6. What Do You Miss Out On When You Work Too Much?

What are you missing out on when you're working too many hours at work?

Most people don't like to think about this. When I ask most entrepreneurs about what they think they're missing out on, they'll say, Wait, I'm not missing out on anything thing. I get my work done, I'm making more money. I'm making more money so I can have more things and so my family can be happy. And very often, especially if you're an entrepreneur, the concept of lost opportunity usually applies to income.

Well, wait, if I had done this project, I would have made more money or wait, if I hadn't done this project and wasted my time, I just lost opportunity. I could have been doing something else and making more money. But what are you missing out on with the people around you, your loved ones, your friends, your family? This is not a guilt thing. This is something for you to really think about.

For me, when I'm working too many hours, a few things happen. Some of them are obvious and some of them are more subtle. The more obvious ones are that I'm simply not available to play with my kids and hang out with my wife. In my case, I primarily work from home. So if I'm not available and if I'm in my office and I'm kind of to the side, there's a sort of sense that life is going on outside here, and I'm not part of that.

And so I'm kind of hearing it, but usually I'm tuned out. I'm working on my work and I'm doing my thing. And so I might not feel it as much, but I know as I've talked to my kids and when I come out and see my wife, I see that they're feeling it. They miss me. They still like me.

And so there's that. But in addition to that, when I'm working too many hours, when I talk with people, I'm not as present. So I'm talking with them, but I'm thinking about something else. My mind is over here, but they're talking to me, but I'm really not there. And so my kids will say something and gosh, we all say as parents, we're never going to do this, and we're going to always give our kids undivided attention.

But the kids saying something, and I'm not really tuned in and they're saying good stuff. I'm not saying they're actually saying something that's important. That's huge for them, that they're sharing with me, that they want to connect with me. They want to make a connection, and I'm too busy in my head and in my world because I'm letting work take over me. I want you to think about something.

There are 168 hours in a week, 24 times seven is 168. And if you do the math of the idea of us sleeping roughly 8 hours a night, which is by most accounts the healthier thing to do, that takes you to 56 hours -168 that's 112 hours. And let's say there's another 12 hours a week just to make math nice and round and pretty and simple. Another 12 hours a week where we're either just, I don't know, showering or doing something, bathing, brushing our teeth, something that's not really where we're present or available or connect with people. So we've got 100 hours roughly, of time that we can choose what we want to do in a week.

Now within that time, you might say, wait, no, actually, I don't have 100 hours that I choose. I need a job. And whether I like my job or not, I need to invest about 50 hours a week in that job. Okay, great. 50 hours a week.

How long is your commute? I'll wait my commute to half hour each way. So that's five days a week. So now that's 55 hours. How long does it take to get ready for work?

It takes me half hour. So now we're at 57 hours. And when you're off from work on your lunch break, are you really getting much personal time? No way. I'm just going out and technically I'm off for a break, but I work from 830 to five.

I got a half hour lunch, and I'm just kind of going through the motions. Okay, now we're at 60 hours now where you're dedicating in some form or fashion your life to work. That's 60% of your waking time or however you want to word that if you want to be able to have a certain amount of health and be able to sleep and so on. So he said, okay, wait, 60 hours now is going there. And so then I've got 40 hours left to be with my family, but I'm cooking or cleaning during some of that time around the house.

So that's another roughly hour a day, sitting down to 33 hours, and I'm doing some other chores very quickly. You get down to maybe 20, 10, 15, 25, depending on your situation. Maybe a couple of hours, two to 3 hours a day if you're doing things well. But when I talk to people, some people say, well, I don't even have that much. And so what are you doing with that?

And so this is not just even a concept of how many hours you're working within your work, but how many things are you taking on? One of the things you'll find if you want to work a four day work week or if you want to have an elegant, simple lifestyle, business wise, you have to cut away at things. And the same thing goes with your life outside of work, you have to cut away at your number of personal commitments and the length of time for them. So I see so many kids. My kids are ten to twelve ish range.

And I'm seeing so many kids around that they're so busy, they've got like 80 hours a week of stuff planned between school and this and that. And the kids are up to all hours and the kids, they're drinking coffee to stab teenagers and stuff to be able to cope with life. And it's like, okay, well, hold on. There's so many different things you could be doing and you're obsessed. And then after a couple of years, I don't like that anymore.

