James Blackwell argues that 80-hour workweeks are a myth. Instead, he recommends concentrated sprints of high-value work, delegating lower-value tasks, and protecting time for planning. He suggests valuing your time at $5,000 an hour to decide what's worth your attention.
James Blackwell.
$5,000 per hour.
"Blue Sky Mondays."
Hello everyone, James Blackwell here. I thought I would do something slightly different and record this video whilst I am enjoying a Sunday afternoon at a beach club here in my home in Dubai. And today I'm going to talk about how entrepreneurs really work and really the Myth of this 80 hour work week and endless hustle and real productivity. Because when I look at most successful entrepreneurs, it's not about putting in the hours. Yes, like up. Obviously there's a 10,000 hour rule and obviously the more you put into something, the bigger your rewards are long term. But in terms of working, it's all about working smart. And when I analyze probably over the last easy five years of my entrepreneurial journey and when I've had the most success, I'm actually working less and less and I work more in what I would call like short bursts. So a bit like the conversation I was having with a friend the other day is like when you, when, when you're a lion, you are resting a lot of the time and then you hunt. And that's very similar to a lot of successful entrepreneurs. Like they know the true value of the time. And it's all not about filling up your calendar with lots of meetings and being busy, being busy, it's all about being really hyper productive in those what I would call fire mode, two hours in your day. So if I look back on my weeks and the successful months we have and the businesses, it's when I've really put in a lot of time, energy and effort just in bursts. And the more I have more freedom, the better ideas come, the more free flowing I am and the better the business does as well. So one of the key things like I want you to go away and look at is over your last week, what was your calendar like in terms of like, was there a lot of meetings, was there a lot of endless things that just aren't really a high value revenue, revenue producing task that you feel that you probably shouldn't be doing anymore. Because like I said, the most successful entrepreneurs out there are very valuable with their time and they don't really waste a lot of it on just doing the work as it were. And that brings me on to your hourly rate. So one of the things that I learned early on was making sure my time was valuable. So when you start adding up what your productiveness is in your business, how much revenue and profit your business makes, takes and how many hours of the week that you're putting in, then you can reverse engine and work on your hourly rate and then it's all about delegating tasks that are below the hourly rate and actually having a higher hourly rate in your head perception than even you are. So for example, my hourly rate is $5,000 an hour. So if someone wanted time with me to mentor them or spend time with them, it would be $5,000. But even if you're hourly rate is maybe $500 or $200, you want to raise that bar up. So the standards are high. So you know in your head that your time is very, very precious and very valuable. Very, very valuable. That brings me on to this 80 hour work week. So you see people online that are saying that they're working 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week, 120 hours a week. And a lot of that is like a status game signal. So no one really works 80 hours to 120 hours a week because it's physically impossible. They would not have the mental clarity with. And your brain actually requires a lot of energy. So your brain would just break down. Which is why people tend to, like I said, like the most successful people tend to be knowledge workers. And with knowledge workers you really need to protect your brain and energy. So like I said, the best way that I do that is through sprints. So when I have an idea, some creative genius or something that I want to work on project wise in my businesses, I will just be all in on that. So whether that's going to be two hours, it might be six hours, might be eight hours, but then I'm going to rest a lot. And the most successful entrepreneurs do this. And they do this really well. One of the quotes that I learned recently, I was reading Naval Ravikant's book again and he was talking about a busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things. So if you want to be able to do great things, whether you're a musician, artist, entrepreneur, or whether you're an investor, you need to free your time and free your mind. And like I said, like when I go out, say on a Sunday here, I'm here in Dubai, just enjoying my own thoughts. I go with a journal, I go with my Kindle, I read and I just relax. And that's like my time to really unwind. But it's not necessarily on a Sunday. I could do that sometimes on a Monday, on a Wednesday, I block on parts of my time. And one thing that worked really well was I call it Blue Sky Mondays. Blue Sky Thinking Mondays. So I would always never work Mondays in my business. Even when I was growing the agency, it was Very, very important to me that I took that time to work on the business, not in it. So I would go to a cafe and I would journal down, like, the thoughts and my plans for the business that week, that month in the coming year. So I had clarity of thought before I started that week. So even if you're just starting out or you're in business like year two, year three in your business, start off by having that time to yourself. So whether it's taking half a day off on Mondays, you could start by maybe not starting work until like one in the afternoon. And then you can start to generally build that in. Like, the more you hire a team and put systems in place, then that'll work for you. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I'm gonna go back to enjoy the rest of the sun for the day, but like I said, I wanted to try and get this video on because I know I'm gonna try and keep doing this every Sunday for you guys. Let me know what you want to learn next. So in the comments, let me know what topics or certain areas in your entrepreneurial journey that you would like me to cover next and I'll catch you on the next one.
