In this Labor Day Facebook Live session, life‑and‑business strategist Charlie Hugh‑Jones examines the relevance of the traditional 9‑to‑5 workday. He opens by noting the holiday’s origins—workers’ fight for humane conditions—and contrasts that with today’s “hustle” mentality, especially in Silicon Valley, where long hours are glorified. Charlie critiques the prevailing narrative that more hours equal more success, citing a New York Times article that called 9‑to‑5 “for losers” and a study showing only 7 % of U.S. workers feel productive during work hours. He shares personal anecdotes from his legal background and from clients who struggle with rigid office policies, illustrating how excessive hours erode focus, emotional intelligence, and decision quality. Central to his argument is the concept that productivity is not about doing more tasks but about doing more of what truly matters. He introduces the science of ultradian rhythms—90‑120 minute energy cycles—and argues that managing energy, not time, yields higher output. Charlie outlines the three‑key framework from his recent book Unlocking a More Productive You, emphasizing energy management, purposeful work, and strategic sprints versus a marathon mindset. He celebrates the book’s achievement as the #1 Amazon bestseller in time‑management, using it to reinforce his message. Throughout, Charlie encourages listeners to question the 9‑to‑5 label, adopt energy‑based work habits, and reject the hustle that “defrauds” oneself. He ends with a call to action: engage with his content, share the live session, and reach out for deeper conversations about purpose‑driven productivity.
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Good morning. It is Elevenses with Charlie, and welcome this Monday, 4th September, which is Labor Day here in the United States. And what a great day to talk about the workday. This is the day when everyone is taking time off. It is a federal holiday. That means everybody gets it as a bank holiday. call it in the UK, bank holiday. And it's a time when people are to celebrate labor in the workforce, to celebrate the workforce itself. And so I want to talk a little bit about that today because I've titled this 11 Z's with Charlie, Is 9 to 5 for Losers? Is 9 to 5 for Losers? In my industry, it's, um, quite common to talk about freedom, to talk about getting away from the 9-to-5 grind, of being able to have sufficient money to make your own choices, of being able to go and fulfill your passions and, and do a business or whatever it is that is aligned with your purpose. There's lots of talk about that in the self-development, in the coaching, in the executive coaching industry. But what does that mean when we start talking about 9 to 5? I read an article yesterday. I want to show it to you. I don't know if it's back to front. Is Silicon Valley— sorry, in Silicon Valley, 9 to 5 is for losers. That was in the New York Times yesterday about this culture, this idea that it's not about working smarter anymore, it's about working harder again. I say again because 10 years ago we were all reading Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek. We're all trying to learn how to work smarter Do less to achieve more. And right now there seems to be this cult of the hustle. Now, on the last holiday when it was Memorial Day, I started talking about the idea of dropping the hustle because the hustle was, in effect, lying to ourselves. If we simply put in more effort, if we just worked harder, if we were still up at 11 o'clock at night writing the 5th report on or revising the business plan yet again, or the investor presentation, whatever it was. If you were doing that all the time, you were hustling, you were eventually going to be successful. But at what cost? Now, many of you know that I wrote a book recently called Unlocking a More Productive You. And in it, my central message is productivity isn't getting more done, it's getting more of what matters most Done. There was a recent study that said only 7% of the US workforce at the moment feels it is productive during working hours. That raises some fundamental questions. I mean, do you not think about, one, what are working hours, and two, not feeling productive even though people are working so hard? Well, let's just question this one premise first. Is there such a thing as 9 to 5 anymore? If that's the workday, I certainly don't think it is. When I say that, there are hundreds of people who have office jobs, who have a certain number of hours that they must complete for their employer in order to get paid. I'm not taking that apart. I'm not challenging that. What I am saying is, back in England when I was doing a lot of work recently, We'd started things called zero-hours contracts, which were all about working shifts, about not having holiday time, about not actually knowing when you were going to work in the week. And it certainly wasn't 9 till 5 o'clock. And this was happening in the Tesco's and the Asda's, the equivalent of Walgreens and Safeway and Whole Foods and Publix. And you didn't work 9 to 5, you worked a shift. And you wouldn't know how long those shifts were going to be. Could it be 11 hours and do that for 3 days and then have a couple of days off? The