I recently attended a network event as a panelist on the subject of social media. Before the panel discussion part of the evening began, a group of about one hundred attendees who work in PR and/or own a business, were mixing and mingling in the pre-show drinks and nibbles party.
I was standing in a circle talking to a group of people, all involved in running their own businesses. As we talked I noticed a difference between how these people worked to build their businesses (or at least how they talked about their work) and how I work on my business. They seem forever busy, and while they were brave enough to start their own business, the amount of labor hours they put in is significant.
The problems people have with their relationship to work became clearer when I mentioned that I’m doing a productivity course from Eben Pagan (Wake Up Productive), whom none of them had heard of.
I told the people in the circle how I often have a nap in the afternoon if my body feels like it, which got a laugh from some, presumably because they couldn’t imagine sleeping in the middle of a work day. I felt the need to defend myself and explain the nap is actually beneficial for my productivity (Eben suggests this in the course – though I didn’t need him to give me permission to take a nap, that’s for sure!).
My naps are short, usually around 20-40 minutes long and are not solid sleep, more like a dozing in and out of consciousness. I feel amazing once I get up, very clear and coherent – it’s like a reset button when you are feeling tired in the afternoon. Eben, and people he quoted, concurred about the effectiveness of napping for improved productivity.
This concept, the idea of “not working” when it’s designated work time based on what society tells you or how you have conditioned yourself, is something that lots of entrepreneurs and certainly employees have trouble coming to terms with. If you’re working for someone else then obviously you can’t just go to sleep on the job and if you are working for yourself the sense of obligation to keep producing is very strong – you feel guilty if you don’t work a 12 hour day.
Personally I got over the typical working day time structure a long time ago. Truth be told, I never really had to adopt it because I went from school, to university to running my own business at my own pace, so I never had the stringent nine-to-five mentality applied to my life, even if most people around me live that way Monday to Friday.
Do You Work Too Hard?
I’ve started to look at how I work more closely because it’s become quite clear that how I “work” is how most people want to work, yet never seem to be able get there. People are curious to find out if I really do just blog only a couple of hours a day and how could I travel the world and run my business at the same time for almost an entire year. How can I live with such a fluid work structure?
In your case, your very long working days could be because of your employment situation or life situation if you are a mother looking after kids for example, or because of some kind of mental conditioning you have applied to yourself. For whatever the reason, you are working when you don’t want to and you don’t know how to change.
Even among my highly successful entrepreneur friends, I’ve noticed the conditioned state is always striving for more and more. Successful people sometimes have it worse, because they become trapped in a vicious cycle where they always need something bigger and greater in order to feel a sense of purpose. If they are not running as fast as they can to the next financial milestone, they just don’t feel right.
Another chronic problem I’ve observed in today’s work environment, something I’ve deliberately made choices to avoid, is the idea that you need to take on every project that comes your way. Heaven forbid that you could miss an opportunity to grow your business, get a promotion or make more money.
Time is a resource people seem so willing to give away if the promise is more growth, more money and more status, yet you understand that those things don’t lead to more fulfilling lives. Worse still, adding more stress is a guaranteed outcome if you take on more projects, and we all know how good stress is for us.
If you’re an entrepreneur who makes your own work day, you don’t have anyone else to blame but yourself if you’re working long hours. As an employee you can try and lay the blame on your boss, but still, you chose to take that job and continue to follow the entrenched working day structure. These things can be modified, if you have the impetus to make change.
Laying the blame elsewhere is a mental cop-out, so the first thing you need to do is accept that working too hard is your own fault, no one else is to blame. Take responsibility for your situation and then start making changes.
Wisdom From The Tao
Back many years ago when I was running my English school, I spent a day printing out and then laminating small paper cutouts of famous quotes I liked, which I stuck up on the walls of the school.
Once I shut the school down, I took the quotes and placed them on the walls of the spare room in my house, which I use for video recording and is going to become my strategy room for business planning and mastermind sessions.
There’s one special quote from my wall I’d like to share with you that is particularly relevant for the topic of this article –
Balance and Illumination
When you are mindful in times of rest, you are observant in times of movement. If you have self-mastery in times of rest, you can be decisive in times of movement. If you have stability in times of rest, actions will not lead to unfortunate results. Rest is the foundation of movement, movement is the potential of rest. When you do not lose the constant in movement and rest, your path will be illuminated.
