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I had a revelation today: I don’t really like working.
I suspect you’re grinning by now. If not, you should be. I bet you’re thinking: “This is a revelation? Seriously?”
Well, yes, it is. We all don’t like work. No matter how much we love what we do, we have those days where we really don’t want to be there. It’s a beautiful day outside, and we’re sitting here in front of the computer. What are we doing? Why are we letting our lives waste away at work?
I decided I don’t want to do that anymore.
I just don’t want a job — any job — that requires 8 hours a day of work. In the beginning, or at all. Ever! I want to live my life powerfully…and I want to be free to do what I want, when I want to do it.
So I made a mind-blowing decision…off the cuff. I said out loud to the world, “I wonder what would happen if I said I was only going to work 2 hours a day…and I still had all the same goals?”
Now that is an interesting puzzle. What if I don’t change my goals at all…I just change my perspective on what it takes to get there?
Changing Your Perspective
If you only had 2 hours a day to get everything done that you needed to do, how quickly would you change your work life so that you could still meet all your goals? In my case, my goals are still to launch Inspiring Innovators, drive traffic to it, promote it, write this blog, and write an ebook. Between all of those, I want to make $10,000/month in income from all of those sources by the end of this year.
But now I’m adding a new twist to it: I’m going to do all of this…and only work 2 hours a day.
My New Work Schedule
It’s actually going to be about 2.5 hours, all told. Here’s how I’m going to break it down:
And that’s it. I have the rest of the day to exercise, read books, take up new hobbies, or go lounge around outside. Anything that comes in that night gets added to the next day’s to-do list before I go to bed.
Weekends are optional work days. I can choose to work my 2 hours (or not) as I see fit.
How would this sort of thinking change your life?
After you’ve read this, my challenge to you is to sit down and see what your work schedule would look like if you only worked 2 hours a day.
Here are a few instinctive ways I think my life will change:
Overcoming “I can’t”
A year ago I would have said it was impossible to only work 2 hours a day. I was full-time running my web hosting company, buried under piles of work I thought I had to do myself. But that wasn’t the real issue. Lack of time, much like lack of money, is never the underlying issue. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem.
What was that problem in my case? Actually, a lot of it boiled down to ego. I was filled with feelings of “I have to do this all myself” and “I can’t trust anyone else to do a good job”. Also, I wasn’t charging my customers the rates I needed to charge them to reliably sustain my business and hire new employees. Simpli, as a business, was perpetually cash-poor.
I have learned from all of these mistakes. My current businesses, while having all the great elements of “me” that will make them shine, will have employees from the start. A key distinction will be my ability to let go. And, in order to be able to fully let go and get my ego out of the way, I must restrain myself to only working 2 hours a day.
If you run a business, are you running it…or is your ego?
If you’re not hiring other people, or if you make excuses like “We don’t have enough money to…”, stop. Nothing is worth snuffing out the light inside yourself. Nothing is worth more than treating your body and mind well. No business is worth killing yourself over.
If you could only work 2 hours a day, what would you do? That’s your genius. Outsource everything else.
Let it go…and watch your business flourish. How will your life change? How will you change? I want to hear your comments…just leave them here. Of course, I will post an update here as well so you can see my progress toward this new goal.
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Recent Comments
6 RESPONSES TO "I HATE WORK, SO HERE COMES MY 2-HOUR WORK DAY"
Hello, my name is Donald Brown. I am an Internet marketer, and I totally understand how you feel about your work. However, the reality is, if you want to run a business, you really have to run it. Running and managing a business is a full-time effort, no matter if you have employees, or you simply outsource the work.
The pure fact is; you will still spend much time running and managing the business. Now as far as making $10,000 at the end of the year, that's a pretty lofty goal, but there's one problem with that and that has to do with whether or not people will buy from you.
