The ten hour workday. Sounds grueling, doesn’t it? So many people I know are working to shorten their days. The ideal seems to be the four-hour workweek, espoused by the human beta tester, Tim Ferriss. Four hours a week sounds amazing, yet I can tell you this. Tim Ferriss and most entrepreneurs are not sitting on a beach somewhere, drinking a margarita. They are filling their days with useful activity. And that’s where the ten hour workday can really help you get a handle on extraneous time wasters.
The Forty Hour Deception
Here is my point. In my forty years of working, I have never worked an eight hour day. Never. Nada.
Not once did I clock out my front door at 9 am and return home at 5 pm. Didn’t happen.
My week was not forty hours, clocking in and out. Nope! Each time it was more like fifty hours.
You see, our modern existence, especially here in California where I live, includes the superhighway of slow.
Things like traffic, crowds and the ever-present line at Starbucks slows us down and adds time to our day.
Yet we usually process our workday as an eight hour day.
We miss the time wasting activities that suck and drain the very life out of us.
We take new jobs that pay more, only to find the commute time has doubled.
We forget to add in that wasteful lunch hour fighting the crowds at the deli.
We miss the time waiting in line for the elevator in the high-rise.
We miss all the things that slow us down and add to our day.
The Bottom Line
Every job I’ve ever had was at least ten hours door to door.
When I started tracking it as such, my time management came alive.
Once I put the time wasting activities on paper, I was able to do something about them.
- My commute went from a total time waste, to a learning extravaganza with audio books.
- My time alone scrunched in a single table at the deli changed to a communication outreach with others.
- My wasteful crowd filled break times became a time to write and edit a novel.
By tracking and focusing on my complete workday has led to much greater productivity. Once I looked at my day holistically, I was able to see the inefficiencies and take action to correct them.
The Best of All
When I look at my day as a ten hour time block, it becomes metric.
Each hour is ten percent.
Now it is easy to figure out what percent of my day is wasted time.
I’m finally being true to myself.
An Entrepreneurial Dream
Now that I work from home and have more freedom with my schedule, the ten hour time block is gold.
It gives me complete control of my day.
By including all the time sucky items that creep in, I’m able to deal with them.
I’m not in denial anymore.
Work is work, play is play.
Ten Hour Workday Planning Tools
In our next post, we’ll look at some tools to help you examine your day, see where the inefficiencies are and take action to become a more productive person. I want to show you that a ten hour workday doesn’t have to be a slothful, dreaded experience. With the right tools and some planning, your ten hour time block can become a fantastic and productive experience.
Podcast
Here is the Daily Drivecast for this post. The 10 Hour Workday
Question: How long is your workday, door to door?