How I gained 47 days of free time per year

The joys and possibilities of a 4 day week

When I was pregnant with our son, my husband and I decided that for the early years stage, we both wanted to spend a day a week alone with our boy. We’d had a hard road to parenthood and once the little wriggler was safely here, we wanted to be able to spend as much time with him as we could and also ensure that he bonded as equally as possible with us both.

So we decided that until he was in nursery aged three or so, we would have a child minder for three days a week, and spilt the rest of the time between us.

At that time, we both were working full time in the business that we shared (and branding and marketing consultancy), and although we were already pretty boundaried about evening and weekend work, we both put in a 5 day, 40-45 hour week.

I won’t pretend we were not nervous about the drop in time in our business; time equals money when you sell  time as a consultant, and dropping 20% of our availability felt significant, both for my husband who delivered probably 70% of the work and me who delivered and also spent time nurturing prospects and looking after clients.

So, let’s cut to the chase; what was the financial affect on our business from dropping a day each our of our roles?

NOTHING.

That’s right, absolutely nothing!

In fact, it all worked out so well that we NEVER went back to five days a week, even when our child was at nursery and then full time school – he’s now at high school.

How can that be?

Well, the impetus was for us to get through the same amount of work if at all possible, so we quickly found ways to be more intentional with our time. If you don’t do work and find work you don’t get paid – simple! We certainly couldn’t afford a 20% dip in income and there was no stable wage of someone else in the household to fall back on – it was all on us.

Less faffing – being honest, a lot of us do faff about a bit in our working day, and if we have 5 things on our to do list, we will get them done but it might take all day, whereas the trick is to actually do things as quickly as you can, not allow the tasks to fill the time you have.

Doing the same things better – I also cut down on networking and found ways to use social media to network with and find new clients. Yes social media is a time suck if not approached correctly, but so is travelling 45 mins to get the an event to find out that it’s nigh on useless, spend an hour there trying to make the best of it, then come back!

Saying no to meetings – I encouraged phone meeting and email/ online feedback session as much as possible with my clients. This was in the days before zoom too – and the pandemic has taught me that you can save a LOT of time by not having in person meetings, you avoid the travelling, the need to tidy the office all the time, the time spent at the beginning making coffee etc. I am always sociable with my clients on zoom calls or on the phone but I do think you get down to the nitty gritty sooner. And actually, some clients prefer it that way too.

Streamlining systems – we started using Xero for our accounts around this time so that I didn’t faff on with too much paperwork. We also started using a CRM system and invested in some sales coaching to help us get out skills and processes in that area fine tuned too.

Focus focus focus – when you have 4 days not 5 to get stuff done, you just become more focused and driven to get everything done. You can’t afford a slack attitude on Monday and the thought that you’ll catch up later – because you won’t.

In the 13 years that we have worked like this, we have gifted ourselves over 600 days more of time off. Time to rest, do house admin, spend time with our son, spend time as a family, garden, start an allotment, volunteer in our community, get out on the mountain bike, walk, BE.

Each year, in addition to the holiday allowance we give ourselves (yes we do that too, our working year is based on a 4 day week for 47 weeks) we have 47 EXTRA days all to ourselves. Each.

Who do you know who gets just shy of 12 weeks holiday a year?!

But that’s what you get when you run your own business on 4 days a week.

Could this work for you? And before you say NO, think about it. Allow yourself to contemplate the possibility.

How can you strip 8 hours out of your working week to give you that precious opportunity? Where can you cut back? Streamline? Stop faffing? Stop procrastinating?

I’d love it if this were possible for you too. Why not pick my brains and make a plan in a Marketing Clarity session?

Has this inspired you? Let me know in the comments if you too work a 4 day week, or would really love to!