The Tao Te Ching, 13th century classic text of Taoism
I really like this quote, and I’m not just saying that because it makes great justification for afternoon naps.
If you take on the meaning of the quote you will truly understand how important it is to be a master of how you spend your energy, both during times of rest and work.
When I think of what the human body is capable of doing and what a tremendous source of energy we all are, it brings into light how critical it is to get the balance right in how you use your body. If you don’t work smart, re-energise effectively and prepare well, then your life will start to fall apart.
Your potential for creative output is interlinked with your ability to use your down time well, and vice versa. If you hate your job, then you’re more likely to use the time away from work on poor habits, like excessive drinking and food consumption, lazing in front of the TV for hours, forming poor habits of thinking – becoming cynical, negative – and even destructive.
Conversely, when you don’t get enough sleep, when you don’t put in time to learn and study, or when you don’t input enough quality nutrients into your body, then your work output suffers and you start to get sick.
Harmony is the key here and if you want to enjoy your working life you need to take control of every hour of your day and find a balance that delivers fulfillment. Work, rest and play are all interlinked and when in harmony can result in a wonderful state of being. If even one of them is out of kilter, the other elements suffer.
The 80/20 Rule, Leverage and Your Work
Long time readers of this blog know my dedication to promoting the 80/20 rule as a key for success. The part of the 80/20 rule that we focus on the most is the 20% that delivers leverage. This is an easy concept to understand, because if you look closely, you know that only a few of your work activities result in the majority of the output that actually makes an impact, so you should focus on those activities.
In my case, writing blog posts like this, sending emails to my newsletter, and creating content I deliver to my paying customers, are the highest leverage activities for my business. They happen to be some of the most fulfilling work I do from a creative standpoint too, which is one of the reasons I’m successful at what I do – I enjoy my work for more than just the financial return.
What’s interesting is my high leverage activities don’t consume much time from my day – less than 20%, so the rule holds true again. I can spend less than 20% of my day on the handful of output tasks I know that deliver big results and thus run a very successful and fulfilling business.
That’s great and we should all strive to find what few things deliver most value to us, but there’s something I’m not talking about here – what do I do with the other 80% of my day when I’m not working?
Let’s say on average it takes me about three to four hours of each day to be productive for my business. That’s not four consecutive hours, but cumulatively over the course of a single day, about that much time is dedicated to getting things done to maintain momentum in my business.
As Tim Ferriss points out in The 4-Hour Workweek, if you carefully measure the time when you are completing work, the period that you are actually productive is quite small. If you spend 8 hours at your office, collectively you might get two hours of productive work done – work that moves you forward (that usually doesn’t include responding to emails or talking on the phone).
Eben Pagan suggests a schedule that focuses on short work bursts of concentrated focus of about one hour, which has been proven to be about how long we are capable of staying focused on a task, without needing a break or experiencing degradation in our ability to focus.
The point is very clear – we don’t need to work long hours every day to achieve the results we want. We’re not built that way and if you are forcing yourself to work for hours and hours, then you’re doing harm to your body AND being less productive.
Become focused and direct your energy on completing a very small handful of the most crucial tasks, then you can become a highly productive person, yet only work for less than 20% of your day.
What About The Rest Of Your Day?
We’ve come to the realization that our work time doesn’t need to take a huge chunk of our day, which leaves us with quite a few hours left over to spend on other activities.
Our natural inclination might be to indulge in leisure activities, but as anyone who has ever tried to spend every day sitting on the beach drinking martinis, it gets boring pretty quickly.
I’ve never been good at what most people call the traditional holiday, which is essentially “doing nothing”. I need to be creative, both in terms of output of my own creative process and stimulation from other people’s ideas. Balance is key here and spending a full week just reading a book down by a pool is not my idea of a good holiday.
If you are working your butt off putting in 50 hour weeks, dreaming of the two week break you get in a couple of months time, it makes sense that you look forward to taking a holiday that involves nothing much. You’re so exhausted that simply sleeping and watching TV or reading a book is what you desire, because you need to regenerate after using your energy so inefficiently and out of balance in your working environment.
If however, you have a working life that is all about short, laser focused, optimal usage of work energy, you don’t feel drained and look for time off to do nothing. You have plenty of energy left over for other things and this is when the real challenge comes in.
Not only do you have to learn how to work smart, you also have to learn how to use every other hour of your day in an effective manner. You have to become a master of your own energy, which as the Tao quote so elegantly presents, is the key – what you do when not working is the determinant for what state you are in when it is time to perform.
