The 4-Hour Workday (Focused Work Changed My Life)

when I was in college trying to become a fitness YouTuber of all things I came across a popular book title by Tim Ferriss the four hour work week I'm sure every single one of you know that I've never read the book but when I first saw the title I interpreted it as the four hour work day and so ever since that the idea of a four hour work day stuck in the back of my head throughout my life college experience uh business failures and everything leading up until this point so along the way my subconscious mind was kind of munching on Creative problems because I perceived anything more than four hours of work a day as a problem and this alone changed the direction of my life and really everything I do and all of the decisions that I made now when I say that four hours of work a day or anything more than that was seen as a problem I don't mean like it was the end of the world I just mean that I knew that I was able to achieve some form of success with only four hours or less worth of work per day and so my mind naturally wanted to come up with Solutions relating to that whenever my work extended Beyond four hours of work a day so in business as I've talked about many times before it's like when you just start out and you're getting into freelancing or you start an agency or you learn a skill it's very wise to start a service based business first something where you are in direct control of the Outreach right you aren't reliant on an audience or paid ads or something like that to drive traffic to a product and instead you have a skill and you create a valuable offer and you iterate on that with time until you can charge more and more and more and eventually you reach out to people you start Landing clients maybe you're building an audience along the way and then that is able to fuel your client acquisition but it gets to a point where you have an audience that's large enough to productize right and systemize so that you can still maintain a four-hour work workday but if you continue Landing clients without doing that you can see where the problem starts to arise right because then you've built yourself into some form of a new nine to five where you have a bunch of clients you're making a good amount of money but there's still a cap there's still a limited amount that you can make without just working 16 hours a day and so this is what I mean by perceiving it as a problem and consistently working to evolve which we'll talk about soon and systemize that so when I got to a certain point where I realized okay it's time to start moving in a New Direction because if I keep like I can't just take on unlimited amounts of clients I have to be able to deliver and do other things so that's what I did is once I reached a certain point I took on less clients I productized my service and I had built an audience to the point where I could sell that product and that required much less work on my hands so in business it comes from systemization of your workflow so that you can work faster and more efficiently and it comes from eliminating things that just don't make too much sense to do or delegating or Outsourcing low leverage tasks and working on the things that you actually want to work on right you can Outsource the things that you hate and so for the past three years I would argue that ninety percent of my days were under four hours of work a day I'm not saying that this is absolutely foolproof and that you're not gonna go over four hours of work you're going to be able to like you can work as long as you want right I'd like to like right now I'm probably working six hours a day maybe but I do see that as a problem it's not affecting me in a negative way but I know that at some point I'm going to have to systemize in order to maintain a specific Baseline while working four hours a day so as an example of that is if I'm making twenty thousand dollars a month or let's say ten thousand dollars a month and then I hit a new high of twenty thousand dollars a month because I saw an opportunity and I started adding on more work let's say six hours of work a day in order to reach that then I have to system I eyes and come back down a little bit so then you keep moving your Baseline up so your four hours of work are going a longer way and making more money or whatever the end goal is whether it's money or not to the point of you being able to make a lot more money while only working four hours of work a day it's like bulking and cutting when you bulk and you're eating in a caloric Surplus and you're in a state of growth and in this case business growth you're going to tack on a bit of fat in your business the things that kind of bog you down and make you have to work more and so when the cutting season comes and you want to cut back to let's say 15 body fat in business and be able to sit there comfortably while working four hours a day that is necessary you don't just get stuck at one single part of the journey you evolve and so to preface before we dive into some evolutionary psychology and philosophy before we get into the Ten Commandments of the four hour work day I want to preface that if you have a job job this is mainly for people that are creators right and they have more time on their hands but if you have a job this is going to have to be limited to like one hour a day and maybe four hours on the weekend if you have that time and if you just don't give a about starting a business right now you can use this for your work as well when I was working a job at a web design agency I would usually knock out my work in like two to three hours and then I would just screw around or work on my business for the rest of the time so all