When it comes to work, less is more
Whenever I mention the idea of working less, most people jump to one conclusion…lazy. Based on the positive response when I advocated day-time naps, however, I suspect this audience may be receptive so today I’m going to tell you why you need to consider it.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is the next guest on Take My Advice (and a cracking episode it is too), and I was in the middle preparing for the interview when I wrote Time for a nappucino, a few weeks ago, so dropped in his quote about the value of downtime.
“If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.”
Pang’s first book, was titled Rest, and as you might guess, he explored why incorporating ‘deliberate rest’ into our lives was not just a positive but a necessity. Aside from the health benefits of getting enough sleep and de-stressing, recovery is a critical part of achieving a flow state, which is the secret to attaining disproportionate gains in creativity and productivity.
In his follow-up, Shorter, the focus is on “how working less will revolutionise the way your company gets things done.” It isn’t idle speculation, you understand. He spent a couple of years researching and working with organisations based around the world to understand what motivated them to introduce a shorter working week – whether that meant reducing the number of days, shortening the number of hours each day, or both. Plus, they weren’t just tech or creative organisations; they included restaurants, call centres and manufacturing businesses amongst others.
(Photo by Will Whipple)
I’m not going to be able to effectively summarise a whole book’s worth of insights and evidence into this newsletter, of course, so instead, I’ll pick out some highlights.
A reminder of how useful ‘design thinking’ is to help reframe the way you approach challenging problems.
While Shorter analyses companies from across a wide range of industries, there was a significant cohort of businesses for whom creativity is a critical component of their value proposition. Many of them approached the rationale for experimenting with a new way of working through the lens of design thinking, which Pang usefully also adopts to explain the steps required to move from theory to reality.
If you haven’t read Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown, then I’d recommend taking a look. I’ve reread it over the past couple of months, and ten years’ on from its initial publication (and much like classics such A Technique for Producing Ideas) the lens through which it encourages us to look at innovation and achieving breakthroughs is as relevant as ever.
It’s a highly practical approach to all sorts of challenges and while you can customise the process for your own needs, here’s a neat infographic that demonstrates its value.
(Design by University of Nebraska Medical Centre)
The reasons for considering implementing a shorter working week are manifold.
In the short-term, you will see reductions to your stress levels and improvements in your general wellbeing. It stands to reason, that if you give yourself more time to switch off, exercise, practise mindfulness, spend time with your family – whatever it is that you end up doing with those extra hours – you’ll realise a benefit. After all, how often do we say to ourselves and other people, “I really need a break”, or “I feel like a different person after that holiday”.
The truth is that many of us are running on empty because we’re trying to do too much. Don’t get me wrong, at times I’m as guilty as anyone, but I’m well aware that designing a better work/life is critical to me experiencing positive physical and mental health.
From a long-term point of view, it makes sense too. Despite our current predicament, there is a general trend towards increasing life expectancy, which inevitably points towards us working longer too. It’s imperative, therefore, that we avoid a cycle of overwork and burnout.
Frankly, that should be enough to consider it at least, but it’s the change in mindset about your time that’s most notable. You’ll very quickly regard those meandering meetings in which you’re not really required, for example, as not just undesirable but impossible.
Instead, you’ll prioritise tasks that generate real value like short, focused periods of collaborative work with colleagues.
Or indeed sessions of ‘deep work’ in which you can make real headway into the types of cognitively demanding thinking that you can’t achieve when you’re on the daily treadmill.
An additional short-term benefit, from an organisational perspective, relates to improvements in recruitment and retention. Frequently, Pang spoke to businesses for whom the shorter working week was a significant selling point for staff. Not just for the obvious reason that you have more leisure time (or that effectively your hourly rate is much higher when you do less work for the same salary). More broadly, the fact that a company that adopts this type of policy displays a general openness to innovative thinking.
Finally, and critically, there tend to be improvements in financial performance, whether in sales growth, net profitability (contributed to by improvements in productivity and low staff turnover), and valuations at IPO and/or exit.
While the move to working less may be a gradual process, there are some clear first steps.
I know what you’re thinking. These ideas sound excellent in theory but difficult to achieve in practice. But we need to start somewhere. Admittedly some of these ideas have been said before, but if they’d been fixed, wouldn’t need to be repeated!
- Start with reducing the number and/or lengths of meetings. Ensure there is a clear agenda and keep it to a handful of people, particularly if you’re on Zoom. Use meetings as an opportunity to make decisions, not share information and data.
- Give employees a voice in how and when to reduce working hours.
- If you’re considering a shorter week, the day you remove should be the company’s slowest and least productive day. Or at least the day which would offer the most benefit for the employees to take off.
- Use technology to improve project and time management, but when people are not working, they’re not required to be ‘available’. Respect people’s time off.
- Communicate clearly both with staff and clients. A big fear for many companies is that clients will disapprove or be concerned that you’re doing less work for them. Depending on your industry, there are plenty of ways to ensure that customer and client services don’t suffer. The reality is that invariably clients not only understand but are also envious and recognise the benefits to you and the quality of your work.
- Most importantly, listen to my interview with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang for more on why this is the future and specifically how this approach can help businesses through these most challenging of times.
I’m feeling idealistic today so write this in the hope that we can collectively change the paradigm of work in the future to one of working less while achieving more. Let’s shift the narrative from glorifying the causes of burnout to making less work a badge of honour.
Have a nice weekend,
Ollie
Any Other Business:
It’s unlikely that you’ve missed my new podcast this week, but just in case…check out the first two episodes with Christopher Lochhead (author, number one business podcaster, marketing and start-up legend, category design king) and Cath Bishop (3x Olympic rower, former diplomat, author, leadership expert and coach). Please subscribe to receive each new episode as soon as it’s released.
Following on from my articles above, listen to Women at Work to find out why ‘Now is a Good Time to Take Care of Ourselves’.
In other podcast news, the excellent FOMO Sapiens is back and this week’s show with Gretchen Rubin is fascinating. She talks about her latest book, The Four Tendencies, which explores how different personality types respond to expectations, and how understanding your profile will help you make better decisions.
Another interesting article from BBC WorkLife, this time on the ‘paradox mindset’ and how embracing contradictory ideas can be the secret to creativity and leadership.
And finally, this is a nice infographic from Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut and John Neffinger.
