Break Free – Start Working Less to Get More

Wonder which country’s workers log the most hours a week? If you live in the United States there’s good and not so good news. For starters, you don’t have to look far for an answer. Americans work the longest hours of nearly any other country in the industrialized world.

Long Work Hours Don’t Equal Productivity

And you thought you were the only one skipping lunch, taking work home or clocking in early only to work an hour late. Turns out the average American puts in 7.9 hours a day on weekdays. Americans working weekends log approximately 5.5 hours a day.

As much as you might not want it to be so, if you worked any length of time in the private, government, retail or manufacturing sectors, there’s a good chance you were programmed to think working long hours equaled productivity. Now that you’re an entrepreneur, it’s time to shed that programming.

It’s Easy to Tell If You’ve Been Programmed

In case you’re wondering if you work long hours due to programming, answers to these questions will help:

• Do you feel guilty when you work less than 7 hours day?
• Are you always looking for work to do?
• Does an awkward feeling come over you when you sit down and relax?
• Ever catch yourself thinking people who work less than 7 hours a day are lazy?

Focus on Business Results Instead of Hours Worked

Instead of focusing on how long you’ve been at work, focus on results. It’s something we discuss often here at Write Money Incorporated, and for good reason. Focusing on results helps you to:

• Identify action steps that help you meet daily, weekly and monthly business goals
• Acquire the resources needed to meet your creative business goals
• Avoid distractions
• Keep your head out of the sand (refusing to measure the results of your efforts won’t make a million dollars mysteriously appear in your business bank account)
• Monitor employee efforts
• Realize which sales strategies, blogs, websites, products and services need to change or be discontinued

Tools to Help You Measure Business Results

To measure business results:

• Calculate the costs of technology, marketing efforts, licensing fees, real estate, salaries, etc. Deduct these costs from gross profits.
• Remove a cost component to find out where you might be able to realize savings. For example, if you upgrade to a more efficient technology model you might save $$ in overtime expenses.
• Segment domestic and international sales to find out which countries purchase more of your products/services
• Review Klout scores to measure the influence of your social media efforts
• Consider using social media measurement tools like PostRank, TwentyFeet, Peer Index, Sprout Social and CrowdBooster.com SocialOomph.com and HootSuite.com also offer social media measuring tools.

Just as it’s important for you to do work you love, it’s also important for you to know how your work is paying off. Sure. You can spend hours checking blog visitor stats, posting to social networks and cold calling prospective customers. But why continue to do that if it’s not getting you the results you want?

Turn on the light. Stop working in the dark. Measure your results. Tweak efforts and start working smarter to yield stronger results.

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Sources:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/01/three_faces_report.html (Center for American Progress: The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: American Time Use Survey Summary)