Why I rarely work more than a 3-4 hour workday

And why doing less supports me to be consistent in my business…

From my camera roll: My desk, today

Have you ever come across Oliver Burkeman’s three-or-four hours rule?

I did today after listening to the hosts of one of my favourite podcasts, Bad On Paper, talk about his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals.

As he writes on his website:

There aren't many hard-and-fast rules of time management that apply to everyone, always, regardless of situation or personality (which is why I tend to emphasise general principles instead). But I think there might be one: you almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day.

The real lesson – or one of them – is that it pays to use whatever freedom you do have over your schedule not to "maximise your time" or "optimise your day", in some vague way, but specifically to ringfence three or four hours of undisturbed focus (ideally when your energy levels are highest). Stop assuming that the way to make progress on your most important projects is to work for longer.

And I felt so validated reading this, as a person who has very intentionally shaped my business to only ask 3 part time work days from myself each week.

Now the core reason that I made this decision in my business is to honour the fact that I live in a chronically ill body and I’m also a working parent so I just don’t have the capacity to work at an intense pace in my business.

But the truth is that even whilst working very part time hours in my business I am able to quietly and gently get a lot of meaningful work done each month.

I dive deep with my clients in Voxer each work day and one month a quarter I have a day each week with 2-3 calls with my clients too.

Every week I write a newsletter, record a podcast episode, and often record another one for the podcast I co-host too.

Every month I create a coaching workshop for the awesome humans inside my group program YS&SB and I host twice-monthly office hours for them too.

I also record a private podcast for my group program each week, I show up in our community Slack channel, and regularly create additional resources for them throughout the year too.

And I also create free resources throughout the year like my deep dive kit and embark on live launches for my group programs and products too.

I do a lot with the 8-10 hours that I pour into my business each week, all without regularly burning out or running out of creative steam too.

And reading over Oliver’s words I realised that the thing that I sometimes worry may hold me back in my work - the fact that I’m only able to work very part time hours in my business and need to be very laser-focused with my energy and time - is perhaps one of the things that supports me most of all to gently and quietly thrive in my work.

And I share all of this with you today to say: perhaps working less would support you to gently, quietly, and intentionally thrive in your entrepreneurial journey too.

If you feel pressure to fill more working hours and do even more with your time and energy each week, perhaps this is the permission slip you need to lean into the magic of doing less too.

I also share more behind the scenes of my part time workweek in this podcast episode here too if you’d love to hear more about what my workweek looks like and how I made this possible for myself too.

What gentle productivity advice or insights have resonated with you recently?

Until next time,

Jen