Why you should reduce your work hours by 20 percent.
I know, I know, you’ve never been busier. So how could you justify working 20 percent less?
Well I believe there’s a good chance you’d be much more successful if you did.
Put your disbelief aside for a moment and consider the benefits of dramatically reducing your time spent on the job.
Firstly, you would be forced to be more efficient.
Look, I’ve been mentoring entrepreneurs and CEO’s for over 11 years, and I can count on the fingers of a donkey’s hoof how many are using their time to it’s maximum potential.
The reality is everyone could do their work faster and more effectively.
Reducing your work hours forces that efficiency. Conversely, knowing you can work long hours usually makes you work slower- after all, you’ve got the time up your sleeve, there’s little pressure to complete your tasks.
Secondly it would make you re-think how you did things.
We all get into ruts. And what’s not broken rarely gets improved. If you had to radically eliminate a fifth of your working time you would need to quickly re-evaluate how your and your team members operated.
That mental reset could easily lead to some major breakthroughs in how you and your company operates.
Thirdly it would increase the most valuable asset you have- thinking time.
The business world today seems almost designed to eliminate time to sit quietly and contemplate your business operations. That lack of contemplation time is very costly.
The fact is that many of the greatest breakthroughs in corporate history may never have happened if the leader of the company did not take time away form the hustle and grind of office life to just think.
You can’t create that quality thinking time if you’re working all the time. But if you were forced to leave work earlier and spend more time walking in the park, or meeting friends, or just relaxing in whatever way you choose, I bet you would come up with a lot more great ideas. Some could even transform your business.
So before you pull another late night shift, ask yourself whether it is really the most intelligent strategy.
Yes, working long hours is more likely to alleviate your show term problems, but great companies are not built by solving the temporary.
They are built by having a handful of clever ideas, and executing them superbly.
So to give yourself the best chance of having those crucial game changing ideas, try working less. And thinking more.
This is one of those rare cases where the most pleasant strategy is also the best.
