How to Stop Working 60-Hour Weeks
Working 60-hour weeks can feel like part of the deal when you own a business. There are customers to deal with, quotes to prepare, jobs to complete, invoices to chase, staff to manage and a seemingly endless collection of small problems demanding your attention.
For a short period, putting in extra hours may be necessary. The problem starts when a 60-hour week becomes your normal working week.
At that point, you have to ask an uncomfortable question: do you own a business, or have you simply created yourself an extremely demanding job?
Reducing your working hours does not necessarily mean becoming less ambitious. In many cases, it means becoming much more deliberate about where your time goes.
At Matt Brookfield, the focus is on helping business owners introduce the structure, systems and commercial thinking required to build a business that does not depend on its owner being involved in absolutely everything.
Why Business Owners End Up Working 60 Hours a Week
Very few entrepreneurs deliberately decide that they want to spend every waking hour working.
It usually happens gradually.
You start the business and naturally do everything yourself. As sales increase, the workload grows. Instead of changing how the business operates, you simply work longer.
Eventually, the business may have significantly more turnover than it did two years ago, yet your working week has increased from 40 hours to 50, then 50 to 60.
Sometimes it goes even further.
| Stage | What Often Happens |
|---|---|
| Starting out | Owner handles almost everything |
| First growth | More customers create longer days |
| Hiring | Staff are employed but the owner still controls everything |
| Further growth | Administration and management increase |
| Overload | Evenings and weekends become working time |
| Burnout risk | Owner feels unable to switch off |
The problem is not necessarily that the business has become successful.
The problem is that the structure underneath the business has failed to grow at the same speed as the workload.
Start by Finding Out Where Your Time Actually Goes
Before trying to reduce your working hours, understand what is consuming them.
For one or two normal working weeks, record your time honestly.
Do not just write “work – 10 hours”.
Break it down.
For example:
| Activity | Hours Per Week |
|---|---|
| Delivering the service | 25 |
| Quotes and enquiries | 8 |
| Administration | 6 |
| Staff questions | 5 |
| Travelling | 5 |
| Marketing | 3 |
| Accounts and invoices | 3 |
| Fixing problems | 5 |
| Total | 60 |
Once your working week is visible, you can begin questioning every category.
Which activities actually require you?
Which could be automated?
Which could be delegated?
Which could be made significantly faster?
And perhaps most importantly:
Which should not be happening at all?
You cannot improve a 60-hour week if you do not understand what those 60 hours contain.
Stop Treating Everything as Equally Important
One reason business owners become overwhelmed is because everything begins to feel urgent.
A customer wants an answer.
An employee has a question.
An invoice needs sending.
A supplier needs calling.
Someone has commented on Facebook.
There are three quotes waiting.
Your website needs updating.
Meanwhile, you have not looked at your profit figures for two months.
The easiest tasks often receive attention first because completing them creates an immediate feeling of progress.
But being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
Your priority should be activities that improve the strength, profitability and future independence of the business.
Think in Terms of Value
Consider dividing your work into four categories.
| Category | Example | Owner Priority |
|---|---|---|
| High-value strategic | Pricing, financial planning, recruitment | Very high |
| Revenue producing | Sales calls, major quotes | High |
| Operational | Scheduling, routine customer communication | Medium |
| Low-value administrative | Filing, repetitive data entry | Low |
If you are spending 20 hours every week completing £15-an-hour administrative tasks, your business has a structural problem.
Your time should increasingly move towards decisions and activities where your experience provides the greatest value.
Build Systems Before You Delegate
“Just hire someone” is often presented as the solution to overworking.
It is rarely that simple.
If your business currently operates entirely from information stored inside your head, employing another person can actually increase your workload.
They constantly need to ask:
“What do I do here?”
“How much should I charge?”
“What do I tell this customer?”
“Where is that document?”
“What’s the process for this?”
You become the company’s human instruction manual.
Instead, document repeatable processes.
These do not need to become enormous corporate manuals.
A simple process could explain:
- What triggers the task.
- Who is responsible.
- What steps should be followed.