My mentors stioll spend lots and lots of time on their businesses, and they love the work that they do. To be totally honest and sincere with you, if you really want to be an Internet marketer, then there's a whole boatload of work ready and waiting for you. Sure those couple hour days sound nice, but let's face reality here. If you have employees to deal with, outsourcing to do, web sites to maintain, and update, ebooks to write, articles to write, emails to write, seminars to attend, phone calls to make and so on, then where's that two hours that you have been talking about?
Ok, sure you could physically work two hours on the computer, but you and I both know that in order to run a business online, or even offline, there's a lot of stuff to be done. I can't honestly think of any brick andmorter business whose owner only works two hours a day, can you?
Now I am not saying that you will not be making $10,000 per month by the end of the year because I don't know how your busness is structured, and how you run it. However, what I can say though, is this, and that is; it takes a lot of time to properly grow a business. Your email list is not going to grow by leaps and bounds because you can't expect everyone to join the list, no matter how good you promote the business. You will find people who will not join the list.
Real marketing online requires you to roll up your sleaves and put your nose to the grindstone. However, this doesn't have to be boring work, or hard work. It can actually be quite fun work. You just have to use your imagination.
For me, I love working on the computer all day long. That's my passion. My mentors are the same way. They spend countless hours in front of their machines editing web pages, editing audio and video, creating audio and video, and so much more. Then if you count their road trips to live seminars, then that's even more hours spend on the business right there. of course, they're not traveling to a live seminar each and every day, but I will tell you this, and that is; they're on the telephone a whole lot because of their businesses. So with all that, where's the two hour day?
The more successful your business becomes, the more work you will end up doing, and that's a fact. Ok, so you may not actually be sitting in front of your computer doing much of that work, but if you're on the phone, at live seminars, and talking to others about the business, then technically, you're working.
Sure, you can actually site there for two hours each day, but tell me this. If someone were to call you after your two hours has expired, would you tell them something like, "Oh, I'm sorry but I am not working right now because my two hour day is over, , so you'll have to call me back tomorrow during the two hours that I am working." Well if you're any kind of business person, you wouldn't tell them that. You would probably help them, and if you do, then you've just extended your two hours right then and there. So you see, there's really no such thing as the two hour work day.
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This is truly unlike anything that you have seen on the net. Be sure to tell others about it as well.
Sounds great, except when your work depends on other people getting things done or when you are involved in a team project. Then it totally crashes.
It sound like it's worth a try for a couple of months, if it works, great! If it doesn't, you would have streamline you so much that have cut down a good amount of hrs/day or gain some valuable experience.
So have fun with it.
I like your point about hiring other people and not making excuses. Even if one is not aspiring to work 2 hours a day I think many people put off hiring others when they should. Good luck with your endeavor.
Hi all, and thanks for commenting! The point of this exercise is to figure out how much of your workday is comprised of actual work, and how much of it can be eliminated so you can focus on more fun things. I'll make sure to keep posting about my experiences.
@Donald: You wrote "The more successful your business becomes, the more work you will end up doing, and that’s a fact." Sorry, but I don't agree! The more successful your business becomes, the more you should consider outsourcing to other employees. After all, if your business requires YOU, how will you ever sell it? I want to run a business that doesn't control my life, and that I can eventually sell. The more a business runs itself (by virtue of having excellent employees/practices), the more it can sell for -- and the more happy the business owner will be!
-Erica
Erica, your post, and then the comments between you and Donald made me think of two things.
1) In university I took a Small Business Management class. Apart from being a very interesting class with experienced entrepreneurs as professors and lecturers with a lot to offer, there was one statement that really stuck out. If you can't create a business that earns you money while you're sleeping (or playing golf, or suntanning, or whatever) then you're not starting a business, you're creating a job,
Second, I think your response to Donald is the E-Myth principle. I recall reading the E-Myth Revisited a few years back, and two things jumped out at me. A) When you start your business, draft job descriptions for everything. Even if you're filling all of them at the start, then you can begin hiring people to take over specific roles as your business grows. The added bonus is that when you're hiring employees, you are finding people to fill a role, which also means that should problems arise, you are finding someone to fill a role rather than replace a person.
B)Systemize everything. (Short as this is running on :))
Great post!
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