Let’s Talk Professional Tennis
Professional tennis is my favorite sport to watch. Every single day I read about the ATP and WTA tour online, who is winning what and all the news from the tennis world.
Professional tennis presents a great example of the importance of perfect harmony of energy and mind, during times of performance, preparation and rest.
Tennis is a physical sport, but at its heart, it is a mind game. The term “inner game” may have in fact come from the book – The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey – first published in 1972, which offers an introduction to the world of mindset and self talk, and in this case, how it affects your tennis game.
Tennis as a spectator sport is interesting because you only see the players during their performance time. A tennis match, on average is only a few hours long. During a given tournament, especially the best-of-three set smaller tournaments, the amount of time a player spends on court is minimal, yet this is when they must concentrate focused effort if they want to win.
Match time is when a tennis player does their job and is the highest leverage activity in their life, at least while they remain a professional player. During a match a tennis player has to master their mind so their body can go to work to construct enough good points to win. If you really drill it down, only a handful of points within a game make the difference between winning and losing, so the most critical times in a tennis player’s life are a very tiny proportion of their entire life – it could literally be 30 seconds, a few times in each match.
What we don’t see as spectators is the amount of effort tennis players put in to prepare for these critical moments. Hours are spent in the gym. They go to sports psychologists to help work on mindset. They live on the practice court spending hours each day drilling routine shots and plays over and over again. They need to monitor their fluid intake, eat the right foods and get enough sleep despite jumping across different time zones as they travel to different tournaments around the world.
Though we don’t observe it as spectators, a tennis player is constantly working to find balance and harmony, so when it’s time to perform, all aspects of their game are ready. In this case, if you have self-mastery in times of rest, you can be decisive in times of movement, has never been more true.
Find Your Harmony
I hope by now you’ve started to look at your entire day holistically to see the interconnectedness of all aspects of your life, and are considering what needs to change in order to bring things into balance.
I suggest you look at these factors in your life as first places where change might be necessary –
- What work you choose to do and how you do it
- How you use the time you don’t work, which includes time “at work” when not working
If you don’t love your work, then that is the first thing that needs to change – it might be time for a career shift. If you do love your work but you find yourself exhausted after long days, then you better figure out exactly what it is about your work that delivers value, then subtract that from everything else you do, and what you have left is what you are wasting time on.
If you truly want to excel at something, and if you are doing a job you love you are motivated to achieve results, then the time you spend preparing to do that job and the time you spend away from that job, are just as important as when you do the job itself. It’s all related.
Above all, this is about balance, and the only thing in your life that should take more than five hours every single day is sleep (unless you are a polyphasic sleeper).
Mix things up, do what you enjoy for fun, what you love as creative expression, study, learn from and be entertained by what others express as their passion, eat good food in frequent moderate servings, exercise, meditate, relax and then when required, you will be ready to perform at your peak, but you won’t have to do it for very long to succeed.
Yaro Starak
Seeking Harmony
How can people that work in IM not know Eben? He is easily among the Top 10 names you come across when you research the field!
I used to be like that…online all the time and wasting half of that time. I felt there were too many deadlines and i have no time for wasting on my self, then I got wiser. I found that if I insisted on doing my own things first, I still found the time to do the work for others.
It all comes down to what we’re condition to. Whether we’re used to working a 9-5 or working our own business at our own pace, that’s the type of work ethic we’ll put into our business.
This is great food for thought Yaro!
Hi Yaro,
My audio library was getting a bit dry after I had already listened to many of your shows repeatedly, so I decided to pop out here and get some more. Absolutely brilliant work! I just love your show. I have an online radio show (live but also recorded) and so your tips on interviewing were a great boost to my ego because I thought, “I do that… yeah, I do that!” A fun read.
So glad to have “met” you. This article is really good too. I am working my way OUT of the working 9 5 world and am so excited for what’s to come when I get big and famous. (I will still listen to you, though, my friend – no worries
)
Have a great relaxing week & keep nappin’,
Amy P
In China, when you take a nap at your workplace this means you have been working really hard! So it’s totally sociably acceptable
I agree, naps are good for kids and grown-ups too. In China, do people catnap at their desk or do they have a special snooze area?
I follow my own rhythm when I work. Sometimes, anxious and stressed and not as productive. Sometimes, focused for short bursts. In between, I alternate celebrating what I’ve gotten done and lamenting everything that’s left undone.