- What software or documents are required.
- What happens if something goes wrong.
- When the owner actually needs to become involved.
A good system allows somebody else to achieve a predictable result without repeatedly asking you what to do.
Remove Yourself as the Default Problem Solver
This is one of the hardest habits for many entrepreneurs to break.
When something goes wrong, everyone calls the owner.
Eventually, employees can become conditioned to escalate even relatively minor decisions.
That creates dependency.
Instead of immediately solving every problem, start asking questions.
“What do you think we should do?”
“What does the process say?”
“What options have you considered?”
“What would you do if I wasn’t available?”
You are gradually teaching people to think independently rather than simply transferring every decision upwards.
There will always be decisions that genuinely require the business owner.
The goal is to make those the exception rather than the default.
Put Boundaries Around Communication
Modern technology has made running a business easier in countless ways, but it has also made business owners permanently available.
Emails arrive at 9pm.
WhatsApp messages appear on Sunday mornings.
Customers message through social media.
Staff call whenever something happens.
If you respond instantly every time, you unintentionally train people to expect instant access.
Establish communication boundaries.
You might check emails at 9am, 1pm and 4pm rather than keeping your inbox permanently open.
Staff could be given clear guidance about what qualifies as an emergency.
Routine customer messages could be answered during business hours.
The objective is not poor customer service. It is organised customer service.
Stop Doing Work Someone Else Can Do
Delegation can feel expensive, particularly when you have spent years doing everything yourself.
But look at the numbers differently.
Suppose you spend ten hours each week on routine administration.
That is around 520 hours every year.
If those hours could instead be used for improving sales, increasing margins, developing employees or building systems, the commercial value of your time could be considerably higher.
Delegation should therefore be evaluated on return, not simply cost.
Ask:
“What could I achieve with the hours I get back?”
That is a much more useful question than:
“How much does this person cost?”
Automate Repetitive Tasks
Not every task requires another employee.
Technology can remove considerable amounts of repetitive work.
Depending on your business, automation may help with:
- Appointment confirmations
- Invoice reminders
- Customer follow-ups
- Quote templates
- Email responses
- Scheduling
- Lead tracking
- Recurring invoices
- Internal notifications
- Review requests
Saving five minutes does not sound particularly exciting.
Saving five minutes on something performed 20 times every week is different.
That is 100 minutes a week and more than 86 hours across a year.
Small efficiencies compound.
Stop Underpricing Your Time
Sometimes a 60-hour working week is fundamentally a pricing problem.
If your business needs enormous volumes of work simply to generate an acceptable profit, you may have built a model that requires constant activity.
Imagine two businesses.
| Business | Weekly Jobs | Average Job | Weekly Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business A | 20 | £350 | £7,000 |
| Business B | 12 | £600 | £7,200 |
These are simplified figures, but they demonstrate an important principle.
More work does not automatically mean a better business.
If pricing allows you to serve fewer customers properly while producing stronger margins, you may be able to reduce operational pressure considerably.
Competing primarily on price can create the opposite situation: more jobs, more enquiries, more administration, more travelling and more problems without a proportionate increase in profit.
A premium business should be comfortable charging appropriately for expertise, reliability, professionalism and the overall customer experience.
Create a Weekly CEO Block
Even in a small company, the owner needs time to work on the business rather than permanently working in it.
Create a protected block in your diary every week.
No jobs.
No routine administration.
No casually checking emails.
Use that time for:
- Reviewing financial performance
- Examining your pipeline
- Improving systems
- Reviewing pricing
- Planning recruitment
- Assessing marketing
- Identifying bottlenecks
- Setting priorities
Initially, taking several hours away from day-to-day work may feel counterproductive.
In reality, those hours may eventually save dozens of hours elsewhere.
Identify Your Biggest Bottleneck
Do not attempt to redesign your entire business in one weekend.
Find the biggest cause of unnecessary work.
Perhaps quoting takes eight hours every week.
Fix quoting first.
Perhaps staff constantly telephone you.
Improve training and decision-making processes.