consistency of What was a mid-Victorian era Industrial Revolution 9 to 5 doesn't exist in many parts of our Western society. Particularly now that we're a knowledge-based, knowledge-driven workforce most of the time. So the idea of working 9 to 5, clocking in the hours, is very interesting. And, and For this article in Silicon Valley to say 9 to 5 is losers— is it in Silicon Valley, 9 to 5 is for losers? I'm struck by the assumptions in there and the kind of— this degree of concern of whether you're going to be seen to be working hard. We know that it's only the small portions of deep thought or focused work in our day that moves the needle, that takes the project along, that creates the insight to be able to make some powerful decisions in a business. It only takes a moment to convert a customer. There may be a journey, but you're not going to bludgeon them by hitting a client time and time and time again with the same message until they convert. It's not about that. It's about connection. It is about inspiration. It is about value creation. And I think that's what a lot of this talk misses. What I learned in, in my early part of my career is a typical knowledge-based worker, not necessarily creating coding or what have you in the high-tech industries, but I trained as an attorney, as a lawyer. We're known in Europe for an immensely long hours culture. How long could we outwork, outlast, outperform our competitors and we'd win? You know, often negotiation went through into the night on corporate deals when we were trying to close them. And basically the one who was awake enough and could pay enough attention at 3 AM in the morning was the one who got the clause they wanted. Now that's no basis for proper negotiation, but that was how we sometimes worked. There was bravado, there was this, you know, alpha I can work harder than you mentality that meant some deals were really bad for our clients. And I talk a little bit about, about that in the book Unlocking a More Productive You, because all hours are not created equal. And the way we work, the way we operate, the way we use our time determines how productive we are, how much of what matters most we get done, how deeply we can concentrate and Figure out those things, how quickly we can read something, take in the salient points, and then be able to summarize it for a client, for a customer, for our direct reports. There's also a lot of problems with a long hours culture in terms of being able to appreciate and understand what's going on for your coworkers, for your team, for the business as a whole. As we use up energy, as we use up our willpower, our concentration, our patience, our emotional connectivity, we become worse at reading people, at understanding what's really going on. And so we start challenging people, we start pushing people to do things that are not in their best interests either. One of the things I learned in writing the book and investigating so deeply the kind of cycles and rhythms of the workday was that work is a series of sprints, it's not a marathon. We have something called an ultradian rhythm, which is a 90 to 120 minute window Well, cycle actually, where our energy peaks and then comes down again and then needs recharging. And we can learn a lot about ourselves by being able to pay attention to what's going on in our bodies, in our mind, in our emotions. But the way we work, the way we're continually bombarded by email, the way we keep checking messages, the way we don't use the power of our no to create space to think means we don't pay attention to ourselves. And so we don't work more effectively. We don't focus more single-mindedly. We don't have the energy in order to be more productive. But it is possible to do less— sorry, yeah, to work less and achieve more. I'm not saying that we're ever going to get away from having to clock in a certain number of hours in order to get paid, but I was just talking to a client recently who was struggling with the fact that their employer didn't yet let them work From home. They were a new employee. They'd only been there a month or two. And the reality was I had to tell them, you aren't trusted yet to work from home. That's not because you don't clock in the hours. That's not because you don't fill in the timesheets. It's actually because they haven't seen you deliver the results consistently. And that's where we need to get to, understanding roles and goals. There's responsibilities and achievements, things that we have to do for our employer or for our business or for our employees. Irrespective of the time, we have to deliver those. But there's also the goals. What are we seeking to achieve? What targets have we hit? And have we demonstrated we've hit them? Then we earn the right to say, I can still achieve those in a different context. So the fundamental question that I posed at the beginning here, is 9 to 5 for losers? My answer is absolutely no, it is not. But 9 to 5 is just a portion, a signifier, a label for work. Work and being employed is not for losers. What we achieve for those that we've chosen to serve, whether that be a corporate employer, whether that be a hospital, whether that be for an individual employer, a person who we work in the service industry