of this is about saving time on the things that you're working on to free up more time for the more priorities in your life so why is this important there are a few things and the one being that there are a few qualities that separate humans from other beings like one of them that has fascinated me is how humans survive more so on a conceptual level while animals survive on a physical level like you wouldn't see a giraffe getting offended because it doesn't have the same beliefs as you and so if you are trying to survive the idea or belief of the four hour work day that is going to be much more powerful for actually making it happen right you kind of have to identify with it in a good way right this is what spiritual teachers tell you not to do words do not attach your identity to something because that becomes a part of yourself and you're going to work to survive it and if that is static then it is going to cause some form of unnecessary suffering in your life but this can be spun for good and you can create a positive identity that is going to lead to a better future and the struggles and pain that you face are going to be learning experiences for creating a system that is better for better and more conducive for reaching your desired lifestyle and so that's the first thing the second thing that fascinates me about humans versus other beings is their depth of focus our depth of focus is crazy and it goes a lot deeper than I can go into in this video but so in Psychology there is the task positive network of the brain which happens when you you are focused on an external string of tasks this is good for productivity there's also the default mode Network which happens when you take your focus off of the external so something like work and you focus you bring your focus to the internal and this opens your awareness and allows better ideas to fill your brain or negative ideas but this is good for creativity and so this balance between narrow external focus and more internal open Focus we can look at a graphic that I've made before called the focus Matrix because there are negative aspects to focus right it's not all productivity and creativity there's unconscious narrow or open focus on the left which you can see leads to stress anxiety reactivity annoyance feeling lost feeling uncertain feeling overwhelmed and then on the right there's conscious narrow and open Focus which is more efficient task oriented associated with the flow State present creative relaxed and joyful so keep this in mind as you're going about all of this because it's a helpful guide when you become aware or conscious of your current state so if you feel lost or you feel stressed or you feel anxious there's a reason behind that and you can work towards moving your focus in the other direction towards something positive usually by eliminating distractions and focusing on the task at hand evolution is forced on us by the fact that systems fall apart with time unless they become more efficient We Can't Stop and remain in the same place even to remain still we must advance so this is another reason why this productivity system is important is that humans we have a natural desire to know more the curse of knowledge we have an endless thirst to learn things that will Aid in our survival and so with our unique minds and with this knowledge we build systems to solve problems that lead to better outcomes in all domains of life Society culture personal life whatever it may be as an example it took a lot of energy physical energy to carry water in plowfield so we used our creative ability and our minds to create a solution like a tractor and a system for being able to use that energy more efficiently so let me introduce you to the supreme law of the universe which is entropy some call this Nature's tax and in brief entropy is the measure of disorder in a system so you have to understand that the productivity system that we're going to be creating here is important for the survival and evolution of our work because we create systems to Aid in evolution so a system it has an end goal or an outcome and then it has a process or steps in order to reach that outcome and systems unless fueled with a specific energy or the energy has to have specific qualities to it so in your body you can fuel your body the system of your body with junk food but that energy isn't very quality it doesn't really meet the demands that your individual body needs and so when you fill it with clean Foods or whatever uh healthy diet that you can fill it with and give it the proper nutrients through that energy helps upkeep your body so in something like productivity is when you're trying to reach the outcome of a stable and revenue generating business then you are going to have to fuel that system with the correct energy in the forms of focused prioritized action and so another fun fact is that these systems lay over each other they're just layers upon layers right like a paragraph is a goal to the system of sentences and words are a system that create sentences so we'll dive into this more in a future episode but just start thinking of everything as a system notice the goal notice the steps on how they're going to get there and then notice that energy required to maintain that system without it falling apart so an example would be a librarian right you have a library they have a system for organizing books and making them easy to find and then they have steps for themselves or the employees to continuously uh rent out take back in organize the books in a way that makes sense and reduces that system from tending toward disorder or chaos but if you have a home bookshelf and you take out one book and then another and they end up