WORK LESS WEDNESDAY
WLW #87
This week’s issue of Work Less Wednesday is sponsored by:
🤩 Ivy Malik: How to Attract Quality Clients Without Justifying Your Price 🤩
Ivy Malik (@IvyMalik) is a sales coach for ambitious creatives. Inher value-packed 37 minute webinar, she breaks down the three biggest mistakes that are holding you back from attracting your dream clients on repeat. If you want to work less and make more, I highly recommend checking out the link below.
🌴 1. How To Take 6 Weeks Off From Your Business – Podcast By Mariah Coz
If you can’t take time off from your business without it breaking, you don’t have a business, you have a job.
Since it’s the summer, now is a perfect time to think about how we can create systems in our businesses to be able to take time off, guilt-free.
Which is where this podcast episode comes in.
Mariah recently helped me with the marketing and strategy for 🏖How To Work Less, and I’ve been a huge fan of her podcast for a while now.
In this podcast, Mariah revealed that she’s taken the last 6 weeks off from her 7-figure business.
In the episode, she shared:
- Why she took 6 weeks off (some planned, some unexpected)
- How she navigated being OOO with her team and clients
- What she prepped for when she only had a few days to plan for my unexpected absence
- How your business model impacts how you plan for time off
- The decisions and shifts she made months ago that made this easier to execute now
Here’s a link to the full podcast episode for you.
You can also check out Mariah’s company, Fearless CEO, here.
⭐ 2. How The #1 Notion Consulting Agency Uses Notion (Behind The Scenes) – Twitter Videos By Tem
I’ve been following Tem (@optemized) on Twitter for over a year now, and if you’re into Notion, I highly recommend dropping a follow.
He’s the founder of the agency Optemization, which is the #1 Notion consulting agency.
They build custom Notion workspaces and workflows for high-growth startups.
Recently, he’s been dropping a series of short videos documenting how his agency uses Notion internally.
I’ve collected some of my favorite videos below, check them out:
✨ How To Create A Beautiful Follow Up Document After Sales Calls(part2)
📄 How To Simplify A Notion Page Layout
👥 How To Create An Employee Directory
✍️ How To Take Notes In Meetings
P.S. Interested in using Notion to run your business? You get all of my templates and workflows in 🏖️ How To Work Less, including my Client Portal, Freelance Database, Project Manager, and more! Cohort 5 starts September 4th – get on my VIP Waitlist here!
🗓️ 3. The Real Reason For The 40 Hour Workweek – Article By David Cain In Business Insider
This article is from 2014.
Almost 10 years later, it hits like a ton of bricks.
In it, David Cain has just returned from a long sabbatical from work.
Just a week back into work, the reality sets in…
Activities are, “quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.”
And what’s even more interesting, is that all these activities “cost little or no money, but they take time.”
This next part is what really hit me:
“The 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public.
Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy.
It keeps them watching television, and its commercials.
It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
The 40 hour workweek keeps us from enjoying our time outside of work.
All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution, and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy.
For the economy to be “healthy,” America has to remain unhealthy.
The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’s most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something.”
Does this resonate with you? Just look around.
Filling up every minute our time with work is a feature of the system, not a bug.
👀 4. Correct Video Eye Contact With AI – Veed.io
This week a friend shared this awesome tool with me – it’s called Veed.io.
It’s simple, but powerful.
Record a video while looking at notes or your script, then plug it into Veed.
It will automatically fix your eye contact to camera.
Here’ a video explaining how it works.
This can be a game changer for podcast recordings, online courses, and Zoom calls.
Check it out here. (not an ad)
⚖️ 5. The 85% Rule: Relax For High Performance – Blog Post by Eugene Yan
I learned about The 85% Rule from this blog post by Eugene Yan.
This is a concept from an interview with Hugh Jackman on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
The 85% Rule:
”A sprint coach was studying Carl Lewis, for a year, and couldn’t understand why Carl was always last or second last at the 40-meter mark, but then go on to win the 100-meter sprint.
Eventually, he realized that Carl Lewis did nothing at the 50-meter mark; his breathing and form was exactly the same.
Other runners would try to push harder, clenching their fists, scrunching their faces. But Carl Lewis stayed exactly the same—and go on to breeze past the others”
“Hugh observed that all great athletes have relaxation.
He hypothesized that most Type-A athletes would run faster if they ran at 85% capacity—instead of 100%—because it’s more about relaxation, form, and optimizing the muscles.
Tim agreed that in most activities, being overly tense works against giving your best performance.
Hugh shared that he had that problem, of pushing himself too hard, and found the 85% rule to work well for him.”
The lesson: For high performance, pushing yourself too hard can hurt more than help.