of your day sitting at your desk twirling your thumbs. Therefore, speak to your boss and make arrangements to leave whenever you want as long as you deliver excellent results. Most managers won’t have a problem with this as long as you deliver and as long as they can get a hold of you when they need you.
How this last part works out really depends on your job and on your boss. Having the conversation, however, is a step in the right direction.
Give these a try and let me know what you think in the comments below. What worked for you? What challenges do you see implementing these tips?
Originally published at vicslist.org.