scattered around the house and you never put the energy or effort necessary to maintain order in that system or if you don't have a system for organizing it at all then the attention the mental energy as well necessary to maintain that system in the order in your mind is going to fail so this isn't only the system that is external but it is how your mind interacts with that system because that's how you order Consciousness that's how you bring Clarity to your mind and allow yourself to act alright so let's dive into the four hour philosophy or my Ten Commandments for focused work okay so let's talk about the four hour philosophy in short we already mentioned this but humans survive on a conceptual level so if you identify or you hold the idea of a four hour work day in the back of your mind somewhere and associate yourself with being able to work four hours a day then you're going to try to survive that identity you're going to feel threatened when something threatens that belief or that system of yours and you are going to work to try and survive it and be able to make better decisions in a way that allows you to productize systemize or just maintain four hours of focused work a day so why four hours one these conceptual systems or beliefs or ideas that we're trying to survive with our mind they require mental energy they require attention and at the start this is going to be very draining right you aren't going to have a way of organizing your mind to the point of being able to act on this consistently you have to test and refine and iterate and from personal experience and anecdotes from friends and just scientific studies it seems like three four five three to five hours of focused work a day is what humans can have before they need to just give their focus a break because as we with everything literally everything you need to train it it's like a muscle focus is a muscle you're not going to be able to do it very well at the start you're going to be able to focus for like 20 minutes and then you're going to have to take a break and come back and train that with time until all of this becomes habit because one thing that I forgot to mention earlier about systems is that once they are refined once they have been repeated or conditioned into your head and formed those grooves in the neural networks of your brain they become automatic they become routine and normal to you and that's kind of how you automate the path to the good life is just by continuously layering system over system in your life that is going to lead to a better future and so another thing is that when you limit yourself to only four hours a day that kind of acts as a pseudo deadline right it's not as powerful as having like a real world deadline that you actually have to meet but just limiting yourself to four hours and knowing that you don't have to work more than four hours it will shrink time and according to Parkinson's law where work matches the time or whatever it is you're going to try and fit your work within those four hours so that was why four hours the second thing is vision and identity so this is for a future video entirely because it's such an important topic but you need a vision for your future and the way that I like to paint this is that you need a minimum viable Vision like a minimum viable product in business you just need to get it out so that you can make connections when you have certain experiences and are able to associate ideas with that and make it better with time you can do the same for your vision for the future so write out the following and be as specific and detailed as you can who you want to be what you want to do for work where you want to live what your ideal day looks like how you will contribute to humanity what people you will surround yourself with network and Social Circle and feel free to let the stream of Consciousness keep going with this and so the point here is to set a foundation for the goals that you're going to try to be achieving on a daily basis with your productivity system what you're going to be working towards because that's a huge problem is that people just don't have an intrinsic goal that they're trying to achieve they go and they adopt the goal of someone else because it's Clarity that someone else has created like a job or something else and then they give their mental energy to that and align their work with that and then eventually they're so deep in this meta system called society that their attention is just enslaved in that and they don't have any time to go and create something for themselves so it's going to take a lot longer so commandment number three is to Outline Three priority tasks so this is situation dependent I can't tell you what your lever moving tasks are going to be but what you need to do is you need to understand what you're trying to achieve from a very big picture not technical details so if you want to start a Creator business or a one-person business like I've talked about multiple times you could go and watch my videos because they are big picture rundowns and then you can start testing from there and so in terms of my levers for my stage in business again this is context dependent and situation dependent based on what's going to move you to move you towards your goals depending on what stage you're in stage of development you're in in business so my first priority task is always writing content I wake up and I write my newsletter and tweets and threads for 45 minute blocks each so about two 45 minute blocks 90 minutes total 45 being my newsletter and then 45 being like tweets threads posting to other platforms Etc because writing forms the foundation of literally everything I do if you want to