The eight hour work day trap.
Why thirty minutes a day is all you need to change the world. Or at least run a business.
It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing the right thing. But then the almighty question is—what is the right thing to do?
This post is about the fundamental question of how to spend time. Time is precious and if it’s spent at the whim of some dumb fuck who doesn’t care about the importance of creativity and innovation—peoples lives will be squandered. But who am I to say these things. Shit I can say whatever I want this is my blog.
The first place to start is to know what we want. I know what I want. I want to be in control of my time and how I use it. And I want to exit the middle class.
Now that I know what I want, how much time should I be spending on it? And what should I be doing? Let’s start with two types of work.
Work can be reduced into two categories—doing and thinking. The doing or doer is the laborer, the manager, the technician. It is the warehouse manager who works from 9 to 5 and is busy busy busy. The thinker in contrast will tinker and draw and write and collaborate. Thinkers are creating. They are making something from nothing. Both doers and thinkers are important. One needs the other. But a company full of doers is bound to fail. A company like that needs to find and or foster the thinker. Because the thinker asks “are we doing the right thing right now?” Because if “the right thing” is discovered, then throw every doer available at that thing and let them to work on it as long as they like.
It takes eight hours a day
Where did the eight hour day come from?
An article from the Huffington post writes that a man named Robert Owen championed to reduce the work day to eight hours. Later, Henry Ford made the eight hour day fashionable and reduced the amount of time his workers worked and increased their pay. Another old school concept. One of those traditions that get passed down from generation to generation that tends to lose potency as time passes.
Parkinson’t Law
Parkinson’s law states (from wikipedia) “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Parkinson came up with an equation when he saw the swelling of bureaucracies. He noted that the number of employed in a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”
It is so true. Give your employees eight hours to complete a task then eight hours they will take.
The government doesn’t help. Because of the federal labor laws. Like the one about overtime pay for over a 40 hour work week. The government reinforces the eight hour day concept.
How much actual time is needed to start and run a business? This is a tough question to answer. Because if you ask Gary Vaynerchuk he will say work as often as possible. But I don’t think that is a good answer. Because pounding your head into the wall will eventually knock it down but that is a horrible use of resources. I was just reminded of a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” That person should have given him four hours.
I propose we start sharpening our axes and reduce the work day to five and a half hours. Broken down into three ninety minute blocks with a half hour break in-between each one. But this can’t work unless we sharpen our axes by understanding the greatest and impactful thing to work on during that time.
What are the most impactful things to do with my day?
I have discussed creative work vs consumption work in another blog post. The summary is—use work time to create instead of consume. So just right there, if we are using our time to create we are doing the right thing with our time. And make sure to track the creative work. What gets measured gets managed. Compare the amount of time spent on creative work to the amount of money coming in. Is one influencing the other?
What is the best way to work?
Go to more of a task based work day than a time based workday. For example, for me to write these blog posts, I write for thirty minutes. That is my task. A thirty minute writing session. And If things are flowing well I’ll bump the time to forty five minutes or an hour. But after that time I’m done. The task is complete.
Use self-imposed deadlines and make miracles happen. Watch the video IDEO deep dive shopping cart. The company IDEO was tasked to improve the shopping cart. In five days! And they did it. It wasn’t perfect, but they did it. IDEO has a system in place to work under these time constraints. Always collaborating.
Ultimately, what this post is all about is working on the absolute most important thing at all times. And making it a habit to work on them everyday without distractions. And learning how to work well with other people. This is why I need to be in control of my time. I need to decide how to spend my time. If I let other people decide how to spend my time, it will be wasted.
Here are a few key takeaways:
Be in control of your time. Even if you are an employee. Make sure the company values production over busy. Because as I see it we live in a culture that prides busyness over productivity.
Be disciplined with your time. Don’t multitask. When you are working, get rid of all distractions. Do one task at a time in predetermined blocks of time. I do fifteen minute increments.
More work is not better. Better work is better. Figure out the least amount of work that delivers the greatest impact to your work.
The key is to work towards a goal using the least amount of energy and effort possible. Why put in more than that.
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