Do you want to make more by working less?
I’m not being facetious, I want you to think about it.
And I want you to follow along with this article, so that you’ll not only understand why I’m asking you this question, but you’ll also see a clever way to make more by working less.
But, to teach you this technique, I have to first give you some background…
Let’s start at the beginning: our eight hour workday.
I stumbled upon this concept when I started thinking about the 8 hour workday.
To me, a mandatory duration for work never made any sense, especially for knowledge workers.
After all, how long the average person sits at a desk or pushes paper has very little to do with their productivity.
People work when they want to work. And when they don’t, it doesn’t matter whether they are at work or at the beach, they stop working with equal enthusiasm.
Give people a reason to work, and they will move mountains. Lock people into a room for eight hours, and they will figure out a thousand and one ways to slack off.
And this isn’t just hearsay… We know this!
We’ve seen that companies with flex schedules or “results only work environments” (i.e. you work whenever you want to) do incredibly well. These types of organization produce at the same level, and arguably even better results than their eight hour workday competitors.
We already know that a six-hour work day is more productive than an eight-hour one…
We also know that working for eight hours straight is much worse than taking breaks as well. In fact, we even know that the ideal work day is composed of several 52 minute bouts of work, each of which are separated by 17 minute breaks.
So… Amidst all this science and study, why do we still stick with the 8 hour practice?
I first thought the origins of the practice might have something to do with it… So I looked it up!
It turns out, the eight hour workday started during the industrial revolution where the normal 10-16 hour workday was reduced to 8 hours. Ford Motor Company was the first one to adopt the reduced workday in 1914.
And this was not done out of the kindness of Henry Ford, although to be fair, uncle Henry did treat his workers a lot better than his counterparts.
The eight hour workday came about because it was the “sweet spot” for profitability.
You see… When workers spent their entire day toiling on conveyor belts, doing the same thing over and over again, they inevitably made some errors.
In fact, they would start to introduce more and more errors as time passed by. And at eight hours, their errors started to cost the company more than the value they were creating.
This meant, anyone working over eight hours was actually costing the company money!
When faced with this fact, Henry Ford decided to switch to an eight hour workday. Yes, it was done for the sake of efficiency, but it also made workers happy. Win-win.
Since then, we stuck with his practice.
And today, it has become the global cultural norm.
Seeing The Cultural Norm
This is a crucial bit to understand:
In the light of modern day research, especially for those of us not working attached to conveyor belts, there is no rational sense for us to continue working the 8 hour workday.
It is no longer efficient or effective.
But we still continue to work 8 hour days, because of social and emotional reasons…
In other words, we are bound by social contracts to give away 8 hours for our work.
You see… Human beings organize society through explicit and implicit social contracts.
The explicit contracts are out in front of all our faces. For instance, when someone becomes the US president, their role in the pecking order is pretty well defined. It is an official social contract.
But some other social contracts, the implicit ones, are not spoken about. They are simply assumed.
For instance there is an implicit social contract between a parent and a child. The parent takes care of the child when the child is young, and the child takes care of the parent when the parent is old.
This type of child or elderly care is unpaid work. It may not even be desirable work. But it’s necessary to keep society going, and because most people tend to agree with this pattern as a fair exchange between parent and child, we keep doing it.
Here’s where this whole thing about social contracts gets interesting…
While corporations are mostly put together through explicit social contracts, society is mainly organized by implicit ones.
And as Tim Ferriss mentions in his best selling book the Four Hour Workweek, humanity has agreed to push paper between 9 to 5, as a social contract.
This is an implicit social contract. It is, in fact, the white collar worker’s social contract.
And this contract is not about creating value. Instead, it’s about showing up and fitting in…
While the value you create determines how much you get paid, the time you SACRIFICE for a company justifies your pay in the mind of the “tribe”.
Since we all have – roughly – the same amount of time in life, the tribe wants to feel that you are sacrificing as much as the next guy.
