I Didn’t realy feel like doing much work today, so I only worked a total of two and half hours all day.
Not much else to report. I’m still amazed that even though I’m working a fraction of the hours I was before, income hasn’t dropped at all.
Just checking in with a short update before I go on leave.
So far, I”ve pretty much managed to keep on track with the 4 hours per day 6 days a week. Gong over twice only. Once by fifteen minutes simply becuase I wanted to finish a specific task, the other was around 1hr extra becuase I was dealing with some important customer issues that needed to be resolved.
I’m on leave now for 2 weeks so not really doing any sort of work, but when I get back I’ll be cutting my time back to 4 hrs / 5 days only.
I’ve really noticed a BIG change in my mindset and thought processes. Instead of thinking what more work I can do, I’m thinking about what tasks can be done to increase income (specifically marketing tasks).
I’ve been focusing on creating marketing system – which my team can easily carry out without me being around. So far it’s working quite well, I’m working less and believe it or not, turnover is actually increasing.
Well, I’m at singapore airport right now, and time is running out for my internet access so I’ll say good bye for now…
I’m now entering my second week of the experiment and I have to say the results are quite literally amazing!
There is no doubt in my mind that I am now achieving MORE working 4 hrs a day 6 days a week then when I was working 10-15 hrs a day. Yes, I’m doing less work, but the work I am doing is FAR more productive.
I’ve turned my focus to income producing tasks such as marketing campaigns, and have delegated as many of the tasks as possible. So far the result is that I’m working considerably less than before and we’re actually ahead of budget.
I am also working on some other tasks in the business (such as tutorial creation) which are shared between myself and our other writers and video producers. The reason I’m doing this is that the tutorial I’m working on (www.buildingwebsitesmadesimple.com) is very much about my own personal experiences and web development systems, so it’s not really the sort of things I can outsource.
All in all the result so far are very promising, although I’m still a fare way off the 4hours work week going from 72 hours a week to 24 hours a week in one hit is a pretty big step.
Next I’ll be cutting it down from 4 hours, 6 days a week to 4 hours 5 days a week. I’ll probably do the change around late december early January, depending on how things pan out.
Hours worked: 3hrs 30 min
Comments:
I’ve been getting up nice and early lately (around 5:30 -6:00 am) with the aim of getting a few hours of work in before the rest of the family wakes up. This way I can have my work finished by between 10-11 am and the rest of my day is free to do what I please.
This morning I was creating a some new video tutorials for my website – www.buildingwebsitesmadesimple.com which is a relatively new site that we recently launched that teaches people how to make a website of their own.
After I had written the script, created the powerpoint, and recorded the video it came time to edit and produce the video. Editing and producing these videos can often take longer than creating the scripts and recording them, and I thought to myself “this is really a job some one else could be doing” (I’ve been very ‘aware’ lately about what tasks I could be outsourcing instead of doing them myself) and that’s when I started thinking about the cash v’s time balance.
Basically – in order to cut down my work hours I need “buy time”. In other words, in order for me to work less, someone else needs to work more, and that of course means I need to buy their time.
There’s a fine balance here between the cash that’s available to buy time with and the cash that I take as a wage. Without an increase in profits buying someone elses time mean a reduction in my own income. Basically in order to buy more time – I need to increase turnover / profits – the higher the turnover the more time I can buy.
I’m all for outsourcing, BUT I’m also VERY big on making sure I can maintain a certain level of income. Finding that balance is something I’m working on at the moment.
As a result of this, I’m paying closer attention to my cash flow, seeing where I can cut back on un-necessary spending and re-allocate those funds to ‘buy time’ that will be spent on income producing activities.
In the short term I’ll continue editing and producing the video’s myself, but this is definitely one area that I will be outsourcing in the near future.
Hours worked: 4
Comments:
While I was sitting back reflecting on the on the experiment and my reaction and attitudes towards it I noticed some interesting changes in my beliefs about work.
So far each day I have gotten ALL my important tasks done, and my income hasn’t suffered one single bit. Sure it’s early days but I’m feeling VERY confident that the shift from 12-15 hours per day to 4 will NOT have a negative impact on my earnings.
In fact I’m quite surprised to find my self doing a total 360 degree shift on the subject – my wife will tell you, one of my main arguments for working those long hours was that if I didn’t “put in the hours” we wouldn’t be able to keep up our level of income – in other words I believed I HAD to work 12-15 hours a day simply to maintain a certain level of income.
My belief on that subject has completely changed.
There is however another belief that I haven’t yet been able to shift – that is that in order to INCREASE my income I still have to work ‘harder’ (which translates to more hours for me). for some reason, I still can’t come to grips with the possibility of increasing my income without putting in more effort on my part. To me, income (or rewards) only come with greater effort (more working hours).
I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to change this belief if this experiment is going to succeed.
