Rethink how you work and develop your own four hour workday. Then use the free time for what actually matters: Family, Health, Personal Growth.

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It’s 8:00 p.m. and I’m still sitting in my cubicle.

My mind is mush. Stomach is growling.

The fluorescent lightning has made my eyes weary and head achy.

But my work is not done.

I’ve already called my wife to let her know that I’m not going to be home in time for dinner. I’ll have to figure something else out for sustenance tonight. Whenever that might happen.

Instead, I’m working.

Not even working on something cool and meaningful. There’s no pressing deadline on a project. It’s just work. Busy work.

The kind of busy work that anyone who’s ever worked in a corporate office setting can fully understand.

My day was jam-packed full of meetings. All of which should’ve been emails.

And now the day’s work that could have been done was put aside because NPCs took control of my time.

This was my life in corporate public relations until I realized that it didn’t have to be this way.

It was a fancy job. In a fancy industry.

And I even got to work in a fancy office on the 36th floor of the Empire State Building.

But the actual work was anything but fancy.

When I started building out my dream of owning my own business, I looked to this period of my life as the hellscape I’d never experience again.

This is the period of my life that I call my anti-vision

An anti-vision is a powerful exercise where you map out what life would look like if you never pursued your goals and instead settled for mediocrity (here’s a guide I wrote about the anti-vision practice and how to make it for you).

My anti-vision helped me realize what I didn’t want, and from there, I built my four-hour workday to align with my actual goals.

The problem is that as soon as I started working for myself, I got sucked into the hustle culture of grinding away at my business, too.

I was fully seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

Since it was my business, it was the most rewarding thing I’d ever do; so it was okay to work all of the damn time.

Until I burned out.

I’d wake up in the middle of the night with massive anxiety. Worried over whether that email I just got was from one of my clients who decided to quit.

My weekends were spent trying to overcome the regular bout of Sunday Scaries. To beat them, I assumed it meant I wasn’t working hard enough. So I made myself available on weekends.

All of it finally came to a head when I realized that I missed the entire plot and had to make a change.

My workday is now just four hours

Four hours.

The funny thing about this is now I’m more productive than I ever was when I was grinding away for 12 hours a day.

How is that possible?

Today, I’m going to share with you how I developed my four hour workday and how you can do the same.

If you work in an office setting, keep reading because some of these strategies will still work to reduce your overwhelm so you can actually get shit done, too.

Let’s get into it.

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You’re grinding away every day. Plugged into the Matrix.

Emails.

Slack notifications.

Meetings.

Meetings that should’ve been emails.

Slack messages that should’ve been trashed before they were even sent.

How could you possibly find that deep focus in a sea of busyness and meetings and constant pinging notifications?

Is there a way out of this funk?

Here’s the deal: If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve now been trading your time and energy to line the pockets of your capitalist overlords for almost 20 years.

One time you thought all this hard work was going to pay off and you’d have a chance to slow it down.

But that time ain’t coming. Not anytime soon.

Not unless you step up and take back control.

While I cannot change your office culture, I can encourage you to step back for a minute and do your absolute best to slow down. Way down.

What my 4-Hour Workday looks like now

There’s a reason why I’m able to play video games every single day.

It’s not because I’m lazy.

It’s because by the end of my day, I’ve:

• Written over 1,000 words
• Spent time on a priority project like building my dream of a community for midlifers like us
• Created content in short form text (for Threads) and short form video (for TikTok)
• Checked in with my handful of remaining 1:1 fitness/nutrition students

About one hour assigned to each of the above in total.

This frees up more time to do things for me:

• Going for 1-2 walks per day
• My minimalist daily workout routines (here’s how I got into the best shape of my life at 45 years old with just 20-25 minute bodyweight home workouts)
• Or attending one of like 14 Million extracurricular school activities for one of my two Interns.

I don’t share all of this to flex.

Okay, okay, it is a bit of a flex.

But, my intent is to show you what is possible.

I’m just a 45 year old stay at home dad of two young kids, building his own business. I’m not a super hero. I don’t have a team or even an assistant.

It’s just me.

