Ep. 362 Could a Four-Hour Workday Be Enough to Build Your Dream Business?

What if the secret to sustainable success wasn’t hustling harder, but actually embracing less? In this thought-provoking episode, Anna Lundberg invites you to imagine a work-life where four focused hours a day could be enough to thrive as a solopreneur or independent expert. Tune in to discover practical strategies, inspiring research, and a fresh perspective on productivity that could finally lead to the freedom and fulfilment you set out to create.

Key moments:

[00:00] Welcome & episode overview: Why less really can be more for your business

[01:05] Real-life context: Balancing business with family, seasonal changes, and intense periods

[03:01] The evolution of the 9-to-5: Where did the 40-hour week come from?

[05:30] Deep work, elite performers, and research on focused productivity

[07:19] Why do solopreneurs struggle to let go of overwork?

[08:11] The rise (and dangers) of extreme hustle cultures

[10:18] Redefining ambition: Working less isn’t settling, it’s a bold move

[11:44] Parents & the practicality of the four-hour day

[13:08] Small tweaks that can help you transition to a shorter, more focused workday

[15:42] Structuring your day and building business models that support real freedom

[18:54] Designing for your constraints: Why boundaries are power, not weakness

[19:57] How to start redefining success and connect with Anna for next steps

Resources mentioned:

• If you’re starting to feel like something needs to shift – whether it’s your hours, your offers, or your whole way of working – you can book a free strategy call to explore what might be possible, and what your next step could be.
  onestepoutside.com/call

Four-hour workday

What if four hours was enough? You left the 9 to 5 for more freedom, but somehow you’re still working late at night, you’re squeezing in a few things on the weekend, or you’re feeling guilty whenever you want to take a real break. If you’ve started to wonder whether this pace is actually necessary to grow a successful business, or whether there’s a more human, more strategic and more sustainable way, then this episode is for you.

Welcome to the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started.

Wowee. Where did September go? We’re into October.

It’s my birthday month. Happy birthday to me. It was last week, thank you very much. It’s Halloween coming up, then it’s my son’s birthday, then it’s Christmas. My goodness, it feels like things are racing away and for me in particular, I may have shared before, we had a quite a slow start to September because my son has started school and it was a very slow settling in. So I really appreciated having the flexibility with my business, my work to be present with him and to have some really amazing family days over the summer actually, and these past weeks in September. However, I have to admit the last couple of weeks in September have been quite intense in a good way. I had the accelerator launch kicking off with the new cohort this week, I guess when this episode goes out.

And in fact this episode is much more last minute than it usually is, so I’m feeling quite breathless with the past September. So if you’re there, if you’re there with me, then I feel you. And I think this episode comes in a pretty timely moment because I want to talk about this idea that I’m playing with, which is the four hour day. So not the four hour week that Tim Ferriss popularised, although that did kickstart a lot of my own thinking and it became the start of a big movement which, you know, has benefited many of us, but the four hour day, which I think is a bit more realistic. So let’s take a breath after this intense few weeks, I’m going to Say, but the month this back to school period that we’ve kind of faced, whether we have kids at school or not, I think that’s really deeply ingrained in our being. And look at this belief that we have, I certainly have, that more is better even when actually we know that that’s not true. We have this deeply ingrained belief that productivity equals hours worked. So we may have left corporate, but we’re really bringing that factory mindset with us, measuring our in output in hours and being available all the time.

So look, the, the 9 to 5. I’ve written a book on leaving the 9 to 5; outside the 9 to 5. There’s a demonisation of the 9 to 5. And it’s important to note that actually this is the 40 hour work week. Eight hours times five, my maths tells me, is 40 hours. And it actually came as a positive development, right? People were doing 10, 16 hour days. And it came from Henry Ford in the early 20th century. Not because he cared about well being, let’s be honest, but because he believed and he proved that workers were actually more productive and profitable at 40 hours than they were at, let’s say 100.

Right? So more productive, fewer errors, and also in a bit of a sort of selfish way, I guess from a financial perspective it means that employees have more time for leisure, they can spend more money on goods and that benefits both the workers and the economy. So. So his experimentation with this 5 day, 40 hour work week, 58 hour days in his automotive factories proved successful. His factories maintained high productivity levels and workers were generally more loyal and proud of working there. Right. So really positive actually at the time. So I think it’s important to acknowledge that that was an improvement at the time. And yet this model was never meant to be the be all and end all for everybody, Right? It’s not the model that was created creative knowledge based or relational work, which is much more the reality of today.

