Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And one of the hardest and toughest questions to answer as an entrepreneur, business owner
is how hard should we work?
How many hours should we put in?
What is the maximum we can put in today, to make sure we not only achieve our results,
but we're also not borrowing from our future health, longevity and happiness.
So timestamps below, as we go through three sections, busting through some myths, going
through some historical data, as well as some current scientific studies.
And of course, finally going through a simple three phase process, to maximize the energy
you put towards your work.
So, let's go ahead and jump in.
We need to bust through some myths before we get into the studies and how to actually
apply this to your own business in life.
Now, the first myth deals with willpower.
And that is hard work is just a function of willpower.
If you're not working hard, it's because you don't have enough willpower.
And at the end of the day, it actually isn’t true.
Sure, there is some willpower in sitting down and actually getting to work.
But when it comes to the intensity of that work and how hard and how long you can go,
there is actual biological limits, as you'll see, when we get into the science section.
You can't simply just expect your brain to go a hundred percent the entire day.
Think about it, going to the gym.
When you go to the gym, you work out, you hit the treadmill, you lift some weights and
then what do you have to do?
You have to wait, you have to recover.
You don't immediately go back two hours later and then lift again and expect that you're
going to get better results.
And our brain functions a very similar way.
Now on that same vein, the second big myth is somehow working hard is equated to time.
Working hard and time are two completely different things.
Think about it, we'll just go with our workout example again, because we're treating our
brain like a muscle.
Think about when you would run a hundred-meter race, versus running a mile.
Chances are when you start running that mile, you're going to go out a lot slower, than
if you were only running a hundred meters, right?
And then simply because you have a further distance to go.
And so when it comes to working hard, the amount of energy and how you feel at the end
of that, hundred meters could actually be just as much lactic acid and huffing and puffing
as it could running the mile, right?
And it's because the intensity of the hundred meter is really, really intense.
You have to run really fast in order to succeed in that race, whereas the mile, you might
have a more long drawn out pace because you're going a longer distance.
So you can't expect to run a hundred meter pace for an entire mile, just like you can't
expect to go your entire workday going at 110% and expect your brain to be able to keep
up with that.
And the third and final myth comes to the world around us and that is other people are
working harder than I am.
And so I have to put in harder work, more longer hours in order to keep up.
And that's simply not true.
So let's go ahead and jump into the science and we'll kick things off with the overestimation
problem.
And this is going to handle myth number three.
So according to a 2011 study by the labor review, they found that people on average,
overestimate their work hours, when asked how long they work anywhere from 10 to 25
hours.
So if you take a look at this little table here, you can see that if someone's saying
they're working 74 hours or more, they're likely overestimating their hours by up to
25, which means they're probably in reality, only working 50 hours.
Now, something interesting with this particular table, that I found, is that the people who
overestimated their hours the least, actually wound up working more.
So just keep this 50 hour average kind of in mind, if we were to look at what these
number ranges would get us in terms of a actual maximum.
So now that we know our friends and colleagues are most likely overestimating their time,
whether it's intentional or not, let's go ahead and take a look at how long biologically
we're actually designed to work.
So according to anthropologists who went and studied, what we used to do and were running
around hunting and gathering.
We as humans actually only worked five to six hours a day.
Now chances are you're here because like me, you want to maximize the amount of hard work
and probably want to work a little more than five or six hours.
But just keep that in mind that our brains essentially developed an environment, where
we only had to think a maximum of six hours a day.
Now moving on to our next set of case studies, let's go ahead and move on to where we are
now, in terms of knowledge work, the CDC did, a massive study, where they took a lot of
different studies and they did some of their own.
And they compiled it into this a hundred plus page paper, where they looked at the effects
of productivity when it comes to longer shifts or working overtime.
Now, instead of going through all these hundreds of pages, I'm going to distill it down into
three big takeaways, when it comes to figuring out how hard we can actually work, in a little
bit on how long we can actually work.
So I'll link that in the description, if you actually want to go through the details.
Now, the first big takeaway here was that the total week hours play a significant role
on the number of work hours per day.
And what this means practically is the more time you want to work, the more days you need
to spread out, spread that time out over.
Now, the second big takeaway from this study was that they found that for the most part
work that was done in 10 hours, could've just as easily been done in eight hours.
And the one of the reasons behind this was the third big takeaway we have here.
