In today’s episode of Creating The Path, I’m talking about working less and creating a 16-hour workweek.
Yup, you read that right.
I want to talk about why creating a short workweek is so important and share the three reasons I believe you should create a shorter workweek for yourself. So, let's get into it.
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Topics discussed in this episode:
[02:37] What I think about the 40-hour workweek
[06:24] 3 reasons to work less and create a 16-hour workweek
[13:08] How my life used to be when I was working 50-60 hours a week
[14:31] Episode recap
Resources:
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Noteworthy Quotes:
“I actually don't think a 40-hour workweek is good for most people. I just think that we got stuck in that structure because someone decided it should be the norm.”
“We got adapted to living at a certain level of tiredness.”
“There are just so many things to do, and so many things we can experience outside of work. And I think you deserve to have the time to do those things.”
“I know that I can do that and not have everything in my life fall apart because I have the flexibility to take care of myself when I need to.”
“I think we should all have enough whitespace in our calendar so that we can either use that free time to do fun things, or just relax. Or we can use that time to get the car repaired when it breaks down. Or to take care of ourselves a family member or pet when they get sick.”
Summary of the Podcast:
Creating the Path is a podcast that challenges multi-passionate entrepreneurs to achieve their goals by working less and eliminating overwhelm, so they can create their own unique pathway to a life they love. My mission is to transform hustle culture and assist others to shift away from living life on auto-pilot to living intentionally and following your own path to a life you love instead.
Host Bio:
Heather Grace Hanson is a certified positive psychology-based coach and creator of the Intentional Energy Framework, a system that empowers you to create a life and business you love without burning out. Heather is obsessed with all things personal development, running and walking in the park, interior design, salsa dancing and most importantly, spending time with her pup, Barclay.
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Creating the Path, a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to create their own unique pathway to success and happiness. I’m your host, Heather Grace Hanson, and each week I’ll be sharing tips and strategies to help you create the path to a life you love. Let’s dive in.
Hey there, thanks for joining me today. Today I’m talking about why creating a short work week is so important. I help my clients create a 16 hour work week, not because it’s trendy like the 4 hour work week or something like that. And I’ll probably talk in a future episode about why I chose 16 hours instead of 15 or some other number, but that’s not the point of this episode.
In this episode, I want to talk about why should you even bother to reduce the number of hours you work to begin with?
If you’re currently burned out and working way too much, the answer is obvious. Because of course you don’t want to work so much that you’re stressed and exhausted all the time.
But since 40 hours a week is the normal full-time hours, at least in the US, you might be wondering, well I just need to get myself down to 40 hours or maybe 30 hours instead of 50 or however much you’re currently working.
Or maybe you’re working 40 hours a week and that feels like too much already, but maybe you feel embarrassed that a quote unquote normal work schedule is too much for you.
If that’s you, I actually think it’s just that you’re more attuned to your body than most people are, because I don’t think a 40 hour work week is good for most people. I just think that we got stuck in that structure because someone decided it should be the norm and over time we just adapted to it and get adapted to living at that level of tiredness.
Years ago, a former roommate of mine validated the fact that I always felt too tired to do anything after work or even on the weekends.
For years, she’d been working a part time job while she was looking for acting jobs. Then she decided to get a full-time office job because she felt like she needed that motivation to really get the acting thing going if she had a job she really wanted to quit, because her part-time job was really easy and comfortable and didn’t motivate her that much to go on auditions.
So a few weeks after working her new full-time, she came home one day and said to me, “I don’t know how you do this.” I said, “do what?” And she said, “work a full-time job”. I’m so exhausted by the time I get home, I can’t do anything else. And I said, “welcome to my life”.
I can kind of laugh about it now, but it’s really sad if you think about it, that that’s the norm. Working so much that you have to overcome your tiredness or push through to create some kind of life outside of your working hours.
And she was only working 40 hours a week at her job. At the time I was working somewhere between 50 to 60 a week as the norm, which isn’t unusual in NY. At least back then. Things are shifting now due to the pandemic.
What I realize now though, is that creating a shorter work week, anything from 5 - 20 hours a week, is even more important than I used to think.
For 3 main reasons. And 3 reasons might not seem like a lot, but these are good ones.
The first reason to work less is for your health. Long hours, even 40 hours a week can have damaging effects to both our physical and mental health. Of course everyone is different, so I’m not saying you for sure will have health issues if you work 40 hours a week, but for some people that’s enough to have a negative impact on their health.
And I know plenty of people who already live with certain chronic illnesses and they already know that they can’t work 40 hours a week, so for them it really is essential to have a shorter work week.