We are not meant to produce at full capacity. We are not a machine that you can just plug in and let’s just run it as much as possible up to a point until okay, yes, we’ve got the most juice from that machine now we’ll turn it off and then we’ll do the same again. Right? That’s, that’s not how we’re designed and it’s not how we want to work. It’s certainly not how we do work. So even Henry Ford, through sort of the financial lens saw that reducing work hours was the right thing to do for the economy, for the business. And lucky for us also for the workers, for the employees. Now my new concept is this idea of the four hours of day and there’s a few, you know, studies and far smarter, more successful people than me talking about these elements that I’m drawing on. So Cal Newport for example, and his idea of deep work.

You know, when I work with leaders and I talk to them about when are they, I ask them, when are you most productive? They’ll inevitably say at home. Because that’s when I don’t have meetings. People aren’t coming to bother me every minute of the day and I’m getting work done right? That’s when they do their deep work. They’re able to reflect, strategize and actually do the stuff that needs doing. And that’s what a leader needs to do. Of course there’s a role for meetings and in person relationships as well. But that’s this idea of deep work that’s grown in prominence. Anders Ericsson conducted a study on elite performers, so think violinists, athletes, chess players, and showed that those who performed at the highest levels actually only practised for four and a half hours a day in really focused blocks.

You know, more broadly, I suppose there’s the idea of the four day work week which is really gaining ground. I’ve got here a couple of stats. You know, Microsoft, Japan’s four day work week trial led to a 40% boost in productivity, not despite few hours, but rather because of them. I would argue Iceland’s four day work week experiment has proved overwhelmingly successful. Same or improved productivity, better wellbeing. Okay, so there’s a lot of research, there are other more sort of subjective, anecdotal pieces of evidence of, of incredible innovators and I was going to say inventors actually. So I was thinking Leonardo da Vinci, artists, famous people over centuries who worked three to four hours a day. And in fact one of my current favourite authors, Oliver Berkman, who wrote 4,000 Weeks, which is the number of weeks we have on average to live in a lifetime, also talks about this idea of sort of three to four hour days.

So let me ask you this. Why are solopreneurs, as founders, as experts in complete control of our business, who have created this business to have freedom of flexibility? Why are we then working 10 hour days late into the night, weekends, evenings, etc etc. Because our hours aren’t just about output, right? They’ve become something that’s kind of connected with worthiness in our identity and to some extent safety. I think there’s this busyness piece that actually when I’m not busy, it’s quite, oh, gosh, that’s a bit scary. Am I doing the right things? Is it okay that I take time off? Oh, check me out, I’m really naughty. I’m going to the hairdresser in the middle of a Thursday. You know, there’s such an, a deeply ingrained psychological belief system, habits, stories that we’re telling ourselves. It’s very hard to let go of those.

Now. I, I’m a bit concerned and this is a recent discovery of mine, but this, this trend from china of the 996-work culture, 9am to 9pm, six days a week, has been worn as a kind of badge of honour in tech circles. In South Korea There’s a new phrase, 007, I guess, zero hours of dating, zero hours of sleep, seven days of work. And these are not jokes, these are actual real cultural norms in parts of the global workforce. And they’re extreme, but they’re mirroring some more common patterns, which is what I see, you know, certainly on LinkedIn, you see these entrepreneurs pulling, okay, 60 plus, I don’t know, hour weeks. Obviously there’s the famous Goldman Sachs and all those who work sort of 100 hour weeks, et cetera. The stories around, okay, working for yourself means working harder than you did in your job, always being on, always chasing. And to be honest, I think in the west there’s also this kind of either tech bro, marketing bro kind of vibe or the boss, I use vibe, the boss, babe kind of culture.