Perhaps scheduling is chaotic.
Fix scheduling.
Perhaps you spend every evening doing paperwork.
Delegate or automate administration.
A practical improvement programme could look like this:
| Month | Main Objective |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Track time and identify waste |
| Month 2 | Document repetitive processes |
| Month 3 | Delegate routine administration |
| Month 4 | Improve staff responsibility |
| Month 5 | Automate repetitive communication |
| Month 6 | Review pricing and profitability |
The aim is gradual removal of unnecessary owner involvement.
Measure Profit Per Hour, Not Just Turnover
Turnover can become an obsession.
“We did £500,000 this year.”
Excellent — but how much profit did the company make?
And how many hours did you have to work to produce it?
A £500,000 business requiring the owner to work 70 hours every week may be less attractive than a £350,000 business generating strong margins while requiring 35 hours of owner involvement.
Track numbers that tell you what is actually happening.
These might include:
| Metric | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Gross margin | Shows profitability of work |
| Net profit | Shows what the business actually retains |
| Average job value | Highlights quality of sales |
| Conversion rate | Measures sales effectiveness |
| Revenue per employee | Helps assess productivity |
| Owner hours | Shows dependence on you |
| Owner profit per hour | Provides a different view of performance |
Reducing working hours while maintaining or improving profitability is genuine progress.
Set a Target Working Week
“Work less” is too vague.
Set a measurable target.
If you currently work approximately 60 hours, you might aim for:
Month 1: 57 hours
Month 2: 54 hours
Month 3: 50 hours
Month 4: 47 hours
Month 5: 43 hours
Month 6: 40 hours
You do not achieve this simply by going home earlier.
You achieve it by systematically changing the business so those hours are no longer required.
Every few weeks, ask:
What am I still doing that somebody or something else could handle?
Learn to Say No to the Wrong Work
Not every opportunity is a good opportunity.
Some customers require excessive administration.
Some jobs have terrible margins.
Some services create complications without producing enough profit.
Some projects take you miles outside your normal operating area.
Some “big opportunities” consume huge amounts of time and ultimately deliver very little.
A mature business becomes selective.
Instead of asking:
“Can we do this?”
Ask:
“Should we do this?”
Those are very different questions.
Turning down unsuitable work can create more capacity for profitable customers and reduce unnecessary pressure.
Your Business Should Become Less Dependent on You
A business that cannot operate without the owner is vulnerable.
If you cannot take a week’s holiday without constantly checking your phone, there is work to do.
If every customer issue requires you, there is work to do.
If employees cannot make routine decisions without approval, there is work to do.
If sales stop whenever you stop personally selling, there is work to do.
This is not criticism. It is simply a useful way to identify where systems need strengthening.
The long-term objective is to build an organisation where you are important because of the direction you provide — not because everything collapses when you leave the room.
Replace Heroics With Structure
There can be a strange sense of pride attached to working enormous hours.
“I’m flat out.”
“I haven’t had a day off in weeks.”
“I worked until midnight again.”
But exhaustion is not a business strategy.
There will inevitably be demanding periods. Large contracts, staffing issues and unexpected problems can temporarily require longer hours.
They should be periods, though — not permanent operating conditions.
A stronger business relies on processes, people, numbers and clear responsibilities rather than the owner’s willingness to repeatedly rescue the situation.
Get Outside Perspective
One of the difficulties of running a company is that you are extremely close to it.
Processes that appear normal to you may be obviously inefficient to somebody looking from outside.
You might have accepted a 60-hour week because you have been working that way for years.
Business mentoring can provide accountability and challenge assumptions around pricing, systems, marketing, delegation and financial performance.
Matt Brookfield works with business owners who want greater structure and clarity around how their companies operate, with an emphasis on building businesses that provide stronger profits without the owner remaining trapped in every operational detail.
The objective is not simply finding clever productivity tricks that allow you to squeeze 70 hours of work into 60.
It is identifying why those 60 hours are necessary in the first place.