learn how I create content and how I script things how I write tweets how I grow other things like that check out the two hour writer Link in the description the second priority task is generating traffic because with content what I'm doing is I'm creating content I'm attracting people I'm putting media on the internet that will hopefully bring people to follow me and then potentially buy my products and just dive deeper into the free content that I give out but generating traffic because this is true with any social media platform that you start on you're not going to have much traffic at the start nobody's going to see your content so you need to focus most of your effort on just generating traffic to your content whether that be networking in the DMS or making friends with people that will potentially share your posts or just replying to Big accounts like if I went and replied I set Bell notifications for every single YouTuber that has a high subscriber count and I went and commented on those every single morning and I blocked out time to do that in my focused work then I'm going to be moving a lever because I'm bringing traffic to my profile and my content over time and so right now I'm doing this on LinkedIn and sometimes other platforms like sometimes Instagram mostly LinkedIn because that's my the platform that is lagging the most for me and so I'm putting more effort into growth rather than just monotonous content creation there so number three is promoting my products be because I have to make an income if I want to do this full time and so with consistent traffic being generated from the content and my efforts into growing those actual platforms then I can start to lead that traffic into either free products to build Authority more and just give out free value or I can lead them into something like the tour writer or digital economics or modern Mastery for those that want those things in specific and my products are good and I put a lot of time into them so it only makes sense that I promote them so more people get results from them so at my phase in business those are the three things that are most important to me and of course there are auxiliary tasks that I have to complete but those are usually towards the end when I have like a an hour to spare it before my four hours of focus work are up so commandment number four is to gain Clarity on those lever moving tasks most people think they need motivation when in reality they need Clarity and so every weekend let's say Saturday Sunday I usually swap a few of my lever moving task for a Clarity generating task so on Sundays I outline my newsletters I'll plan my week I'll do things like that I'll write down ideas for tweets ideas for Threads ideas for Content what I need to do to keep things moving with my products like modern Mastery what's the content going to be in there and a bunch of things like that and then outside of those that are hard scheduled I usually go on multiple walks a day which I use for clarity so in the afternoon at like 11 I'll go on a 30 to 45 minute walk and I'll just listen to lectures and I'll generate ideas for Content then sometimes I'll even write on my phone right if I'm not in a busy area I can just go on a walk and like outline stuff on my phone and so I talk about this balance a lot in my fill mtus video which I'll link here that's about my whole daily routine rather than just focus work routine and so the main question to ask here is how can you use one to two hours of your week to set yourself up for seamless work sessions so commandment number five is time blocks and breaks so the Pomodoro Technique is very popular because it's it's very good but I found something different that works well for me so at the start before any of this becomes habit you should very heavily consider writing this on your calendar you need to make it real you need to take it out of your mind and you need to put it somewhere physical whether that be on your calendar in a notebook on a sticky note on your uh computer you just need to make it known because you're forming a new habit here it's going to take some work and so what I like to do is I usually like to schedule things in 90 minute blocks and so what I'll do is I'll sit down with my priority tasks let's say it's writing content and I'll set a timer I have one back there it's like a little kitchen timer I'll put 45 minutes on it and I'll press start and then I'll write without any distraction that timer when that timer is on there's no tabs open it's just like what I need only to get the writing done and then once that timer goes off I'll reevaluate okay did I complete this what's next and I'll set the timer for another 45 minutes and then once those 90 minutes are done I'll go I'll get up I'll go walk outside either a 30 minute walk or if I'm not feeling like doing 30 minutes then I'll go for 10 minutes the main thing is to just get up and realign and bring your intention and attention to a new priority task so commandment number six is to manipulate deadlines deadlines narrow your attention and the more narrow your attention is the less likely distractions are going to register in your awareness and it's the same thing with the negative side of the spectrum we saw the focus Matrix graphic earlier we're on the left unconscious focus when it's narrow when you're narrowed in on a problem nothing else is going to distract you from that problem no other problems are going to pop into your head unless you like see one problem then that leads to the next and you're like oh no and then your focus starts to open up and you're drowning in all of these problems but on the positive side of things when you have Clarity on what you're trying to do