The second reason to work less is so that you can enjoy life! One of the top 5 regrets people have when they’re dying is that they wish they hadn’t worked so much. That makes me so sad to think about realizing that when it’s too late to do anything about it.
There are so many things to do and so many things we can experience outside of work and I think you deserve to have the time to do those things.
And the 3rd reason to work less is so that you have the flexibility to handle emergencies or surprises when they happen. When they happen, not if.
This really hit home for me a couple weeks ago. I’ve mentioned my dog Barclay before, but I don’t know if I mentioned that he’s about 14 or 15 years old, so I’m very aware that I will probably lose him sometime soon. He’s the 3rd senior dog I’ve adopted, and my first dog I had for a year and 9 months and my second senior dog I had for only a year and 3 days. I’ve had Barclay for almost 4 years now, so I feel extremely lucky about that. And he’s doing pretty good, but I know from my experience with my other 2 dogs that they always seem really healthy until all of a sudden they’re not and then they decline really fast.
So a couple weeks ago, Barclay started limping on his back leg and stopped eating at the same time. I took him to the vet, but while I was waiting for his test results I spent an entire day crying, assuming it was the end.
Don’t worry though, he’s fine. It turns out his thyroid was low, and he started eating again now that he’s on a thyroid medication. And his limp is getting better too, probably just a little arthritis.
Now, I know it’s pointless to waste that energy worrying about a future that might not happen, but I literally couldn’t help it. What I realized though, is that I’m so grateful I have control over my own schedule now though, in case he had some illness that would require a lot of my time to manage.
It reminded me of when my last dog, Annie got cancer and I was still working at my full-time job. Near the end, she also had some issue with her spine, I can’t remember what it was called, but she wasn’t able to walk on her back legs so she couldn’t go to the bathroom by herself.
I remember at the time I was panicked because I thought, well what if she still lives a few more months, I can’t leave her home alone like this and I can’t just take a few months off of work.
This happened over the Christmas holiday when I had some days off, and then her cancer treatments weren’t working so I ended up having to put her to sleep before I had to go back to work after the holidays anyway, but it made me sick to my stomach at the time that I was faced with choosing between work and taking care of my sick and dying dog.
And that’s just an example from my own life when I had an emergency in my life and work was getting in the way of doing what I needed to do. I could be anything though. What if a family member gets sick, or if you get sick, whether it’s a cold or something more serious.
You want to be able to spend the time necessary taking care of yourself and your family when these things happen.
There’s so many things that could happen. A car could break down, you could get a leak in the house, a natural disaster, etc etc.
And I don’t want to sound all doomsday, but I think you get the point. We all know that these things can happen, but there was a point in my life where everything in my life would fall apart if the subway was delayed because my schedule was so jam packed that if even one thing took longer than planned, it felt like everything fell apart because there was no wiggle room to allow me to catch up again. It always came out of my already pathetic amount of sleep time.
No one should have to live like that. I think we should all have enough white space in our calendar so that we can either use that free time to do fun things or just relax, or we can use that time to go get the car repaired when it breaks down or to take care of ourselves, a family member or pet when they get sick.
If you’ve created your work week to be 16 hours by default, then you have the flexibility to choose how you use those extra hours. And, by the way, just because you’ve set your work week to be 16 hours normally, that doesn’t mean that you can’t sometimes work more than that if you’re working on a project you’re excited about or when you’re launching something new. Just so long as you intentionally do that for only a short amount of time and don’t let that become your new norm again.
So let’s recap: The 3 reasons it’s so important to create a shorter work week for yourself:
#1 is to protect your health. Working too much can cause your health to suffer and we don’t want that.
#2 is so that you can enjoy your life and do all the things you want to do that have nothing to do with your business.
# 3 is so that you have the time you need to handle any surprises and emergencies that life throws your way, without your plan falling apart.
Whew, this episode got a little emotional, but like I said, even though I had only 3 reasons for you today, they’re really good ones. I mean, if this doesn’t inspire you to work less, I don’t know what would.
I do realize it’s not always possible for everyone to work less, or that it can take some time to implement this though, so if you’re not sure what to do in your current situation, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram @ heathergracehanson. I’d love to help and offer any suggestions.
Also, do you have another reason for why you want to work less that you would add to this list? Let me know that in the DMs too. I’d love to know and we can keep adding on to this list!
On that note, I’ll say goodbye for now and I’ll be back next Tuesday!
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Creating the Path as much as I did. Send me a DM on Instagram, @heathergracehanson to let me know what you think. But before you go, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Tuesday. I’ll see you then.