You Shouldn’t Have To Work 10+ Hours A Day. But You Will.

The four-hour workday is a trophy at the end of a long, long road

If you’re looking to build something of your own, you’re either balancing it with an existing job or you’re building it up full-time. Both come with their own gargantuan headaches and require brutal amounts of effort, whether it’s the work itself or the thinking about work.

When you go online and read about solopreneurship, however, it looks as though you’re doing it all wrong. Horrendously wrong. Because you’re looking, naturally, for tips and tricks from the “greats”, and those folks are out there pocketing thousands of dollars a month like it’s chicken feed while working a scant three or four hours a day. Not just that — much of their content revolves around how a bit of deep work is all they need to make a million, how they can take four-week vacations and let a software publish all their content for them, and how you — fellow solopreneur trying to make it big — are absurd for working 10+ hours a day rather than following suit. “Why do something yourself,” they say, “when you can hire another person or use a software? Why toil away for hours at a dead-end job when you can make thousands of dollars in your sleep?”

Passive income streams. Delegation. Automation. The way online influencers use these words, it’s like they’re surrounded by conveyor belts bringing in money and farming out duties while they sip Mai Tais in Hawaii, do yoga on the beaches of Bali, or otherwise indulge in beachy places (because apparently mountains aren’t relaxing or exotic enough).

Now let’s assume that that is their actual life rather than something tricked up for the ‘gram. (And yes, there are a deplorable number of fakers out there.) Let’s say they really do make money in their sleep, that they can just put in a couple hours before chilling all day.

What they gloss over — conveniently — is that getting to that point took them years.

Years.

Why? Because for passive/automated income to work, you need to have a loyal audience who will consistently consume your content and buy your products without you having to sell to them every time. They will follow you, engage with you, browse your website and buy products you launched six months ago, because they’re invested enough in you to keep coming back.

And building an audience as loyal as that takes time. A lot of time.

Please, for the love of whichever higher power you believe in, do not fall for scammers who claim to teach some secret technique that will instantly get you millions of views. There is no such technique. To build an audience, you have to offer something unique, create a ton of well-written content around that offering and be consistent about pushing it out. That’s it. I say this because I’m currently in the process of doing it myself. And anyone who’s even a little bit creative knows that creativity is a beast you can never fully tame, no matter how many hacks you try. If it doesn’t want to happen, it won’t. If it wants to happen, it will happen in its own time. That’s the bargain you sign up for with solopreneurship.

So what timelines are we looking at, realistically?

The most ‘recent’ example of a successful influencer that I can think of started out sometime in 2020 (at least, according to the story they’re sharing online). So that’s two years.

Extrapolating from that, the absolute minimum amount of time you’ll need to grind away at your business before you see results is two years. And that goes up when you incorporate false starts or mental health breakdowns, both of which happen often and are, frankly, part of the game. Even in the event that your mental health stays tip-top throughout, there’s much more to solopreneurship than just the creating. There’s the creating, and then there’s the thinking about creating — mulling over ideas in the bath, scribbling notes while eating, all the work-related dreams and nightmares that will plague your sleep. They can lead to great ideas, but they can also slow you down.

Bottom line? Those “thousands of dollars while sleeping” are many, many, many sleepless nights away.

Maybe this doesn’t apply to you. Maybe you’ll be one of the rare exceptions and get super famous overnight.

But let’s say you’re in the 99.5% that have to slog away for years. How do you put in the hours without burning out or feeling unfulfilled?

I don’t have perfect answers, but here are some things I’ve been doing.

Guard your leisure hours

Leisure is a non-negotiable no matter what job you work or how many income streams you’re building. Yes, you’re working multiple projects. Yes, your mind is always whirring with ideas and fears and unsolicited opinions and social media input. Even so, you need at least two clear hours every day where you’re winding down. You’ll have to define what that looks like for you — whether it’s reading, doing chores, watching TV or spending time with friends/family — and you’ll have to promise it to yourself every day.

Timebox as much as you can

This is vital to ensure that both your day job and your creative projects get their fair share of attention. So for instance, if you’re building a writing presence across platforms, maybe you ideate from 7AM to 8AM, write from 8AM to 10AM, work your job or freelance duties between 10AM and 5PM, then write again for an hour from 8PM to 9PM after dinner. That way you get your work done and you also get in a fair amount of writing.

Have transition tasks for shifting between projects

Some amount of overlap can’t be helped when you’re building multiple projects, but flip around too much and your workday ends up like a poorly blended smoothie. To help with that, choose small, distinct transition activities that help you get out of the headspace for one project and into another. As an example, I like to get into ‘fiction’ mode by reading a short story in The New Yorker or from a book. It’s a signal to me that I need to stop thinking about clients and start thinking about pretty prose.

Keep a budget for treats

The big rewards of solopreneurship are very far away. Your mind needs little prizes in the meantime. Keep a budget of both money and time for those. Choose modest prizes, nothing extravagant, but also nice enough that they’ll motivate you and boost your mood. So a ‘money’ treat could be an oat cappuccino and pastry from your favourite nearby cafe, while a ‘time’ treat could be an hour to watch as many cooking videos as you like.

Give each new productivity hack at least a month before you switch

Any solopreneur worth their salt is always on the lookout for tips to max their productivity. However, it’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t see results after a few days, or even a couple of weeks. As someone who’s made this mistake a bunch of times, don’t give up! Any given tip may not be “the one” right away, but don’t go back to Googling new ones just yet. All habit changes take time to ease into. Give them a chance.

Invest in affirmations that feel good for you

Affirmations are all the rage, but they can easily become toxic. I’ve personally always disliked statements like “I am powerful” — they’re vague, unhelpful and make me even feel guilty for not instantly feeling power coursing through my veins. Nonetheless, I believe stating positive things out loud — or even writing them down — can help your brain believe in their reality and thus work towards achieving that reality. If you’re new to affirmations or just skeptical about them, I suggest starting by simply stating your immediate goals out loud. Then, do them. It works for me every time.

Stop consuming “four-hour workday” content

When you know that you’re nowhere near a four-hour workday, you don’t need to make yourself feel bad by reading about folks who do live that life. If you find that the negativity of reading that content outweighs the benefits of imbibing their wisdom, don’t be afraid to mute them, or even to unfollow them. Nothing is worth risking your mental health, especially when solopreneurship is so stressful anyway. Your rewards will come in their own time, be it a reduced workday or extra streams of income. Until then, close your eyes to anything that doesn’t inform or uplift you, and create.

Sign up for a Medium membership here! I’ll get a small bonus if you do, at no extra cost to you. 😊