Forget the 4-Hour Workweek! What About the 40-Hour Workweek?

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I was speaking with an executive coaching client fairly recently and he asked me about what I thought about the 4 hour workweek, and I am going to give you my candid response to that. What I told him that I think there are some great, great principles in the 4 hour workweek.  I think it’s a catchy title, it got a lot of attention.

The problem is most people aren’t even working a 40 hour workweek! How many people do you know that are working a 40 hour workweek regularly? (And I include your work week time, travel to and from work and time spent thinking about work at home.)  How many people do you know that are working in that kind of a schedule?

In my experience in going out and speaking to companies worldwide and promoting my book and talking to people most people are working long…long hours especially when they include the time they are spending thinking about work at home, they are just they are trapped in a never ending cycle.  They are working 50…60…70 hours a week.

My suggestion is start with a 40 hour work week. That is the big part of what I do with the Get Time program, because I am helping people make strategic decisions about how much time they are going to spend in a week working.

If you are not taking control of your calendar, if you are letting your week control you, then you are not living the 40 hour workweek.  If you make a commitment to yourself that you are going to end work at 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock everyday, but you are finding that there is another task, another task and another task and—well, it just kind of goes on and on—then you are fooling yourself. And starting with something like the 4 hour workweek and out sourcing your work is just the wrong place to begin.

You need to start with yourself with your personal systems. Build a strategy to take control of where you are spending your time and what your most valuable activities are.  You need to focus on your Most Valuable Activities. You can only do that if you begin to limit the amount of time that you are working and really become realistic with yourself about the truth of time, how much time there is in a day.

That is why I put together the Get Time Boot Camp. It helps people manage their time and how much time they want to work. It helps to take control of their schedule and take control of the information that is taking…that is flowing through their day.  That is what I can help you do.  I can help you get the 40 hour workweek or even the 30 hour workweek. I can help you get to that point where you are actually in control of what is going on in your week, instead of letting your week control you.

Tired of those 12-hour workdays? What if there was a simple formula to double your productivity by working fewer hours? Find freedom with a free copy of Dave's new book, The Result: A Practical, Proven Formula for Getting What You Want.
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