You can do this.

Four hours of deep focus on one to two important tasks is an incredible amount of time

In order to do this, you must master the super power of focus and prioritization.

Figure out what the hell it is that you want to get done. Then set aside the time to do it.

Whip out your notebook, journal, Notion, whatever.

Map out the projects that you are working on, big and small. List them all out.

Assign some priority to each thing. I can’t do that for you. You should be able to quickly identify which ones are most important.

Or even the projects that have the most pressing deadline.

Please miss me with the pushback that all projects are equally important.

Protect your calendar. At all costs.

If you do not prioritize your time, someone else will.

Set aside time every single day to get this priority project work done.

Block it off in your calendar for the following week.

For example: Every day from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., I have my calendar blocked off for writing.

No excuses. No exceptions. No distractions.

No meetings will ever be scheduled during this time.

If I have to attend a school function, that’s cool … I’ll slide my writing time block to another time that works on that particular day. Otherwise, I’m writing.

Maybe the first hour of your office job is for regular meetings, but mid-morning can be protected and blocked off for an hour or two.

If you’re self-employed, working from home, or trying to start your own business, you might need to set aside time in the morning.

Find what works for you.

If you get bogged down with tons of meetings, try the 1:1 approach

This is straight from Cal Newport’s book, “Slow Productivity,” and it’s a great way to protect your calendar in an office setting.

Anytime you get scheduled for a meeting, block off a proportionate amount of time on your calendar for focused work.

Get a meeting request for 60 minutes on Tuesday morning? Cool.

After you accept that, immediately block off 60 minutes on Wednesday or Thursday for you to work deeply.

Maybe it needs to be 30 minutes, or even 20 minutes if that’s all you can afford depending on your position and status within the company.

But this ensures that you have at least some protected time to get work done without hopefully having to stay until 9:00 p.m. to catch up on the work that should’ve been done earlier in the day.

Remove all distractions

You must make this your deep focus time.

Eliminate the pull from email.

Shut off your phone.

Make sure all social media is off.

No “open door policy” to let the NPCs pop in so they can “touch base” with you.

Pure focus.

It’s just you and your work for the next one or two hours.

Resist the urge to multitask

When you switch from one task to another, it takes your brain time to reset and get back into a flow (this is called Context Switching).

Even something as small as checking an email that just popped up zaps your focus.

And then you’ll need to recalibrate to get that attention and focus back.

This can take up to 10 minutes of brain power to get you back into that original focus after you’ve been pulled away.

That’s valuable time and energy you are wasting by trying to be on top of everything.

Set aside time for the little annoying things

So … what about email?

Or all of those annoying little admin tasks that pop up throughout the day?

How are you going to get those done?

Schedule a time for all of it.

I have a daily 15-30 minute session for admin tasks and adulting.

It includes everything from answering emails to client questions, scheduling doctor appointments, or responding to teacher requests for my kids.

And that time is blocked out.

Maybe it makes more sense to block out one hour per week where you knock out as much administrative work as possible.

Turn it into a game.

Produce high quality work

None of this will make sense if you create crap.

Take your time during these deep focus blocks.

You no longer have to rush the project to scramble to the next thing.

It’s full attention on the task at hand.

If you need to have a buffer time period before the deep work to gather resources, materials or notes, do it.

Whatever it is that you need to put your game face on and perform at a higher level … do it.

This is what will justify declining some of those calls, meeting requests, happy hours, coffee shop dates, whatever. You justify it by cranking out superb fucking work.

This is how you’ll win.

Get super focused and your four hour workday will become a reality

You owe it to yourself to develop more freedom in your day.

We are not meant to be working relentlessly for hours and days and weeks on end until we end up burned out and sick.

Don’t do what I did.

The only way to win back this time is by getting super intentional with your projects, your priorities and your calendar.

Take back control of your day and your life.

I hope you found this useful. If so, I’d appreciate it if you sent this newsletter to one person you think would benefit from my writing today.

And if you’re new here and enjoyed this newsletter, I’d be honored if you subscribed for more at this link.

And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “four hour workday” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Until next time,
Pete