The 40-hour work week denotes the life of an employee whose time is dedicated to one company. Typically, the employee works in an office and has no other streams of income. Spending 40 hours a week at the office gradually makes him less happy, healthy, and free.

In a modern tech era, many still cling on to this outdated 40-hour work week model. This includes most companies, CEOs who speak out against remote work, and even some employees who prefer the perceived structure and stability provided by a large corporation.

It is more possible than ever to get ahead financially without draining your health, time, and quality of life. However, you must kill the idea of the 40 hour work week being the “norm” and productivity standard.

The insanity of the 40 hour work week

The default 40 hour work week model is questionable to say the least. Back in the industrial revolution, factories must be constantly operated and productivity depended solely on the number of hours toiled by workers. Humans worked long days because that was how work got completed. Today, knowledge workers like you and I can problem solve without sticking to the conventional 8am-5pm working hours. We can get tasks done from home without being physically present in the workplace.

In fact, knowledge workers get less than 20 hours of real work done every week – only 39% of the workday is spent performing the roles they are hired for. The rest of the time? It is filled with miscellaneous tasks and distractions. If you evaluate your personal workday, you will likely find inefficient activities such as browsing social media and attending team meetings.

If we get so little work done, it makes no sense to spend 40 hours a week cooped up in an office environment. 

In fact, there are two things that prolong the work week far beyond 40 hours:

• Mandatory “dead” time: The daily commute, lunch break (not a leisure activity), and waking up an hour before work
• Technology that makes the workday longer

The “dead” time that comes with the corporate workday is self-explanatory. The time preparing for work adds up and takes the work week far beyond 40 hours. 

Worse still, what we tend to underestimate is the technology that makes us work longer. 

If we are not cautious, we can suffer from technology-based work creep as our smartphones and laptops ensure that we stay plugged in, even after we “finish” work. Knowledge workers are especially prone to this. We check email, reply to customers and/or colleagues, and do work online after working hours have ended.

If you succumb to the standard “40 hour” work week, you may incur direct hits to your quality of life, health, and financial pursuits beyond the job. 

It also takes an indirect toll on other things in life that are important, such as relationships, love, family, hobbies, and so on. Time lost cannot be regained, so working far beyond 40 hours per week is unwise, especially when you are only productive half the time.

All of this is insanity. This is why you should kill the idea that the standard 40 hour work week is an acceptable model to adopt into your life over the long haul.

Why the outdated 40h work week is still the norm

The trend of remote work during the pandemic has blurred the time at which the work week starts and ends. Some corporations may have become more flexible. Many employees find that they get their job done in less time. This results in time savings, since they do not have to waste their remaining time idling within the office, waiting to leave the office after office hours are up.

Yet, companies are inherently profit-making – that’s the nature of companies – and are incentivised to squeeze every hour of effort from their employees (for the sake of their bottom line).

In the post-pandemic workplace, many companies have required employees to go back to the office. The return to the office reinforces the 40 hour work week.

These are common reasons that many CEOs have used to justify why employees should return to the office:

• Prevent dilution of company culture
• Foster collaboration and an innovative workplace culture
• Enable learning and mentoring to take place to benefit younger professionals 

These fears are based on the assumption that remote work will destroy culture, slow innovation, and halt the growth of younger people. These fears are ill-informed. 

For instance, junior people are tech savvy – the millennial generation is fully capable of using online collaboration tools to seek help and learn things. Even if they are new to an industry, there is no reason why mentorship/ learning must happen in person. Collaboration can take place online, besides the physical office. 

Ultimately, companies are change resistant and their rejection of remote work is irrational, but why do they care? Getting employees to return to the workplace does not hurt companies. CEOs and bosses have more control over their employees, the middle managers have workers to manage. 

As companies put a halt to remote work, the standard 40 hour work week continues as the norm. As a consequence, if a worker is efficient and spends only 15 hours getting work done during the week, he/she now *has to* spend 40 hours at the office just because the company or CEO said so. 

There is also the issue of self-regulation. If you hustle on your side business when working remotely, you might hear friends/ family commenting that it is “unethical” to exploit your workday to work on your own projects. As a result, you may feel guilty of doing something wrong and become hesitant to optimise your time during “office hours” for other financial projects and non-work stuff. The reality? No one truly spends 40 hours on their job anyway, so you should feel free to optimise your “office” time in alternative ways. 

You will be better off than the average office worker who spends half of the workday on news sites, social media, personal calls, messages, entertainment and more.

The truth about how many hours you should work

This is not conventional advice, and it is very rarely mentioned even by productivity gurus and coaches. But it seems obvious at this point. You should spend less than 40 hours a week on any particular job. Perhaps an exception to this rule is a high-paying career where you are paid by performance, such as the field of sales or technology. 

Otherwise, you are better off taking the remote work path and taking your hours way below 40 hours, so that you can optimise your time to explore ways of generating side income.

Show your boss that as a remote worker, you can complete the same amount of tasks and workload (maintain performance), but take your hours down to work on your side hustle.

Does this mean that it is always a bad idea to exceed 40 hours per week? No. Sometimes, working 50, 60, or 70 hours a week is a good thing. If you are starting a brand new career or business, you will likely need to put in a ton of initial effort to overcome the learning curve. Progress is hardest at the beginning. In fact, if you are starting a new side business while working a full-time job, you will most likely be exceeding 40 hours of work even if your job is remote.

Related: Why Side Income is Important (Even If You Love Your Job)

However, you want to work less than 40 hours per week over the long term. It will bring you more happiness, since you have more time for your physical health, family, love, relationships, hobbies, and so on. 

This means that you need to eventually transition. If you are working multiple remote jobs, know that it is likely not very sustainable over a 3-5 year period. The same goes for running a business while working full time in a corporate office. 

Instead, the sweet spot can occur where you diversify your streams of income by running 2-3 businesses (or by having 1 remote job and 1-2 businesses), while working less than a total of 40 hours per week. How is this possible? Think of a small niche site/blog, coaching a few clients per month, or an ecommerce store that is already up and running. By commonsensical logic, you have more control over your hours in a small business compared to a job. It is hard to take your hours below 10-15 hours at a full-time job. 

If you are required to work more than 40 hours a week, you will be less happy. Instead in the long run, you only want to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week out of choice because you love the hustle and your work.

It is absolutely fine to work 60 hours a week or beyond, if you mostly enjoy your work and have financial goals as your #1 priority. Don’t do it because you absolutely must in order to maintain your income and pay your bills. 

Avoid the trap of accepting the 40 hour work week corporate model. Plan your transition out of that lifestyle.