Tim Ferriss made popular the term “four-hour work week” with a book by the same name. Although a pipe dream for many, I’ve met a few successful entrepreneurs who achieve that goal most every week. They literally work less than four hours a week. For the rest of us, it might be better to look at building a great day on four highly productive work hours versus getting our entire week down to just four work hours.
Research shows most knowledge workers do a great job of staying busy for eight hours per day, but few actually come close to working that much.
Odds are you’ve already achieved this feat of a high-power, four-hour day many times. An event demands you leave at noon, or a client or co-worker calls for you to join them to close a deal or work on an urgent project. Somehow, you got an entire day’s work completed before you bolted out of the office.
How can you work in such a compressed vacuum and double productivity when you must rise to the occasion?
A mentor once quipped, “A Q4 is better than a B8!” In other words, a quality four-hour workday is better than a busy eight-hour day. Here are tips that can help build more productive workdays:
- Book focus time as an appointment. Block hours to have a singular focus, and set a deadline. People get more accomplished while focusing on one project and right before a deadline.
- Seven hours of sleep may take an hour from your wake time, but that one hour invested is likely to give you several more hours of high energy and, thus, more productive work time.
- Sip cold water, and take deep breaths. Research shows that spending one minute in deep breathing each hour gives you more energy and alertness. Taking sips of cold water throughout the day also raises energy and attentiveness.
- Know your a’s and b’s and 1-2-3s. Label a’s on tasks that are due today. You’ll know what you have to get done first. Next, number your a’s and b’s in order of priority. When you work through priorities in order, you’ll always know you’re getting the most important items done first. When all your a’s are done and you have an invite that takes you out of the office, you know you’re OK and that the b’s can wait. The to-dos marked with today as a deadline have all been completed.
- Use time estimates. If your list becomes too long and priorities are rolling over to the next day, then start putting a time estimate next to each priority. Add up the total hours of work on your list, and if it exceeds seven hours of work, then push off some items until tomorrow. Long lists slow you down.
If you pull together all of these tools, then you can get a much more productive Q4 versus a B8.
Mark Faust works with owners, CEOs and sales managers who want to grow their businesses. You can schedule a free growth ideas session with Mark. Simply book your time by visiting https://calendly.com/markfaust
