Unworking

I have been using a word for what I am doing and I wanted to explain it.

A hundred years ago, 60+ hour work weeks were normal. Labor reform brought it down to around 40. When computers showed up, economists predicted we'd be at 20 hours a week by now. Keynes thought we'd be at 15 (can you imagine?). Instead the average American works 47 hours, and most knowledge workers I know, myself included, are closer to 50 or 60 hours a week.

There's a reason just deciding to work less doesn't work. Parkinson's Law. Work expands to fill the time you give it. Cut your hours and the work doesn't disappear, it compresses or it follows you home. The hour count isn't really the lever. The lever is how much the business depends on you being there at all.

Unworking is the practice of building a solo business that needs less of you over time. Fewer hours might be the result. They're not the point. The point is a business that can survive me having a bad month, taking three weeks off, getting sick, or getting bored.

It's not anti-work. Anti-work is political. I'm not. I like work. The problem isn't the work, it's the shape of it. A service business where the person is the product means the only lever for more revenue is more hours, and the only lever for more freedom is fewer hours, and those two levers fight each other for your entire career.

It's not the four-hour week. The four-hour week is a target without a mechanism. Unworking is the that mechanism.

It's not FIRE. FIRE is an exit. Unworking is more like a renovation you do while still living in the house.

I run a consulting practice that still needs me in the room for almost everything. That's the thing I'm trying to change. I'm not sure yet what the mechanisms are. Pricing, productized services, IP that earns without me, probably some combination. Eight days in, I have more questions than answers.

I'll write about what I try here. Some of it will work. Some of it won't. Field Notes go out weekly, Clearings monthly when something needs more room.

If the situation I described sounds familiar, you're probably in the right place.