What a Healthier Working Week Could Look Like
A well-structured working week will look different for every entrepreneur, but moving away from constant firefighting could create something closer to this:
| Area | Weekly Time |
|---|---|
| Strategy and leadership | 6 hours |
| Sales and key customers | 10 hours |
| Team management | 6 hours |
| Financial oversight | 3 hours |
| Marketing | 4 hours |
| Operational involvement | 8 hours |
| Contingency | 3 hours |
| Total | 40 hours |
The exact numbers are not important.
The principle is.
Your diary should gradually reflect your role as the owner and leader of the business rather than simply showing 60 hours of tasks that nobody else has been taught, trusted or equipped to complete.
Start With Five Hours
Going from 60 hours to 40 hours immediately may be unrealistic.
So start with five.
Identify five hours of work next week that could be removed, delegated, automated or simplified.
Then protect those five hours.
Do not immediately fill them with more operational work.
Use some of the reclaimed time to improve the systems that will allow you to reclaim another five hours.
This creates a positive cycle:
Better systems → fewer interruptions → more available time → better decisions → stronger systems.
Over time, the business starts becoming an organisation rather than an extension of its owner.
If your company is growing but your working hours are growing just as quickly, Matt Brookfield can help you look at the systems, pricing, processes and structure behind the business and identify where changes could give you greater control over both your company and your time.
How to Stop Working 60-Hour Weeks
Working 60-hour weeks can feel like part of the deal when you own a business. There are customers to deal with, quotes to prepare, jobs to complete, invoices to chase, staff to manage and a seemingly endless collection of small problems demanding your attention.
For a short period, putting in extra hours may be necessary. The problem starts when a 60-hour week becomes your normal working week.
At that point, you have to ask an uncomfortable question: do you own a business, or have you simply created yourself an extremely demanding job?
Reducing your working hours does not necessarily mean becoming less ambitious. In many cases, it means becoming much more deliberate about where your time goes.
At Matt Brookfield, the focus is on helping business owners introduce the structure, systems and commercial thinking required to build a business that does not depend on its owner being involved in absolutely everything.
Why Business Owners End Up Working 60 Hours a Week
Very few entrepreneurs deliberately decide that they want to spend every waking hour working.
It usually happens gradually.
You start the business and naturally do everything yourself. As sales increase, the workload grows. Instead of changing how the business operates, you simply work longer.
Eventually, the business may have significantly more turnover than it did two years ago, yet your working week has increased from 40 hours to 50, then 50 to 60.
Sometimes it goes even further.
| Stage | What Often Happens |
|---|---|
| Starting out | Owner handles almost everything |
| First growth | More customers create longer days |
| Hiring | Staff are employed but the owner still controls everything |
| Further growth | Administration and management increase |
| Overload | Evenings and weekends become working time |
| Burnout risk | Owner feels unable to switch off |
The problem is not necessarily that the business has become successful.
The problem is that the structure underneath the business has failed to grow at the same speed as the workload.
Start by Finding Out Where Your Time Actually Goes
Before trying to reduce your working hours, understand what is consuming them.
For one or two normal working weeks, record your time honestly.
Do not just write “work – 10 hours”.
Break it down.
For example:
| Activity | Hours Per Week |
|---|---|
| Delivering the service | 25 |
| Quotes and enquiries | 8 |
| Administration | 6 |
| Staff questions | 5 |
| Travelling | 5 |
| Marketing | 3 |
| Accounts and invoices | 3 |
| Fixing problems | 5 |
| Total | 60 |
Once your working week is visible, you can begin questioning every category.
Which activities actually require you?
Which could be automated?
Which could be delegated?
Which could be made significantly faster?
And perhaps most importantly:
Which should not be happening at all?
You cannot improve a 60-hour week if you do not understand what those 60 hours contain.
Stop Treating Everything as Equally Important
One reason business owners become overwhelmed is because everything begins to feel urgent.
A customer wants an answer.
An employee has a question.
An invoice needs sending.
A supplier needs calling.
Someone has commented on Facebook.
There are three quotes waiting.
Your website needs updating.
Meanwhile, you have not looked at your profit figures for two months.