And that is that they found that, a 50% increase in office hours only resulted in a 25 to 30
percent increase in productivity.
So what does this mean practically?
That means hours 9 and 10 of a workday, are the equivalent of 15 minutes of productivity,
when compared to our one or two.
So you work an hour, hour 9 and 10 equals 15 minutes, in terms of actual productivity
in the morning.
So I think that's incredibly powerful.
And one of the biggest conclusions from this study was productivity is, does not necessarily
equal time.
So now that we know based on our biology, we were initially designed to work five to
six hours a day.
And we know that if we go over eight hours in one day, we actually see dramatic diminishing
returns.
It's time to actually answer the question of in those six to eight hours that ideally
you would have in a day, for actual maximum productivity, how many of those hours can
you go hundred percent?
So we're going a level deeper here.
We’re not just saying how many hours a day or week you could work.
You could easily do the math work between six and eight hours a day.
And you should probably do no more than six days a week or six days in a row, before you
actually take a break.
But in terms of the time spent in that specific day, how many hours in that day can you go
a hundred percent, from a biological standpoint.
And the good news is we actually have an exact answer.
Because obviously we can't go the hundred percent the entire day.
So, the same group of researchers behind Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, from his book
“Outliers” also looked at the peak performance of multiple different disciplines across the
globe.
In this particular example, they were looking at violinists and they found that at an elite
level for elite performance in terms of maximum concentration and disciplined, practical purpose
practice, four hours was the absolute limit.
In fact, they found that most violinists actually capped out around 3.5 for the elite, and then
those that were novices or lower in their field, not necessarily they’re terrible,
right?
We're talking about elite performance here, but lower on that elite scale, we're closer
to the one or two hour mark in terms of their practice.
I’ll link up that study in the description below as well.
So the summary here is based upon our biology, we're designed to work five to six hours per
day.
Based upon the study that we found from the CDC, once we go above eight hours a day, we
wind up seeing dramatic diminishing returns.
And based upon this last study of deliberate intense hyper-focused practice using a hundred
percent of our brain capacity on something that's incredibly important, we cap out at
four hours per day.
Now you might be wondering, well, there's been times where I've seemed to have worked
more, I've been able to do more hours.
And then chances are spoiler alert.
You probably weren't a hundred percent.
So you weren't working as hard as humanly possible.
Just like there's some, the people who go to the gym every day and they go on the treadmill
every day, but they're not going a hundred percent.
And so that's something that you have to keep in mind, when it comes to how hard you're
working.
Now of course, you also want to keep in mind that those four hours that you have, are most
likely going to be spent on something that's incredibly important and best designed to
move your business forward, which leads us into the practical application.
So now that we have our frame of six to eight hours a day is the optimal, and four hours
of that we can count on our brains to go 110%.
Of course, once we train ourselves to get up there, right?
We're not going to start at four hours a day.
The study was very clear that you're probably going to start at one or one and a half, because
most of us just aren't used to using our brain, if with that level of intensity.
And it really is intense.
We'll get to that in a moment though.
So let's go ahead, jump into phase number or step number three here, of beginning to
apply everything that we've talked about to your workdays, to make sure that you work
the hardest humanly possible, without borrowing your longevity or future health.
So phase number one is identifying the two to three things that absolutely matter the
most, in pushing your business forward.
So as an example right now for this quarter, my three most important things, that I could
never delegate to anybody else in my business is number one, learning how to becoming the
best virtual team leader I can.
Number two, being on camera like this presenting, and then number three, sales copywriting.
Now chances are as a fellow entrepreneur or business owner, your disciplines are also
going to include something about leadership or project management, as well as something
that has directly to do with sales.
And the third one is going to, of course, be unique to you and your business.
Now, are there other things you have to do in your business?
Absolutely.
In your profession.
Absolutely.
But you need to choose the three.
You need to focus on those three, that are the absolute top priority, most important
that you would never hire out, or you would almost never delegate.
Because those things are, what's going to push your business forward and push you as
a professional, in whatever your discipline or skill is forward.
And those are the things that should get those four hours.
When it comes to checking email, or maybe you're doing some administrative tasks.
Yeah, do that later, do that in the other three to four hours that you have in the day.
But here you need to identify those two to three things, that should get your highest
level of concentration.
Because as we all know, a Jack of all trades is definitely not a way to grow a business.
So make sure you hit that like button, subscribe for more videos, just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.