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40-hour “work” week

Maximize the value delivered, not the hours

How many hours, is the right number of hours to work each week? Some entrepreneurs are talking about four-hour work while others are telling you to always-be-hustling.

If you’re asking 40-hours or 130-hours, you’re asking the wrong question. It doesn’t matter. I’d rather work with someone who produces results in 30 hours than someone who works all day but doesn’t produce results.

If you’re starting a business there are times when going the extra mile can make a huge difference but I think it’s rarely about the hours, it’s about the impact that those hours can have.

When starting a business there are always too many things to do and adding hours can sometimes feel like the right way to increase your productivity. There are times when this can be effective but it’s a losing long-term strategy.

As hours increase the value of the work delivered in each hour tends to go down. It can work for short bursts but is likely to burn people out.

Companies that consistently miss dates and deadlines are systemically dysfunctional. Running a business is a marathon, not a sprint and running people too hard is a recipe for disaster.

When I worked at Microsoft, I would often work late and the company would regularly order dinner for the team. It was hugely problematic but at the time, it didn’t feel broken because the work energized me. What I didn’t understand was that I was paying the price the following day when I would wake up groggy and sleep-deprived. I’m sure the company thought they were maximizing hours but they were draining the creativity dry.

It wasn’t about the hours, it was about driving the results.

Most technology jobs are unlike manufacturing jobs. With a manufacturing job, the more you work, the more things you can make. If you produce 100 widgets an hour, it’s math to know how many you can produce if you run the factory 24×7. The same math doesn’t hold true for software or similar creative work.

Elon Musk, sleeping at the Tesla factory, to keep it running all night and Marissa Mayer working 130 hours a week isn’t the same thing.

With a technology job, the more you work… Yeah. The more you work. It’s not about hours, it’s about results. The entire notion of hourly work is flawed, especially when you’re doing anything creative.

Many years ago I discovered a methodology called ROWE. This stands for Results-Only Work Environment. The idea behind ROWE is that it’s about the results, not the hours and employees should be empowered and measured on results, not attendance, hours, vacation or other abstract metrics.

If you’re focused on results, you’re more likely to empower your team to actually drive change in the business while giving people the health, wellness, and balance that they need to achieve it.

This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.