The easiest tasks often receive attention first because completing them creates an immediate feeling of progress.
But being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
Your priority should be activities that improve the strength, profitability and future independence of the business.
Think in Terms of Value
Consider dividing your work into four categories.
| Category | Example | Owner Priority |
|---|---|---|
| High-value strategic | Pricing, financial planning, recruitment | Very high |
| Revenue producing | Sales calls, major quotes | High |
| Operational | Scheduling, routine customer communication | Medium |
| Low-value administrative | Filing, repetitive data entry | Low |
If you are spending 20 hours every week completing £15-an-hour administrative tasks, your business has a structural problem.
Your time should increasingly move towards decisions and activities where your experience provides the greatest value.
Build Systems Before You Delegate
“Just hire someone” is often presented as the solution to overworking.
It is rarely that simple.
If your business currently operates entirely from information stored inside your head, employing another person can actually increase your workload.
They constantly need to ask:
“What do I do here?”
“How much should I charge?”
“What do I tell this customer?”
“Where is that document?”
“What’s the process for this?”
You become the company’s human instruction manual.
Instead, document repeatable processes.
These do not need to become enormous corporate manuals.
A simple process could explain:
- What triggers the task.
- Who is responsible.
- What steps should be followed.
- What software or documents are required.
- What happens if something goes wrong.
- When the owner actually needs to become involved.
A good system allows somebody else to achieve a predictable result without repeatedly asking you what to do.
Remove Yourself as the Default Problem Solver
This is one of the hardest habits for many entrepreneurs to break.
When something goes wrong, everyone calls the owner.
Eventually, employees can become conditioned to escalate even relatively minor decisions.
That creates dependency.
Instead of immediately solving every problem, start asking questions.
“What do you think we should do?”
“What does the process say?”
“What options have you considered?”
“What would you do if I wasn’t available?”
You are gradually teaching people to think independently rather than simply transferring every decision upwards.
There will always be decisions that genuinely require the business owner.
The goal is to make those the exception rather than the default.
Put Boundaries Around Communication
Modern technology has made running a business easier in countless ways, but it has also made business owners permanently available.
Emails arrive at 9pm.
WhatsApp messages appear on Sunday mornings.
Customers message through social media.
Staff call whenever something happens.
If you respond instantly every time, you unintentionally train people to expect instant access.
Establish communication boundaries.
You might check emails at 9am, 1pm and 4pm rather than keeping your inbox permanently open.
Staff could be given clear guidance about what qualifies as an emergency.
Routine customer messages could be answered during business hours.
The objective is not poor customer service. It is organised customer service.
Stop Doing Work Someone Else Can Do
Delegation can feel expensive, particularly when you have spent years doing everything yourself.
But look at the numbers differently.
Suppose you spend ten hours each week on routine administration.
That is around 520 hours every year.
If those hours could instead be used for improving sales, increasing margins, developing employees or building systems, the commercial value of your time could be considerably higher.
Delegation should therefore be evaluated on return, not simply cost.
Ask:
“What could I achieve with the hours I get back?”
That is a much more useful question than:
“How much does this person cost?”
Automate Repetitive Tasks
Not every task requires another employee.
Technology can remove considerable amounts of repetitive work.
Depending on your business, automation may help with:
- Appointment confirmations
- Invoice reminders
- Customer follow-ups
- Quote templates
- Email responses
- Scheduling
- Lead tracking
- Recurring invoices
- Internal notifications
- Review requests
Saving five minutes does not sound particularly exciting.
Saving five minutes on something performed 20 times every week is different.
That is 100 minutes a week and more than 86 hours across a year.
Small efficiencies compound.
Stop Underpricing Your Time
Sometimes a 60-hour working week is fundamentally a pricing problem.
If your business needs enormous volumes of work simply to generate an acceptable profit, you may have built a model that requires constant activity.
Imagine two businesses.
| Business | Weekly Jobs | Average Job | Weekly Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business A | 20 | £350 | £7,000 |
| Business B | 12 | £600 | £7,200 |
These are simplified figures, but they demonstrate an important principle.