And productivity porn, let’s be honest, of YouTube, which is glorifying these long days and complicated systems and hacking your way to doing more, maybe in less time, but it’s still anchored in this idea that more is better and, you know, the extreme and not so extreme because it’s pretty common consequence of this is burnout. And it’s certainly baked in from the start. But I like to think that there is a counter narrative that’s growing that I’m part of and it’s, you know, time sovereignty, it’s having agency recognising that we can choose differently and that more isn’t always better. And what I want to say is it’s really important here. I am not saying when I talk about, you know, working fewer hours or even for that matter, the whole concept of the podcast, redefining, reimagining, success. I’m not saying that this is about giving up on your ambitions, compromising, settling all those negative labels that people might put. I actually believe that this is about being More ambitious. It’s about not settling and going well.

This is just how it’s supposed to be. Work and life are always at odds. I have to work late into the night because my boss has meetings on Friday nights. I have to cut short my holiday because I have to be there at the marketing shoot or you know, I’m in the early months years of my solopreneur business and so I have to hustle in order to get those early results. Okay, so for me it’s about being more ambitious. No, I believe and I will prove that it’s possible and I will seek examples that it’s possible to have a one person business if that’s the business model you’re choosing, maybe with some support around you, whatever that looks like, with sort of simple systems, a business model that means you’re charging enough that you’re really clear on what the things are that move the needle, that you’re doing work that you enjoy with people you respect. And this is totally reasonable and not a crazy thing to be asking for and certainly not something that will or can be achieved if we’re going for the 996007 extremes and not even necessarily the 40 hour work weeks which I just don’t think are necessary. And what’s interesting by the way, and I know you’re not all parents and I appreciate the last six years of my life have been slightly coloured by this and certainly the last couple of years as my children have started school, the core hours of school, if I think of when I get home from drop off, quarter to 10 to 9, so let’s call it 9 o’ clock.

And when they don’t have clubs and things, I need to go at like 2:30. Okay, so that’s five and a half hours. But I’m having lunch, I need a snack, maybe I need to exercise. You know, there are other things that need to be done as well. Right. So that’s probably around four hours of core productive work. Now we do have after school clubs sometimes and I do have a partner who also can do pickups and drop offs sometimes. But the reality is that this four hour day is pretty, I was going to say comparable to.

It matches pretty well the core school hours and that’s a good thing because really the 9 to 5 doesn’t fit with the school hours. Right. It just makes no sense. If an alien landed on this planet and questioned it all, they would not understand what we’re up to. And I think that’s the new lens we need to look at. What we’re doing here with some fresh alien eyes asking, hang on a second, what are you doing? So, question for you, what would it take for you to be able to work four hour days and still grow? I’m not necessarily saying this is possible today or tomorrow. Certainly if you’ve built a business based on, you know, week long hustle, that’s probably not the case. But when I work with clients recently I’ve worked with someone and it’s very quite small shifts in thinking, tweaks to the model, maybe pricing, the offer, clarity on who you’re working with, some boundaries, you know, there’s some little things that we can do relatively quickly and see results.

Okay. But I want to give you, I guess, a handful of first ideas around this and then we’ll talk about this more tangibly in the coming weeks and hopefully beyond. And the first and I’m sorry, I’m going to be a broken record here, you need to refine, redefine, clarify, identify whatever that looks like for you, what success looks like. Okay. It’s not about being always available. You want to be effective, not just efficient. It’s not just, you know, more hours at your desk. It’s not, wow, check me out, I’ve posted on LinkedIn every day, that’s not success, is it? It’s a means to an end.

And so if you’re only measuring the views, the likes on your posts, you’re missing the point. I thought of the comparison actually with Duolingo. I have this discussion with people and I see people talking about this on LingQ, which is quite funny that there’s a benefit to having the stre and I think I’m, I’m over a thousand days now and if you miss, you know, your streak, then it sort of starts again. And, and some people, they say, oh, but I’m so tied to this now and it’s arbitrary and tech is ruling my life and so on. But what I realised recently is the point is not to do, you know, the point is not that I have to keep that streak going. The point is, am I improving? In my case it’s Spanish. I’ve done a few other languages but right now it’s Spanish. So I look at the European levels of language and they have a 1, a 2, B1, B2.

And I, I think I’m sort of mid B1 at the moment and I’m working towards getting to B2. So that is my measure, My measure is the impact, the result of improving my language. If you know, to take it Even further ideally would be that I can go to Spain and actually talk to people where I’m a bit nervous about doing that now, even though I understand really well. And so the measure is not, oh Yes, I did 20 minutes of practising. Yes, that’s the input. But the output is more important in terms of how you actually move the needle. So there is value in business, in going, okay, I’ve messaged this many people, I followed up, I’ve posted or whatever, those are the actions we need to do. But ultimately that’s not what matters.