Remember: the tribe wants solidarity. And it’s solidarity across many generations.
This means, because the previous generations sacrificed 8 hours a day from first hire to retirement, they want new generations to continue the trend. After all, they “put their time in”, why shouldn’t you?
Cracking The Cultural Norm
While the thinking behind the 8 hour workday makes absolutely no business sense, it is deeply and emotionally ingrained in us.
And understanding it can enable you to see opportunities as well as work wonders.
As with many social contracts, it’s not possible for you to reason your way out of it.
This means, you cannot promise your boss the same level of, or even more productivity, over fewer hours of work and expect to keep your job.
You cannot even implement flexible work schedules at a company scale and expect it to last.
Many have tried…
In fact, there have been a handful of companies and innovative leaders, who moved beyond the 8 hour workday, at least for some time and with good results. Some still do.
But, especially among big companies, none of these last.
For instance, during last decade, Best Buy Corporate was renowned for it’s results only work environment where workers picked their own times. And they were doing pretty well.
But, the practice got canceled, when the company was going through some revenue troubles.
And then, to appease shareholders, company leadership sold the idea that they were returning to the “tried and true” work practice of “putting your eight hours in at the office”. The public bought it and the practice got killed.
Yahoo went through something similar when it’s then executive Marrissa Meyer, who touts her 130 hour work weeks, butchered their work from home policies. Electronic Arts went through a similar purge, and limited the hiring of remote workers.
The examples are endless: At the first sign of trouble, or the first PR opportunity an executive gets, companies with alternate workday practices revert to the social norm, and this makes people feel good. And it makes them feel like the company becomes more productive.
And because it is an easy sell the idea of “we’ll work harder” to the popular consciousness, these reversions work as a neat distraction tactic.
Remember, the eight hour workday is deeply ingrained as a social contract. And it’s been brainwashed into us for at least four generations!
You cannot break it as a rule. At least, not yet.
But you can still bend it…
Your Ticket Out of The Eight Hour Workday
Yes, it is possible to keep your own hours. To work only a few hours each day. And to get paid handsomely for doing so.
But, in order to have such autonomy over your work schedule, or get away with putting in fewer hours for the same level pay, you need one of two things:
- Move from being an employee to being a freelancer
- Work away from your boss while keeping them happy
The first one is straight forward…
Once you enter the gig economy, and rather than charging people for hours worked, you start charging people for projects completed, you automatically leave the typical workday.
The key, in this approach, is to avoid being sucked into “how much per hour” conversations with your clients.
Many people still think of work, and the value of your work, on a dollars per hour basis. But this is very counterproductive, and extremely limiting to your pay!
Few people are willing to pay you $1000 per hour of work. But the same people will pay you $5000 for you to build a website, as long as they don’t know that it’s taking you only five hours to build it!
That’s why, if you switch to freelancing, or do any type of freelancing work – never negotiate around hours of work and always focus on units of work delivered.
But what if you don’t want to turn into a freelancer?
What if you want to continue being an employee, and enjoy the many benefits of participating in a great corporation, without being under the thumb of someone who is measuring how many hours you are putting in?
Then, you must get into a position where your boss is not able to observe you!
You see… It doesn’t matter how efficient you are, how much value you produce or how effective you really are.
As far as most people are concerned the amount of time you spend at work still means something.
That’s why, if you want to have greater autonomy, you need to work in such a way that your work day is not observed by your boss.
Remote work, or working in different offices helps with this.
Having a boss you interact with rarely, as it often happens with higher management and executive positions, is also incredibly useful.
As long as you boss does not see when you come into work and when you leave, and what hours you keep, you’ll be able to have autonomy.
But in order to keep it, you need to make sure that you deliver above average results. And you also need to be available for your boss when they need you.
With these in place, your boss will not really care about what schedule you keep.
As long as you don’t shove your autonomy in anyone’s face, and you produce results, you can get away with anything…