More work does not automatically mean a better business.
If pricing allows you to serve fewer customers properly while producing stronger margins, you may be able to reduce operational pressure considerably.
Competing primarily on price can create the opposite situation: more jobs, more enquiries, more administration, more travelling and more problems without a proportionate increase in profit.
A premium business should be comfortable charging appropriately for expertise, reliability, professionalism and the overall customer experience.
Create a Weekly CEO Block
Even in a small company, the owner needs time to work on the business rather than permanently working in it.
Create a protected block in your diary every week.
No jobs.
No routine administration.
No casually checking emails.
Use that time for:
- Reviewing financial performance
- Examining your pipeline
- Improving systems
- Reviewing pricing
- Planning recruitment
- Assessing marketing
- Identifying bottlenecks
- Setting priorities
Initially, taking several hours away from day-to-day work may feel counterproductive.
In reality, those hours may eventually save dozens of hours elsewhere.
Identify Your Biggest Bottleneck
Do not attempt to redesign your entire business in one weekend.
Find the biggest cause of unnecessary work.
Perhaps quoting takes eight hours every week.
Fix quoting first.
Perhaps staff constantly telephone you.
Improve training and decision-making processes.
Perhaps scheduling is chaotic.
Fix scheduling.
Perhaps you spend every evening doing paperwork.
Delegate or automate administration.
A practical improvement programme could look like this:
| Month | Main Objective |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Track time and identify waste |
| Month 2 | Document repetitive processes |
| Month 3 | Delegate routine administration |
| Month 4 | Improve staff responsibility |
| Month 5 | Automate repetitive communication |
| Month 6 | Review pricing and profitability |
The aim is gradual removal of unnecessary owner involvement.
Measure Profit Per Hour, Not Just Turnover
Turnover can become an obsession.
“We did £500,000 this year.”
Excellent — but how much profit did the company make?
And how many hours did you have to work to produce it?
A £500,000 business requiring the owner to work 70 hours every week may be less attractive than a £350,000 business generating strong margins while requiring 35 hours of owner involvement.
Track numbers that tell you what is actually happening.
These might include:
| Metric | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Gross margin | Shows profitability of work |
| Net profit | Shows what the business actually retains |
| Average job value | Highlights quality of sales |
| Conversion rate | Measures sales effectiveness |
| Revenue per employee | Helps assess productivity |
| Owner hours | Shows dependence on you |
| Owner profit per hour | Provides a different view of performance |
Reducing working hours while maintaining or improving profitability is genuine progress.
Set a Target Working Week
“Work less” is too vague.
Set a measurable target.
If you currently work approximately 60 hours, you might aim for:
Month 1: 57 hours
Month 2: 54 hours
Month 3: 50 hours
Month 4: 47 hours
Month 5: 43 hours
Month 6: 40 hours
You do not achieve this simply by going home earlier.
You achieve it by systematically changing the business so those hours are no longer required.
Every few weeks, ask:
What am I still doing that somebody or something else could handle?
Learn to Say No to the Wrong Work
Not every opportunity is a good opportunity.
Some customers require excessive administration.
Some jobs have terrible margins.
Some services create complications without producing enough profit.
Some projects take you miles outside your normal operating area.
Some “big opportunities” consume huge amounts of time and ultimately deliver very little.
A mature business becomes selective.
Instead of asking:
“Can we do this?”
Ask:
“Should we do this?”
Those are very different questions.
Turning down unsuitable work can create more capacity for profitable customers and reduce unnecessary pressure.
Your Business Should Become Less Dependent on You
A business that cannot operate without the owner is vulnerable.
If you cannot take a week’s holiday without constantly checking your phone, there is work to do.
If every customer issue requires you, there is work to do.
If employees cannot make routine decisions without approval, there is work to do.
If sales stop whenever you stop personally selling, there is work to do.
This is not criticism. It is simply a useful way to identify where systems need strengthening.
The long-term objective is to build an organisation where you are important because of the direction you provide — not because everything collapses when you leave the room.