No wonder I get sleepy sometimes
I agree with this article wholeheartedly. I work long hours and if I did not work on certain day or rest for an hour watching tv, I feel very guilty.
I think it is time for me to rethink my working hours and re-adjust my lifestyle to make it more fulfilling and productive at the same time.
Hi Yaro!
Great blog post. I agree with you:
You deserve all the time to relax when you need to do it.
Nap is so effective to produce success in many aspects of your life: work, family, love, relationships, study, grow, concentration…
Because when you go down in sleeping it happens a phenomenon like in the hypnosis process.
Infact quickly you go down in alfa’s brain state and after much more deeper in theta state. This meaning that you go to sleep with your conscious mind, but with the unconscious mind you go to a deeper state of intense celebral activity.
And how the recent scientific research have showed, this means to go into a mental state of extraordinary and brillant creativity.
The benefits of all these rapid naps are amazing. Infact you can wake up with a great intuition or maybe with a extraordinary solution to your business or to a problem that afflicts your life.
Recently I have read an exciting story around the birth of a new fantastic world membership site, that it has happened just after a deep nap of exactly 6 minutes.
So, if my next nap will be just this lucky nap, my life would change immediately in better.
I agree with you Yaro about the importance of make healthy naps, how many you need and deserve. And stop thinking and doing what you have learned watching, listening, and modeling all the people in your life, until now.
You are on this wonderful for learn better success strategies, right?
Remember friend who read:
“DIFFERENT RESULTS REQUIRE DIFFERENT MODES OF ACTION”
Begin to act in different mode and soon you will see awesome results that you can’t imagine!
Thanks infinitely Yaro to give me the opportunity of sharing my studies, my experiences, and I really hope to contribute to other success with these few words.
My hand on my heart,
Alberto
An incredible post. your authenticity shows. that these ideas are yours and not rehashed from others, though I have not doubt you have heard them from others and have built on them and made them yours.
Yes your message struck a chord for me. I work way too hard. And I agree that I have only myself to blame. I need to rethink my work day. Or at the very least (but certainly the most important) I have to watch myself, be aware of myself, when I am ‘running’ my busy days. what is going on at the level of thoughts and self talk when I run my crazily busy days.
Asha
I think the value of working in furious spurts can not be empahisized enough. It really works to focus qs hard as you can for about an hour, and to then walk away from your workspace altogether for ten to fifteen minutes, which gives you some time to do all the little things in the garden and around the house as you go. It is amazing how productive this causes you to be on so many levels.
Yaro,
I was hoping you would say more about the business model you have implemented/automated and how it allows you to work less. Please be specific about how it is that you have organized the underlying structure of your business which enables you to be monetarily successful while working less. I would prefer a more practical answer to a spiritual answer.
Thanks,
Gabe Singer
Hi Gabe, the practical answers are in other blog posts, please read through the articles pages and I teach you everything that I do to make money and work only a few hours to keep the businesses going.
It’s true. I guess at the end of the day it all comes off to just one thing: being organized. If you’re not – you actually never have the time to get to everything.
Awesome awesome post I always feel like I am neglecting my business when I only put in a couple of hours a day. I see your point and I need to change my mindset. I already have a nice solid base established so I am gonna definitely implement the 2 hour a day strategy you discussed. Your right concentrate on the tasks that actually make you money everything else is just secondary!
I can’t begin to tell you which part of your post I liked best…it’s a great read! This is one of the lines that hold very true today — “Time is a resource people seem so willing to give away if the promise is more growth, more money and more status, yet you understand that those things don’t lead to more fulfilling lives.” It’s so ironic how we recognize the importance of time, rest, taking it slow, etc. yet we still push ourselves to the limit to be more successful, to earn more, to close more deals, to increase sales! I know many people who are workaholics,who always deliver what they promise. But at the end of the day, (week, or month) there’s always that feeling of lack or temporary fulfillment. I believe that if we are to be truly fulfilled and happy (smiling and giddy!), we really need to rethink our priorities and invest our time in things that are truly worth caring about.
Really interesting post! As a patent attorney, its interesting to see that alot of my entrepreneurial patent attorney clients don’t work a normal work week. I think we often have our most creative ideas outdoors or when we are relaxing.
