The truth behind the 4-hour workweek

Published on Sunday, 14 October 2012 18:44

Written by Dorie Clark

In our frenetic, overscheduled world, sometimes the fastest path to success is promising the masses a way out. It certainly worked for Tim Ferriss. His 2007 book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich became a worldwide blockbuster, and today it’s a winning formula for a bevy of globe-trotting pundits who rocket to the top of the New York Times’ “most e-mailed” list with essays on “The Joy of Quiet.”

Getting away from it all is top-of-mind for me right now, as I’m finishing up an enforced convalescence and planning a real vacation later this fall. My downtime helped me realize the acuteness of many professionals’ desperation; they’re miserable and overworked. So isn’t it about time we all started cashing in those frequent-flier miles?

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Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to blame our burnout at the office on a lack of beach time than it is to honestly evaluate our performance. To earn the right to take time off in today’s hypercompetitive global marketplace, you’ve got to meet a few preconditions:

•  You’ve already built your expertise. There’s plenty of buzz these days about flextime and other innovative workplace arrangements. But some employees, who assume less face time means fewer hours worked, are in for a rude surprise. You can’t compete by working a 40-hour week, much less a 35-hour one. Only working on the employer’s clock doesn’t give you enough time to develop those “10,000 hours” of expertise. You’ve got to use your nights and weekends—and your vacations.

• Your work can’t just be work. How exactly does Ferriss pull off a four-hour workweek? He doesn’t. As he declared in a 2008 blog post, “The goal was never to be idle.... The goal is to spend as much time [as] possible doing what we want.” For Ferriss, on the day in question, that meant radio interviews, writing a magazine article and reviewing web-site designs.

• Your vacation shouldn’t be just a vacation. I’ll certainly have fun when I’m on vacation in Paris later this fall. But I’ll also accomplish some valuable work by upgrading my global outlook and contacts. I’ve scheduled meetings with business-school professors and started reading up on contemporary French politics and culture. By the end of two weeks, I’ll have done more than consume an inordinate quantity of baguettes and cheese; I’ll hopefully have a valuable new perspective to add to my skill set.

Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University and the National Park Service. She is the author of the forthcoming Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.