Replace Heroics With Structure
There can be a strange sense of pride attached to working enormous hours.
“I’m flat out.”
“I haven’t had a day off in weeks.”
“I worked until midnight again.”
But exhaustion is not a business strategy.
There will inevitably be demanding periods. Large contracts, staffing issues and unexpected problems can temporarily require longer hours.
They should be periods, though — not permanent operating conditions.
A stronger business relies on processes, people, numbers and clear responsibilities rather than the owner’s willingness to repeatedly rescue the situation.
Get Outside Perspective
One of the difficulties of running a company is that you are extremely close to it.
Processes that appear normal to you may be obviously inefficient to somebody looking from outside.
You might have accepted a 60-hour week because you have been working that way for years.
Business mentoring can provide accountability and challenge assumptions around pricing, systems, marketing, delegation and financial performance.
Matt Brookfield works with business owners who want greater structure and clarity around how their companies operate, with an emphasis on building businesses that provide stronger profits without the owner remaining trapped in every operational detail.
The objective is not simply finding clever productivity tricks that allow you to squeeze 70 hours of work into 60.
It is identifying why those 60 hours are necessary in the first place.
What a Healthier Working Week Could Look Like
A well-structured working week will look different for every entrepreneur, but moving away from constant firefighting could create something closer to this:
| Area | Weekly Time |
|---|---|
| Strategy and leadership | 6 hours |
| Sales and key customers | 10 hours |
| Team management | 6 hours |
| Financial oversight | 3 hours |
| Marketing | 4 hours |
| Operational involvement | 8 hours |
| Contingency | 3 hours |
| Total | 40 hours |
The exact numbers are not important.
The principle is.
Your diary should gradually reflect your role as the owner and leader of the business rather than simply showing 60 hours of tasks that nobody else has been taught, trusted or equipped to complete.
Start With Five Hours
Going from 60 hours to 40 hours immediately may be unrealistic.
So start with five.
Identify five hours of work next week that could be removed, delegated, automated or simplified.
Then protect those five hours.
Do not immediately fill them with more operational work.
Use some of the reclaimed time to improve the systems that will allow you to reclaim another five hours.
This creates a positive cycle:
Better systems → fewer interruptions → more available time → better decisions → stronger systems.
Over time, the business starts becoming an organisation rather than an extension of its owner.
If your company is growing but your working hours are growing just as quickly, Matt Brookfield can help you look at the systems, pricing, processes and structure behind the business and identify where changes could give you greater control over both your company and your time.
Stop Confusing Availability With Good Leadership
Many business owners believe that being a good leader means always being available. The phone stays on, emails are checked during dinner and staff know that they can contact the owner whenever they encounter a problem.
While this can appear supportive, it can eventually create a business where nobody develops the confidence to make decisions independently.
Good leadership does not mean personally answering every question. It means creating an environment where people understand their responsibilities, know what standards are expected and have enough information to make sensible decisions.
Consider defining different levels of decision-making within the business.
| Type of Decision | Who Could Handle It? |
|---|---|
| Routine customer query | Administrator or team member |
| Standard scheduling change | Office or operations team |
| Small purchasing decision | Authorised employee |
| Customer complaint within agreed limits | Manager |
| Major financial commitment | Business owner |
| Significant strategic decision | Business owner |
Giving employees authority does not mean losing control. It means deciding in advance where control genuinely needs to sit.
The fewer routine decisions that reach your desk, the more capacity you have for the decisions that genuinely affect the future of the company.
Batch Similar Tasks Together
Constantly switching between different types of work can make a long day feel even longer.
You start preparing a quote, answer an email, take a telephone call, return to the quote, approve an invoice, respond to a staff question and then try to remember where you were before the interruptions began.
Instead, group similar tasks together wherever possible.
For example, you might allocate specific periods for quoting, invoicing, telephone calls and internal meetings.
This can reduce the amount of time lost repeatedly changing focus.