This post was enlightening for me. I had recently read in several places success stories of individuals who made millions by working 16 hours a day, every day. I began to model myself after them. The fact that you have a 2 hour day and have become so successful is inspiring to me. Hopefully, some of what you wrote will rub off onto me and I’ll no longer feel like it is necessary to work so much. I’ve been working all day… It’s like I’m addicted. I’ve decided to take the rest of the night down a notch and take things a little more slow. And it’s all thanks to this post! I’d rather have a 2 hour day than a 16 hour day any day… Take care Mr. Yaro Starak. By the way, I’m a huge fan. I’ve been reading and listening to your stuff for years now.
Very encouraging post. Naps in between help you rejuvinate that energy and work more productively. For me, not hard work, but smart work helps.
It’s very interesting information, Yaro. It matters very much how the man is educated and formed.
gr8 piece of work. keep it up. We really appreciate of such kind of stuff in this regard.
Its very interesting post, I sometimes take naps too depending on how my body feels during the day. Whenever I try to force myself to be productive, the result is never satisfactory.
Asifjaved,
Software Engineer & SEO Expert,
Human being is not a robot that can work 8 hours a day without any breaks. At one point your brain stops working as fast as it used to and you start thinking about something else. Thank you
Long live “80/20″! I try to use this as my guide post for everything I do as I am a perfectionist and clearly “don’t know when to stop”. Hence the 12 hour days. Thanks for the important reminder.
WOW, yes! this is a Great Post,
I definitely am not one of the Entrepreneurs that has trouble with the concept of ‘Not Working’, infact recently (9 July 2011) on my – Travel Blog – (you can find the link on my <iHome Business Lifestyle Blog) I actually wrote a post about a book about Laziness by an author that has a very interesting way of defining work.
‘In that post you can also find an interesting Video about
what some Great Historical Figures have to Say about Laziness’.
Thanks for writing your post, because even though I do frequently remind myself
to take Breaks or go Excersising or play Tennis and things like that, sometimes I am so inspired that I totally forget the time and need some Relax-time. So I like the idea of the short Naps, I actually just did a tiny
(5 minute) ‘Nap’ and while taking this short Relax Time, because of it and because of your story about ‘Not Working’ it made me go back in time
and walk ‘Memory Lane’,
And talking about walking, It reminded me of a Funny Story from more than 10 years ago when I worked at one of the Major Record Companies, a collegue that came working at our department, had a huge ‘Culture Shock’ once…, She had been working at a Record Distributions Centre where the work was like ‘Clockwork’, like in a factory and than she came to work at our (Sales Support) Department (I was a Creative Sales Support Employee back than)
….., one day after having been away with a whole group of colleges, for more than two hours, she was totally Shocked wondering what on earth had happened, while we totally surprised - wondering what all the fuzz was all about - just replied:
‘Well, euh…, we just had a little Walk and Sat in Sun,
Because it’s such nice weather today’
(During Summer there wheren’t frequently that
much big Campaigns to work on anyway)
All the Best,
To your Happy - Home Business - Inspiration,
HP
When we do something we are interested in, it isn’t really a hard work. Only when something is forced upon us (in any means), it becomes hard work. So if our passion turns out to be our job, every day is actually a holiday for us.
@root android
But only if what you love is also financially viable.
that’s a wonderful post. Actually it is quite true that out of all the time that we spend working our productive time is only a small percentage of that. It happens to me so often that even after spending 12 hours on work i feel as if it was not such a productive day and sometimes working just a couple of hours makes me feel so good. I also takes small naps of 10-20 minutes at least once in a day to recharge myself.
A great article!
The working time is precisely why I have always fought to be a self-employed
Why do I have to remain imprisoned for 8 or 12 hours a day, when I can produce the same way, using only 2-3 hours of my life, at the time of day that I like more?
Unfortunately, any computer work is full of distractions!
ps: about the naps, sleep 20-30 minutes after lunch is, scientifically, good for our bodies
Yaro, thanks for this post!
But I think the comparison between an 8-hour work day and a 2-hour work day is irrelevant, because there have been recorded studies of people in other countries who work 12-hour days but report having those times being the highlight of their days.
I believe what ultimately matters is that whatever one is to do ‘at work’ or not at work, that there should be order in consciousness. If someone who is at work finds a state of flow and order in consciousness, then power to him. But when his energy is no longer required at work, he must find another activity that produces the same type of flow in order to keep the mind drifting into chaos.
A great book to read on this subject is Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He exhausts the concept of the psychology of optimal experience. Great read.