and you are narrowed in on one specific task and no distractions can penetrate just because you're so immersed in it that's when you start to kick into flow so you can see the deadline as a challenge as well and so four hours of Total work and then 90 minute time blocks with those 45 minute timers those are kind of like pseudo deadlines those also narrow your attention you can also put something tangible on the line when you really need to get something done so one thing that I've done that just works miracles is public deadlines another reason to build an audience whenever I launch a product I'll usually do it pre-sale and then what I'll do is I'll have it all mapped out of course but I'll put a promotion out and when I get the first sale that means like okay it's go time and if that deadline is like a month out then I have a month to get everything done and usually closer to when that month comes that's when I'm spending like 12 hours a day just unbroken Focus for my computer getting done and so get creative with this it's going to take a bit of uh thinking and creativity but how can you add a deadline to your important work so commandment number seven is to manipulate your environment so your environment and everything leading up to your focus work sessions need to come into play here or at least you just need to be conscious of them so if you're doing Focus work in the morning which I recommend which we'll get into are you setting yourself up to be undistracted by the time that you get to your desk do you have a routine of okay I'm going to do this brush my teeth take out the dog make coffee and get straight into work because when you have that that allows you to get out of bed so much easier because you're not sitting there wondering okay what should I do I have 30 minutes to spare until I start working I'm just gonna sit here and then I'm gonna waste time and then I'm gonna be over on my work time etc etc and so that helps reduce decision fatigue going into the work itself but then when the work itself comes up you have to make sure and prepare for potential distractions so if it helps to put your phone on the other side of the room do that if it helps to wear a hat to narrow your attention which actually does help wear a hat if it helps to wear noise canceling headphones try it out test it none of this is set in stone in its life is a process of iteration and growth and evolution and so as long as you're working to make this process better for yourself you're going to be in a good spot as long as you're becoming aware of the problems that are preventing you from working in efficient four hours and working to change and improve those problems then you're doing fine so the question is how can you manipulate your environment to conserve mental energy for your priority tasks and now commandment number eight which is my favorite is wake up before distractions because there seems to be two main perspectives when it comes to like the hustle and grind culture just waking up early is that some people are very Pro waking up at like four or five a.m and then some people are very Pro I get up whenever I want and then I start working and then it gets done and you can do whatever you want try it out but unless you try waking up early I wouldn't talk smack about it or just like write it off entirely the hours of like five to seven in the morning are sacred there is nothing that can distract you it's very peaceful even if you're a night owl and your brain is in more of that default mode Network open Focus State because you're very sleepy you can set priority tasks related to creativity rather than just being hyper productive during that time because in those sacred hours no one's going to be calling you no one's going to be texting you even if they are it's so early that you don't feel obligated to respond uh the day isn't going to be started you're not going to be getting invites to lunch you're not going to be really uh pressured to eat because you're like oh I haven't eaten breakfast yet or I haven't eaten lunch I need to get that done and then I'll come back to work so wait wake up before the distractions commandment number nine is to prioritize rest quality work does not exist without quality rest it's that simple but as we've discussed previously rest is not the modern notion of self-care the thing that is perpetuated by mediocre people online so rest does not mean Netflix wine and bubble baths those have their place of course but rest equals regenerating mental energy through non-work related activities an example of some of these are going to the gym going on a walk socializing with Friends riding in your Journal reading a good book or just trying out a new hobby whatever takes your focus off of work and allows you to bring it more intrinsic to the things that you want to do so in reality anything that doesn't support your work or mediocrity or a cheap dopamine addiction and so another important thing here is that when the four hours are up you stop working dead stop you do not work any longer unless the priority tasks move over or spill over and then you're working to systemize that back into four hours of work but if it's just busy work and you going on your computer to accomplish little tasks here and there that can wait you need to get into the habit of stopping work and not focusing on work this is so much more important than I can make it seem in this video because if you're constantly focused on work and in that stressed survival State you're not going to open up your mind for Creative problem solving or any of the spiritual things in life that make life good and enjoyable and living in the present moment if you're constantly focused on work by