24 Nov 2025 · 7 min
John Jonas ditches the 40-hour week for tight work sessions focused on four things: supporting his team, creating content, answering emails, solving problems. He explains how this works with Filipino specialists and why forcing them into night shifts wastes everyone's time.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with online Filipino specialists OFS. This is episode 268. 40 hours a week is overrated. So for a long time, I've talked about how I feel like we have this culture in the United States, and really in, like, Western culture of work working, of overwork being a badge of honor where, like, if you're not working 50 hours a week, then you're lazy or, oh, I work more than you do. I work harder than you do. And that's like, some really awesome badge of honor that I think is super, super stupid. Like, no, I spend more time with my family than you do. Maybe. Maybe that's a legitimate badge, but I work 70 hours a week is stupid. I had someone this week say, I work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm like, well, sorry, that's not sustainable. So, yeah, you can't hire an OFS right now. And when you will be able to, you won't be able to because you're going to be burnt out and done. So I just think it's silly. And I know a lot of people aren't going to like hearing this because they pride themselves on how much they work. And I think 40 hours a week is overrated. It's more than necessary. But our culture has lent it to it. Because if you work 40 hours a week or more, then you could. You can get rich, and then you can work more, and then you can make more money so that you can retire and spend time with your family. Like, well, I mean, that. That's dumb. So. And then you add to that that a lot of people working 40 hours a week just waste so much time. They watch funny cat videos, they scroll Facebook, they read news. I have this neighbor across the street who works 40 hours a week. And since they started working from home, he only has to do, like, meetings with team members for his corporate job. And it only takes him, like, I don't know, 10 hours a week. And so he just spends a lot of time doing nothing. And before he had to be at the office, so he'd spend time in his office scrolling Facebook and looking at YouTube videos and whatever else stupid. And now he's at home because of COVID And so he doesn't. He doesn't have to spend all the time working, but he's expected to work 40 hours a week, even though it only takes him 10 hours to get everything done. And, you know, he's like a. He's an executive, he's high paid. And so, so I don't do any of it. I don't do any Facebook, I don't do any news, I don't watch YouTube, I haven't seen that video. I don't do meetings, I don't have phone calls. I will not get on the phone with you. I don't do 40 hours. And with my business I could work anywhere as long as I have a laptop and Internet connection. I can work at the beach, I can work on vacation, I can do emails, I can work on my phone. But I don't, I don't work in all those places because. Because I choose not to. I want to work when I'm at work and then I want to leave work at work and that's it and be done. Now for me, work is at home. And so when I walk into my office, I'm at work and I don't watch YouTube videos or I don't look at this other thing. I don't do anything else other than work when I'm in my office. As soon as I walk out that door, I'm at home and I'm with my kids, I'm with my wife, I'm going skiing, I'm going to ride my bike, I'm. We're going on a trip, whatever it is. Last year we went to Europe and spent a month cycling across Europe with my family. And I didn't bring a laptop because I didn't want to work. So how do I accomplish this? Here's what I have found works really, really well for me. When I'm at work, I'm super productive and super focused and that's it. There are no distractions to me. So I don't have any meetings to interrupt me when I'm being productive. I don't answer the phone when I'm being productive. I won't schedule a phone call with you because that interrupts my productivity time. I am just super, super focused. And that focus is on a couple of things. Number one, making sure my team is supported, that they have what they need to continue doing their work. Number two, creating content. I have to create content for our business. That's what makes us grow. I figured that out over the years. So I prioritize creating content for us. Three, I answer emails. And four, I solve problems. I think, I think through what we're doing, what's going on in the business, what the problems are, what is this thing that's causing us these headaches? How do we solve this? What could we do to solve this? Well, here's what I think we could do. What do you guys think? And I go to my team with it for answers, and then I let them work. Come back and forth with me. We do this all digitally, either through email or through basecamp. Usually through basecamp or project management system. And so I'm very focused on these four things when I work, which means I don't need to work 40 hours a week to get 40 hours a week done. Everything that I'm not doing gets assigned to someone else. So to create content, for example, all I do is sit in front of a camera and talk. Well, and I have some notes here in front of me that one of my OFS wrote. And. And then I hit stop and on my recording and I'm done. That's it. I just drag it to a folder and then it's. It's. Everything else is taken care of for me, including the podcast and the blog and publishing everything and a newsletter and linking everything together. It all gets taken care of for me. So let me tell this back to your ofs. I very often get. Well, I mean, everything here is relevant to an ofs, right? Because everything that I do is working with my team in the Philippines and enabling them to get their work done and then having them enable me to get my work done super, super efficiently. Here's one other thing, though. I very often get asked by people I want, what about having someone work the night shift so they work my time? And you can definitely do it. It's certainly possible. I tell people all the time. It's possible. Just make sure that when you're recruiting, you're finding someone that is working the night shift already, because changing from working day to night hours is really, really difficult. But for me, I don't want someone working the night shift. Just today I had someone ask me, hey, you have someone that filters all of your email for you. I'm assuming they work the night shift. No, they don't work the night shift because I don't want them bugging me during my day. And in fact, I also don't want to ask them to change from day to night because it would disrupt their life so much. So there's two things there for me. Number one, changing from day to night is really hard for them. Number two, I don't want them working my daytime hours because that just interrupts my productivity. It requires more of me. It requires my time, it requires my mental energy to focus on something for them. Right now, when I want to do this other thing right now that's more important for the business. And if someone's there bugging me and asking me and demanding of me, I can't do that. They're productive on their time. I'm productive on my time. There's a time for me to give feedback and instruction, and there's usually an hour or two where I can interact with different people throughout my working time. And that's all I need for them. I get my work done, super productive. They get to be productive on their time. And that's how I don't work 40 hours a week. It.