It was too intense. So now I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to go do that really intense and get burned out from it really quickly and gosh. Just even talking about it gets me stressed out and kind of gets me wise. It's the heart rate going.

There's enough time to do the most important things we want. There's not time to do everything. Once had a person tell me, Wade, you can do just about anything you want in life, but you can't do everything I want to. Just again, put that back to you and not lecture on it or talk much more about it. But just invite you to consider, what is it that you're missing out on when you're working extra hours?

Do those extra hours, would it really matter? Especially if you're an entrepreneur and you have control over your time? Especially if you're working over 40 hours a week? Do the extra three to 5 hours. Is it really making you that much money?

Is it really making that much of an impact on your clients, for the people you serve in their lives? What kind of impact could that make on the people around you? Whether it be your kids, your loved ones, your friends, or if you say, Wait, I don't have anybody special in my life right now. And I'd say, okay, well, maybe there needs to be room for that. Maybe there needs to be time for that to be able to do that.

And so on the less serious side, there's a very simple question I ask people when they say, Wade, you know what? I don't like this four day work week stuff. My employees work five days and I work five days and I hustle and I dance. I said, okay, you hustle. Okay, hustle.

Hustle is a word hustle used to be dance back in the 70s because you all are too young or too old to know that. Too young to know that hustle was a dance. It was a fun thing. And now hustle has meant I'm hustling and I'm grinding. I'm doing all these things.

It's okay. Wait, you're working really hard. Is that what you're saying? And I'm supposed to appreciate the fact that you're working hard? Great.

Congratulations. You're working hard. That's awesome. What results have you created? See, I don't care how hard you hustle.

It doesn't matter to me if you're going to cut my grass. If you use scissors to cut my grass, I'm not going to pay you any more than if you use a lawnmower. Promise you. I just want the grass cut. And this whole focus of how hard I'm hustling, like if there's Noble suffering going on here.

And by the way, this is usually happening in first world countries with iPhones. So big picture perspective that's not suffering in all of these people are so focused on how hard they're working and they're wanting somebody to give them likes on Facebook or Instagram said, yeah, you're hustling good stuff, man. You're not lazy. But instead of just focusing on getting the results. And so I invite you to consider if you can't get the results you're looking to get in four days a week, what's going to happen on that magical fifth day?

Is it really going to be that much better if four days a week? Let's say you make cakes. If four days a week, you make disgusting tasting cakes. No way that example came from. But four days a week, you're making just these horrible cakes on the fifth day, all of a sudden they're going to be tasty.

Come on, all of this. In most of the situations, people can be able to do much better results in less time. The technology is helping us so much with productivity, and a lot of those profits are not trickling down to the employees, which is why employees are very often on Facebook and social media during the day. I'm reading this book called The Five Hour Workday. I love it so much.

And one of the points the author made is how productivity in the United States has gone up like this and the workers wages has gone at a much lower rate. So what do the workers do? The workers are told they have to sit out. They have to sit in the office and occupy space for a certain amount of time, but they're already getting their job done because the technology after the 2006, 2007 ish recession, the productivity got back up. And so now they'll just, okay, they'll occupy space, but they'll be on Facebook or they'll buy stuff.

Amazon.com, all these businesses that ship stuff to you. And yet again, what are they missing out on? What are you missing out on? What's the result you're looking to achieve in your business? Go in, get that result and get out of there.

What's the result you're looking to achieve with your family, your kids, your loved ones, your friends? Make time for that. Start planning your life outside of work more than you plan your life inside work. I hope you find this helpful, and I hope you really consider about what it is that you're missing out on. I invite you take a pause now and write down ten things that you're missing out on.

You almost thought I missed out there. Write down ten things that you could be missing out on right now or you'd be doing if you had extra free time and start looking at what you're trading an extra free time and deciding if that's really what you want to do. I hope you find this helpful. If you want more information about how we can help you there is a tool I'd like to share with you. It's called the four day work week game plan.

You can go to four daygameplan.com if you like more information go to our website. Four day workweek.com starts with the number four day workweek.com. If you found this helpful, share it with your friends. Look forward to helping you make more money and less time doing what you do best so you can create the life and the lifestyle you most desire with you, your friends, your family, your loved ones. Let me know what I can do to help you and thanks for listening.