definition you are not present so if you have to work more than four hours or else your business will explode and fall to the ground then that's a problem fix it with systems and commandment number 10 is to make your process more efficient so if you have a problem whether while you're working or if you're working over four hours then those problems should try to be solved with creativity and systemization this is another other important thing why it's so so so so important to not focus on work when you're not working because then you open your mind to the ability of creative problem solving that's when your subconscious mind sends the Insight or idea to your conscious mind and you have that aha moment it's like in the shower when you're having a shower thoughts and you have the best idea in the world it's because you're not focused on work so let's take for example when I had a lot of client work and I couldn't my my work was spilling over four hours in that case I had to build a larger audience so I have more traffic create a product that doesn't require my time promote and improve that product until it's sustainable and take on less clients with my new free time and you would be correct in assuming that this isn't instant nothing that I talk about is instant life isn't instant you have to be patient with this and you you have to be on this path for life so a bonus number 11 is to leverage digital tools we live in a world where we're so blessed we're Extremely Blessed because once you have the the money to invest in automation software or just of software that will make your business a lot easier I highly recommend doing so it's like instead of sending manual DMS in order to reach out to people you can build an audience fuel your email list and then buy a software that allows you to create email sequences that mimics what sales Outreach would look like in the DMS and then you can focus so much more of your attention on building actual leverage through content and then feeling that newsletter and email sequence to the point where you don't have to send in DMS to get clients or make sales and then when it comes to systemizing scheduling content you can use something like tweet Hunter which I use to schedule my tweets and then those get turned into other content so that's a way of scheduling and me just being able to go into my phone type in a tweet and schedule it immediately and then forget about it I don't have to go back and post or even get on Twitter and one thing I do highly recommend is to write all of this out in notion if you aren't using notion you should just start now because it's going to take a long time to learn or just get used to the structure of it and you're gonna have to go back and refine things here and there but just create a new page right create a new page and write down what you're going to do tomorrow for those four hours of work that is going to be your first system right steps and then the next day come back refine it what didn't work what do I have to do differently today do that for a week and then note common patterns and you can turn it into a weekly system and then abide by that and refine it with time so my challenge for you to end this video is to actually apply this information you may be watching this YouTube video to learn something or just for entertainment or whatever it may be but four hour work days are more than possible I've proven that and there's many people that Leverage The Power of the internet to do that and you'll be you'll only be able to discover whether you can or not through direct experience it doesn't matter what you think is possible about for our workday or not you if you think it's impossible you don't have the awareness or experience that allows you to believe that it's possible and make it a reality for yourself so that's the main thing go back through this you can find the actual written version of this video in the description under the co-letter you can take note of all 10 of these Commandments you can write them down in notion with your systems and just start tinkering what are you going to do for the next day week whatever it may be gain Clarity on it and start acting all right that is the end thank you so much for watching please like subscribe and if you want to learn how to productize yourself in the new economy and steal all of my brand content uh marketing product and promotion systems literally everything I use to run my business in a way that allows you to progress with them and make the systems your own and to grow on social media create a product create a service whatever it may be and promote that and earn an income I show you how to do all of that in digital economics if you are not ready to invest in digital economics because it is expensive then check out the two-hour writer which you can eventually upgrade to digital economics without any extra cost and what that helps you with is how to grow on social media how to start writing content and learning the skill of persuasive writing that transfers over into other communication-based media AKA all of social media and then in modern Mastery this week I posted an article called how to Niche down multiple interests so I know many of you are polymass and you have multi-disciplinary interests and you want to learn how to incorporate those and package them up into a brand that actually grows and impacts people and is able to monetize in the future so if you want to check that out you can join modern Mastery for five bucks for your first month check all of those out in the description and with all of that I truly appreciate you watching see you in the next video peace

2023-01-09 07:48

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