Productivity dramatically decreases with longer work hours and completely drops off once people reach 55 hours of work a week. Conclusion, on average, someone working 70 hours in a week achieves no more than somebody working 15 hours less.
The average U.S. worker clocks in about 1,804 hours per year at work — the highest output in the world.
56% of Americans report doing work from home. 20% report doing it every day of the week. 25% didn’t take any time off last year. 43% took less than a week off.
Those numbers represent a 400% increase in productivity since 1960 and a lot of tired, time-constrained workers who are chasing the almighty dollar.
Yet, the inflation-adjusted wage growth for the middle class has stayed stag-nate or declined. From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent.
Clearly, working more doesn’t mean making more.
One reason for this might be that many of the people our culture perceives as “successful” preach the gospel of working long hours.
But a lot of successful people find ways to work less and work smarter, not work more and work harder. If you’re doing the latter, you’re actually not free. You’re a slave to your company.
There is a different way to find your worth than in how hard you work and the number of hours you put in each week. The most successful people (financially, physically, and spiritually), are those who find their worth in how many assets they can produce that free up their time.
Your business or your investments should be providing your money each month even if you’re not working. If you have to work as much or more than an employee to keep your money coming in, what’s re-ally the difference? You don’t own a business, it owns you.
This is not to say that you don’t have to work hard, especially at the beginning and often at key times of growth, but the end goal should be to build teams, processes, and systems that get you out of that as fast and efficiently as possible.
Your true worth comes from being able to invest your time in those that you love and passions that you care about. You can’t do that when you work 80 hours a week. Your true worth comes from working less.
Take some of your down time to reflect on how you find your worth. Try to work less and finding ways to make your assets work for you.