for, whether that be our stakeholders in the businesses that we run and we own, There's a number of fundamental questions I want to ask. Why do you do it? And how do you do it better? Okay? And that doesn't mean putting in more hours, or it doesn't necessarily mean you have to put in more hours. And that doesn't mean that people who put in more hours are worth more than people who work 9 to 5. Because I know people at the top of their game who work less than 9 to 5 and outperform everybody else because they've learned the tools and techniques to be more productive. And that's what I give you in my book, Unlocking a More Productive You. I have a really great announcement that I'm very excited about that I've waited until this point in the Facebook Live to tell you. It's gonna come out, but on launch day, one of the targets we had was to achieve a bestseller status, to get a slot on the top 10 of Amazon's bestsellers in a category that was relevant. Well, today I get to tell you that I'm proud and humbled and very grateful for all those that made it happen, that actually on Friday, 1st of September, my book Unlocking a More Productive You became the number 1 bestseller on Amazon relating to time management and productivity. There is a huge irony in becoming the number one bestseller in a category called time management. And that's because the second of my 3 keys to unlocking a more productive you is a very powerful statement that you do not manage time, you manage energy. Now you have to read the chapter in order to understand that and all the tools that go with that and why that is so important, real to the series of sprints and not a marathon. that is our productivity and getting to the things that matter most. But I do think it's an irony, but I'm grateful. I am phenomenally humbled. The messages that I've had, the emails of how the book has already touched people, reminded people of things that matter in their world and things that they're going to change tomorrow when they get back into the workplace. Those of you who are in the United States, I know you in London and in Manchester and Leeds are back to work today. But But these are people who've taken some of those tools, remembered what's important to them, and are beginning to reconfigure their days. I've had emails and messages, and I'm just supremely grateful for those who helped do that. But this means I get to talk to more people about productivity and why productivity is not doing more, it is about doing more of what matters most. And in the book, I give you tools and techniques and strategies to make that a reality in your world. So 9 to 5 is not for losers. There's certainly a culture that is trying to press people back into the types of behavior of working 17, 18 hours a day for lower pay, which essentially was the root of this entire Labor Day movement. And the reason for the holiday that we're celebrating today here in the United States is because the unions rose up and said these kind of working conditions were not healthy for human beings. They were not healthy for people living lives of fulfillment and purpose and keeping a roof over their families' heads. There needed to be some change to those working conditions. And I think it's a retrograde step that we look at Silicon Valley and we celebrate those who can work harder and longer than anybody else. Yes, there are times in project work when we're trying to meet deadlines when we have to put in the hours. But making it a norm that you're hustling for 4 or 5— this is the 5th month in a row that you are working 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night, having worked the whole day as well in order to get something through. There is something wrong there because to hustle is to defraud and you are defrauding yourself. You are not focusing on what matters most if hustling has become your habit. So go find a new way of doing things. Look at reasons where you can develop success habits that are not around hustling. And you will be more productive. You will get to more of what matters most in your world. Well, thank you very much for being with me on this Labour Day 11s with Charlie Hugh-Jones. I'm a life and business strategist, and I help high performers and passionate entrepreneurs unlock a better and even more conscious version of themselves to increase their productivity, to enjoy more purpose, to be more resilient, and to— wow, that's one of the doors. Maybe it's telling me I should finish. To be more deeply connected with those that you love and those that matter in your world. And if there's anything in this Facebook Live that has resonated for you, that has touched you, that you want to talk more about, please direct message me. Check out charliehughjones.com. Look at my YouTube channel. youtube.com/charliehughjones. Check out, uh, this Facebook page. Please like it. Please share this Facebook Live if it's been of any use to you or you think it might be helpful to somebody else. And if you disagree with anything I say, or you want to say more and elaborate more, then just leave a comment below and I'll reply to that when I can. So thanks very much for watching, watching. I'd love to see you again sometime. Until then, bye for now. Bye for now.