A simple working pattern might include:
| Time | Focus |
|---|---|
| 8:00–9:00 | Planning and urgent matters |
| 9:00–11:00 | High-value focused work |
| 11:00–12:00 | Calls and communication |
| 13:00–14:00 | Quotes and proposals |
| 14:00–15:30 | Operations or team management |
| 15:30–16:00 | Emails and administration |
The exact schedule will depend on the type of business you operate, but the principle is useful: your diary should control your attention rather than other people’s demands controlling it.
Look Closely at Meetings
Meetings can quietly consume a significant proportion of a working week.
A one-hour meeting involving four people does not really cost the business one hour. It consumes four working hours collectively.
Before arranging a meeting, ask whether the subject actually requires one.
Could the information be provided in an email?
Could a ten-minute conversation resolve it?
Does everybody invited genuinely need to attend?
Could regular meetings be reduced from an hour to 30 minutes?
Meetings should have a purpose, an agenda and a desired outcome. If nobody knows why a meeting is happening, there is a good chance it should not be happening at all.
Create Rules for What Reaches You
If you employ a team, one powerful way to reduce your working hours is to establish clear escalation rules.
Your employees should understand what they can deal with themselves and what genuinely requires your involvement.
For example, you might establish financial approval limits. A manager could be authorised to resolve customer issues up to a certain value, while larger matters require owner approval.
The same principle can apply to discounts, purchasing, scheduling and operational problems.
Without these boundaries, employees may understandably choose the safest option: asking you about everything.
With clear boundaries, they can act confidently while you retain oversight of the decisions that carry meaningful commercial risk.
Protect Your Most Productive Hours
Not every hour of your day has equal value.
Some people do their clearest thinking early in the morning. Others are more productive later in the day.
Identify the hours when you are best able to concentrate and protect them from low-value work.
If 8am to 11am is when you think most clearly, do not automatically spend those hours clearing your inbox.
Use them for activities such as financial planning, important proposals, business development, strategic decisions or improving processes.
Routine administration can often be completed during periods when your energy and concentration are naturally lower.
This is not about trying to make every minute productive. It is about matching the right type of work to the right part of your day.
Build a Business That Can Handle Your Absence
A useful test of business independence is to imagine that you unexpectedly became unavailable for two weeks.
What would stop?
Would quotes still be sent?
Would customers receive answers?
Would invoices go out?
Would employees know what jobs they were doing?
Would somebody understand the key numbers?
Would routine problems still be resolved?
Every answer of “no” identifies an area where the business is too dependent on you.
You do not necessarily need to solve every weakness immediately. Create a list and tackle them in order of importance.
Over time, the objective should be to make your absence increasingly uneventful.
That does not make the owner unnecessary. It makes the business stronger.
Review Your Week Before Starting Another One
At the end of each week, spend a short amount of time reviewing how you actually worked.
Ask yourself:
- What consumed more time than expected?
- What interrupted me repeatedly?
- What did I do that somebody else could have done?
- Which task could be turned into a process?
- Where did I make the same decision more than once?
- What created the most commercial value?
- What should I stop doing next week?
This weekly review turns reducing your hours into an ongoing management process rather than a one-off productivity exercise.
If you can remove just one unnecessary hour each week through better systems, stronger delegation or clearer boundaries, the cumulative difference can become substantial.
Do Not Fill Every Hour You Win Back
There is one final trap to avoid.
Business owners often become so accustomed to being busy that any newly available time is immediately filled with more work.
You delegate five hours of administration and then use those five hours to take on another operational responsibility.
Nothing really changes.
Some reclaimed time should certainly be invested back into strategic work, but the purpose of creating a better business is also to give you greater choice over your time.
That could mean finishing earlier, protecting weekends, spending more time with family, exercising, taking proper holidays or simply having space to think without constantly reacting to the next notification.
Working fewer hours should not be viewed as a lack of ambition. If a business can produce stronger results with less direct owner involvement, that is often evidence of better systems, clearer leadership and a more sustainable operating model.
For business owners who feel that long hours have become part of everyday life, Matt Brookfield can provide an outside perspective on the commercial and operational changes that may help reduce unnecessary owner dependency while building a stronger, more structured business.