What matters is, okay, I made a sale or I made money, you know, those are the goals that we should be measuring. Right. The actual impact. So all this to say it’s not just about input, it’s about being aligned, knowing what you’re working towards and knowing that you are working towards this. Four hour days, it’s a decision, basically I am deciding this is what I want to work towards. Okay. And obviously, you know, it could be four hour days, it could be 20 hour weeks that are. Because you don’t have kids at school, you can make that a four day week, you make it a three day week, longer days, totally up to you.

Far be it from me to prescribe exactly what you should be doing. I’m just opening your eyes to a possibility of okay, yes, this is what I’m going to work towards, the four hour day, let’s say, okay, then, you know, we want to be structuring our day around our natural energy. So if it is within the school hours, you know, we kind of have that as a, as a structure we have to stick to. But there’s still an element of energy, your natural energy that I know that all the productivity advice says, you know, you should do sort of your most intentional strategic work first. I find that I like to ease into, you know, a little bit of sort of following up on LinkedIn and emails and things that actually helps me to warm up and then I can do my blocks of deep work. You have to find what works for you. Having clear blocks that are flexible nonetheless of, okay, these are the things I need to be doing. I need to be doing what we calling the accelerator.

The momentum moves the things that are actually going to move the needle. I need to be doing the longer term authority amplifiers, you know, what are those big strategic things that are moving the sales needle every day, every week. But also there’s things like, okay, I’m recording this podcast, there’s content creation, there is you obviously sort of lower return. But nonetheless Important things to do, which is accounting and admin and so on. And then having boundaries and reducing things like spending five hours crafting a LinkedIn post or you know, trying to have inbox zero doom scrolling. All those things that actually don’t help anyone, right? If you’re using, doing those things in your four hours, you’re not, you’re not going to get very far. And then building a business that supports this vision, right? And your natural energy, now you know what the big picture looks like, you know what your day’s structure looks like. You need to be building offers, pricing that, support that.

So it’s not going to work if you’re still customising every client proposal and doing bespoke work for every single workshop or coaching engagement. If you’re completely tied to delivering live in real time one to one, you know, there is a ceiling on that if you’re charging by the hour, obviously there’s a ceiling. And it’s going to be really tricky to do this if you’ve only got those four hour days and if you’re not clear on what you’re doing, if you’re just kind of being really reactive and just working through your inbox, basically that’s not going to get you to where you need to be either. And then really it comes down to honouring your constraints. So whether it’s school hours like me or chronic illness neurodivergence, or simply just plain not wanting to burn out and you know, just having a great life where work and life are much more balanced, designing for these constraints is how you are designing and working towards a meaningful and sustainable definition of success. It’s not settling, it’s not compromising, it’s making work work for you. So look, I know this isn’t like a productivity tip, it’s not 10 steps too. Although we can definitely talk about what those elements are and we will do in the coming weeks more tangibly what the business model looks like.

But we’re talking about making a decision now, a values led decision to design your business around the life you want to live and not the other way around. So again, this is not laziness, this is not settling, it’s having boundaries, but also having real clarity around what it is you want and being bold in setting that ambition and designing for that big picture. Okay, So I hope you’ll follow along with me as we start talking about these four hour days and I’d love to hear from. You can message me on social, Anna Selundberg on Instagram, or you’ll find me on LinkedIn. Hopefully reply to any of my emails if you’re already subscribed and let me know. Does this sound appealing? Does this sound completely crazy and far removed from where you are today? Or is it something you’re already doing? In which case, I’d definitely love to hear from you and showcase your examples. So let me know how this lands and I will see you next week. Bye for now.

If this episode has you thinking that something needs to shift, whether that’s streamlining how you work, redesigning your offers, or finally building the business that you actually wanted when you started, let’s talk about what’s next for you. We can look at where you are, what you want these next few months and years to feel like, and whether one to one support or the Business Accelerator would be the best fit. Just book a call at onestepoutside.com/call. It’s a simple conversation to explore what would make the biggest difference for you right now. That’s onestepoutside.com/call.

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