What My Working Week And 4 Hour Days Look Like
“It’s rare I work more than four hours a day.” The words came out of my mouth quite nonchalantly; it was, after all, the truth of my day to day in my business. It was sort of the way my working routine had developed over the last year or so, and other than feeling guilty about not doing enough sometimes I never really gave it much thought. Until Josephine, who was interviewing me on her podcast at the time, expressed her disbelief at how I managed to do everything I do in such a short time frame.
That got me to thinking – maybe it is quite a big deal. I know that, objectively, in the last two years I’ve achieved a lot. I’ve created and run three different e-courses several times, devised and run group programmes, hosted three workshops, worked with around 100 one-to-one clients, done some sponsored work here and there and blogged and podcasted more or less weekly. That’s a big list when you write it out like that, and my conversation with Josephine highlighted that all that visible output likely triggers assumptions about my working habits in those looking in. I feel a responsibility to shed a more realistic light on how I spend my time.
First though, a potted history. When I very first left my job I still had the ‘work = time at desk’ mindset so would generally be “working” for around 8 hours – working is in inverted commas there because I didn’t really know what I was doing and basically faffed around a lot. I remember I was starting later in the mornings, at 10 or 11am, and if I didn’t work through to 7pm to ‘make up’ the hours I would feel this strange guilt and pressure, like someone was watching me and logging my hours.
Over time though that dropped away and by the middle of 2018 I has shaken off the 9-5 spectre and was working more intuitively – I didn’t feel I needed to ‘make up’ hours and instead planned my time in a very task-focused way. It feels like a really long time ago now, but I was still working more than 4 hours then because, although I was focusing more on goals and tasks, I was giving myself lots of tasks. I piled my plate really high with things that meant I was racking up the hours just to meet deadlines.
This has started to drop off this year. I began to feel more stable in the business as I’d built a bank of experience that showed me that things were working and I didn’t need to keep doing more things in case everything fell apart. I also found myself in the middle of a burnout that meant I had to do less – I couldn’t keep afloat at the pace I was going. I needed to choose guilt-free fallow time and rest in my day in order to conserve energy. And now, out the other side, the habit has stuck.
I don’t always do a four hour day. Sometimes I’ll do more hours if I’m feeling good, or if I’m finishing things off before a deadline or I’m in the flow of whatever I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll do a two hour day if I’m tired. The key is that I work intuitively, guided by my energy levels day by day, hour by hour – this isn’t always conscious (although I sometimes have to say ‘step away, you’re too tired to do anything good’), more just trust that by not forcing things I can stay in the sweet spot. And it happens that most days, four hours is that sweet spot.
What I’m aiming for is a state of structured flow. This for me is the balance between enough structure and routine to not lose myself, but enough freedom not feel trapped. I still have daily and weekly to dos, I still plan my time in a planner to give me anchor points in the week, but I constantly re-evaluate it to ensure that at any given moment I’m doing the work I’m in flow to do. For example, if I’d scheduled to write a blog post on a Thursday but I wake up feeling tired and uninspired, I’ll instead do the admin I’d planned to do on Friday and move the writing to the following day. It all gets done, but at the time when I can do it best. I want to avoid those jarring moments of ‘I don’t know what to do now’ or ‘do I really have to do this’, as that’s when all my energy gets backed up and I feel stressed and guilty.
Of course, I am lucky in that I don’t have children who need me during the day and I am full time in my business, so I have more flexibility than others to move things around. However, I do believe that by connecting to ourselves more, to being more conscious and accepting of our energy levels, there are ways to be more in flow even if you’re only working on your business in the evenings. So much of how we work is indoctrinated by the traditional workplace that we feel like because we’ve said we’ll do a certain thing on a certain day we have to do it – if the only person who’s affected by that is you, why can’t you change it?
Below are my routines and a couple of examples of recent weeks in my business so you can really see what my day to day looks like.
Weekly routine
(My working week is Tuesday-Saturday so I can share a weekend with Dan)
Monday
Set 3 or 4 main goals and tasks for the week, plot appointments into my planner and plan the tasks around them
Tuesday
A creation day where I might record podcasts, write a blog post, work on a new product
Wednesday and Thursday
Client call days – no more than three calls per day
Friday
Depending on what’s going on that week this will be either another creation day, or a catch up day to sort out admin and incomplete tasks
Saturday
I do client calls every other Saturday, on the ‘off’ weeks I either take the day off or work on a big project
DAILY ROUTINE
My days are punctuated with these constants:
I walk the dog in the morning before I do anything else
I spend half an hour checking and replying to client emails
I go out for a second walk in the afternoon (unless it’s raining 😉 )
I have a long bath at night
All the tasks I plan revolve around these constants.
A REAL WEEK
Here is everything I did last week (week commending 23rd September 2019) so you can see what this looks like in practice.
My three tasks:
Create a pre-order workbook
Write a blog post
Send 3 podcast pitches
Monday
Planned my week (30 mins)
Sent prep emails to podcast interviewees (30 mins)
Tuesday
2 podcast interviews (around 2 hours)
Reply to urgent emails (1 hour)
Tweak a web page (15 minutes)
Wednesday
Client call and notes (1.5 hours)
Reply to non-urgent emails (1 hour)
Create a workbook for The Playbook early bird (1.5 hours)
Posted on Instagram (1 hour)
Thursday
Client call and notes (1.5 hours)
Write and send podcast pitches (1 hour)
Write a blog post (1 hour)
(Note, some weeks are busier than others with clients. Usually I’ll have two calls per day, and won’t do more than check my inbox on those days)
Friday
Write course content (1.5 hours)
Curate links and resources for newsletter (1 hour)
Saturday
2 client calls (3 hours)
I wrote on Instagram Stories last week about my to do list, and the point I made there I want to reiterate here too. There is not a lot of stuff on those daily to do lists. I know that I could do more every day that would make things happen faster. But the point is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back to a place where every day I was wringing myself out energetically and striving really hard to reach a point I hadn’t even defined. In this way of working, everything happens at the time and pace I decide.
Of course it doesn’t always happen like this. I’m not always in flow and can go for weeks where it feels like pushing a stone up a hill. But more often than not I can return to a place of more flow quicker now that I am planning small, clear things to do every day, knowing they are the pieces of the greater puzzle. Ultimately, it makes me happier in myself and my work, and it makes me healthier, to work like this rather than try to max out on productivity. And if we’re not happy, then really what is the point?
