How to Put the Brakes On A 60-Hour Work Week
(And run your business, instead of your business running you!)
By Gil Effron
It seems like wherever you turn these days, someone is telling you that you should be working “on” your business, and not so much “in” your business.
They’re telling you that you should be focusing on your company’s purpose, vision, direction, strategy, structure, systems, people, goals, and accountability processes.
It’s good advice. However, for many business owners and professionals, it’s hard to slam on the brakes suddenly and say, “I’ve had it with working 60-plus hours a week… I’ve had it with too many restless nights… too few days off… and no relief in sight. I’m going to change and magically do it differently… starting right now!”
It’s not easy to make the transition from the do-all, know-all, touch-all owner/manager/worker/slave to that of a Strategic Business Owner –– an owner that’s truly in control of the business, and not the other way around. But one thing is for sure. If you don’t start the transition, you’ll never break the 60-plus hour habit and the stresses that come with it.
If you don’t do something now, you look in the mirror in a month or two or three… or a year or two or three… and nothing has changed. You’re still working 60 plus hours a week.
Because for things to change, you must change!
Your Ultimate Goal
Your goal –– as a business owner –– is to design a business that serves you… and that functions independently of you. In other words, your goal is to create a business that is systems-dependent, not owner-dependent –– a business that runs nearly on autopilot and spits out lots of cash in the process.
So instead of shuffling papers, doing the bookkeeping, or helping to fill orders, you spend time making your company different, better, more profitable, and more systems-oriented.
Like a business architect, you design your business to satisfy your vision, dreams, and needs.
In order to gain this greater freedom, fulfillment, and financial success, you must function as a leader instead of as a worker. You need to become more strategic, long-term focused, less tactical/technical, day-to-day fixated. After all, if you don’t focus on the entire business, no one else will. And it will continue to drift or run aground with all the stress still on you.
So how do you begin to act more like a leader and abandon your role as employee or technician?
Here are seven steps to consider:
Action Step #1 –– Change Your Thinking From Employee To CEO
This is always a very good place to begin. When we change our thinking, a change in behavior naturally follows.
So, first and foremost, change the metaphor in your head for what it means to be a “business owner.” Regardless of your industry or the size of your business, start viewing yourself as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) –– not as an employee.
Instead of seeing yourself as a player on the field, see yourself as the head coach, the director, conductor, facilitator, or captain. You can feel the difference already just thinking about it.
Action Step #2 –– Give Yourself A New Title
To help with this mindset transformation, start referring to yourself as CEO. Put “President/CEO” on your business card, stationery, nameplate, etc.
Using the term CEO allows you to see your company as an entity beyond yourself… as a separate and valuable asset that needs to be professionally managed and optimized, and nurtured.
Remember that you are not the business and the business is not you.
With your new title, spend time and energy helping to build, improve, and optimize this asset. For example, focus on how to grow sales, expand your competitive advantage, and increase your value to customers.
Action Step #3 –– Give Yourself A Raise (At Least Mentally)
Consider that as the CEO you get paid at least the equivalent of $200 an hour. It’s what you deserve to manage this separate entity and valuable asset –– your business –– professionally.
When you see something that needs to be done, ask yourself before you touch that task, “Would a CEO do this?”
Or ask, “Is this task worth me doing at a cost of $200 an hour?”
Don’t spend a dollar’s worth of time on a dime decision or task.
Elevate your vision, thinking and tasks. Instead of asking, “How can I do a given task,” start asking yourself “Who else can do this task?” Learn to delegate often.
Action Step #4 –– Give Up Low-Value Tasks
If you truly buy into your role as CEO, you should be willing to give up the urgent, less important, low-value tasks you routinely handle.
Realize that 80% of your results come from 20% of your talents and activities. Delegate the 80% of your activities that produce only 20% of your results. Stop doing the wrong kind of work.
CEOs should think, lead, and delegate –– not handle trivial matters. Your job, as CEO, is to design/redesign the business… to make it grow. Your manager’s main job is to improve the business. And your employees’ various jobs are to operate the business.
Here are a few more reminders:
- Don’t major in minor things! Don’t let yourself be distracted by irrelevant, insignificant “stuff.”
- Don’t let the urgent control your life. Put your cell phone/pager away more often. Don’t be a slave to email. Check it once a day, not all day long.
- Instead of creating to-do lists, start creating not-to-do lists for yourself. Let go of small things. Eliminate or delegate the 80% of your activities that produce so little impact for your business. Share these not-to-do lists with your team. Put them on notice that you are getting out of the daily detail (usually their areas of responsibility) in order to influence the big picture.
- Quit trying to manage details and start managing your people. Guide their focus and priorities. But let them do the work.
Action Step #5 –– Schedule time to think and plan
Take time to think deeply about important, strategic matters.
Make time to get away from the day-to-day distractions and focus on deep thinking, planning, and decision-making. Isolate yourself to concentrate on big-picture issues. Spend time alone digesting all the information you are bombarded with… and develop the big ideas to take your business to the next level of performance.
Once a month, schedule a day away from the office to think and plan. Once a quarter, schedule a day just to work on you and your business.
With no distractions whatsoever, put on your CEO hat and spend time reviewing and improving your chief asset –– your business.
And don’t think it doesn’t work. I have a personal friend –– a financial advisor –– who starting taking off one day a week to work on his business, not in it. Within 10 months, he almost had doubled his sales.
Action Step #6 –– Focus On Three Things Every Day
On a daily basis, reserve the vast bulk of the day to tackle only your top 3 priorities.
Selfishly guard your time and focus on these.
Don’t allow your employees to disrupt your CEO-oriented priorities and actions with countless “got-a-minute” interruptions.
Allowing such conduct creates an environment whereby your time is neither valued nor respected. It also creates unproductive days, a reactive business mindset, and employees that are overly dependent upon you for everything.
Action Step #7 –– Learn To Delegate
Whatever your technical expertise, consider hiring someone else to handle such technical and tactical work so that you can escape the stranglehold.
For example, if your background is selling, hire a competent sales manager or accounting manager to manage those day-to-day details that you don’t want to do, don’t like to do, and (most often) don’t do very well.
If you already have such employees on your payroll, then for goodness sakes let them do their jobs. Get out of their zone of responsibility.
Making The Transition
I know from many years of experience that when I share these seven action steps with stressed-out, overworked, 60-plus-hour-a-week business owners, they are prone to object emphatically.
“How in the world can I do this,” they cry. “I have a business to run. I need to be there. I need to be paying attention. If I’m supposed to be the CEO, then who’s doing all this other stuff?”
The answer is that it isn’t easy. There is always resistance to change. Eliminating bad habits and learning new ones doesn’t happen overnight. It certainly doesn’t happen without at least a little struggle.
In fact, it may not happen at all without you seeking outside intervention or support from a coach, mentor, or business advisor. After all, you already know all this. Most likely, I didn’t tell you anything new.
The reality is that it’s just difficult (if not impossible) to do on your own… without an experienced guide or bell ringer at your side.
But without this change in your thinking now… without guarding your primary role as the CEO… you are destined to remain locked into exactly what you are trying to avoid: working 60-plus hours a week… restless nights… few days off… and no relief in sight.
You can learn more about the single most critical strategy I can recommend in order to bring about this change… keep you totally focused and productive… and making measurable progress from this day forward.
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