What Happens When You Challenge Yourself to Work Only 2 Hours a Day
A few weeks ago, I was hosting one of my Tea Parties in Say Yes to Desire and talked about an idea I’ve been deeply reflecting on and personally practicing.
I think as entrepreneurs, we really need to be challenging ourselves to work as little as possible.
Someone from that tea party reached out wanting me to expand on this concept further, so that’s what I’m doing today in this blog post.
Enjoy!
Firstly, this advice applies for people who are building a business on top of having their basic needs already met.
So for example, either your business already covers your living expenses or you have a job outside of your business that covers your living expenses. It can be too mentally difficult to apply this minimal hours approach if you're in a state of true survival mode.
However, if your needs are met, then challenging yourself to only work 2 hours a day in your business is going to do a number of things.
It forces you to identify what actually makes money versus what just makes you feel productive.
When you only have 2 hours, it forces you to do the work that really matters. For instance, if you want to start a podcast show and you only have 2 hours a day, then you're going to launch a show very quickly and publish episodes very efficiently and promote what you're selling very effectively. When someone doesn't give themselves that constraint, they may spend years learning about how to start a podcast and never actually do it.
It trains you to work with your energy, not against it.
When you're constrained by time, you start noticing when you're sharpest, when your creativity flows, etc. You stop forcing productivity during hours when you're running on fumes and start designing your business around your actual human rhythms. This also makes your energy more attractive to your true fans. People can feel it when someone is just performing at their own energetic expense. Growing a business that is truly sustainable, especially now, is going to come from taking care of yourself so that you can be real and authentic with people.
It reveals how much of "business building" is actually just anxiety management disguised as work.
With limited hours, you don't have time to be busy from a place of avoidance. You have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing if something will work, of putting imperfect things into the world, of trusting that done is better than perfect. Spending 30 hours editing a Youtube video because you’re trying to do it “the right way” is just not an option. You’re going to have to figure out your way. This is where the real growth happens.
It makes you build systems and assets that work without you constantly tending to them.
When you can't be "on" all day, you're forced to create evergreen content, automated sequences, digital products, templates, and frameworks that serve people while you're living your life. You start to think in terms of making your business work for you instead of the other way around.
It forces you to get smarter about opening the door to money without falling into the trap of over-delivering or people-pleasing.
For example, I had a bonus service where I would make a Teachery theme for people who bought a program through me for which I was an affiliate. If I thought that "working hard and long" = "more valuable", I would have created a bonus that required me to spend hours customizing each person's Teachery course according to their custom branding and specific requests with lots of back and forth communication. I would have burnt out.
Instead, I made it very simple: "Send me a screenshot of your course and I will redesign it however I want it and send the editable theme over to you." I implemented systems so that each redesign took only an hour. There was no need for back and forth communication about anything and every Teachery theme I designed was a fun learning experience for me that improved my design skills by leaps and bounds. This affiliate bonus offer helped me generate an extra $200k and has given me an entire library of Teachery themes that I can repurpose and sell.
You use all your extra time to actually live your life - which will only make you more alive and powerful in the two hours that you show up in your business.
Now, disclaimer: working 2 hours a day is not something you stick to 100% of the time.
There will be seasons where you spend more time per day getting something specific done in a specific amount of time, but I believe it should be a season. Not the norm. For example, when I created Sacred Systems, I worked more hours to get it done, but that lasted for just 2 weeks. Then I went straight back to working less.
When I look back to the beginning of my business, I definitely felt like I had to work all the time. But in hindsight, I see that that was survival mode and codependency.
The tricky thing with survival mode is that even if someone's core needs are being met (rent paid, food on the table), they may still feel stuck in survival mode and that always leads to creating a life of being overworked and underpaid - no matter how much money they make. Someone making millions of dollars a year can still be running off survival mode and wondering where all the money went. That's what survival mode does - keeps us recreating a reality of working hard just to survive.
So, looking back, I can see how even in the beginning of my business, I would have really benefited if I knew to challenge myself to work as little as possible. It would have made me smarter in my business. I would have done less client work and focused more on digital products. I would have read more books to get smarter with my money instead of feeling like I didn't have the time to read them. I would have lived my life more, healed from trauma earlier, and become a more powerful version of myself sooner. The list goes on and on.
Too often, working lots of hours in our business is just another way we diminish the power we actually have. We're just making another job for ourselves, avoiding old wounds, and recreating however we're used to feeling.
I believe everyone has the power to be incredibly impactful in their business in just a couple hours a day. That's more in line with the true essence of entrepreneurship in my view.
More disclaimers/insights:
There are also a series of very specific decisions I made that have allowed me to create a business that does not require endless hours of upkeep. Here are those decisions:
I left Facebook and Instagram years ago. I do Youtube and podcasting instead. Social media posts lose value over time, but search engines like YouTube keep your content discoverable for years.
I do not manage a community on any community platform like a Facebook or Slack group. Choosing to manage a community is a huge commitment that requires daily time and energy. Instead, I prefer to offer one call a month for 90 minutes in my Say Yes to Desire program where we connect face-to-face.
I send out an email newsletter every week and I sell in every newsletter I send. I don’t prescribe to the idea that I have to give tons of “free value” before I can “ask for the sale.” To learn more about my approach to email marketing, check out Easy Peasy Email Marketing.
I got serious about systemizing everything I possibly could. This required that I has a zero-tolerance policy for unnecessary dysfunction in my life and business. To learn more about my approach to systems, check out Sacred Systems.
Seven years ago, I deleted 10,000 people from my email list. I was done with the lead magnet game—tired of attracting freebie-seekers instead of actual customers. For years after that, the only way onto my list was to buy something first. This shift changed everything. I I focused on one question: "How can I create at least one new customer today?" Now my list is filled with paying customers and people who genuinely want to hear from me. Any freebies I create are actually free—no email required.
I don't fill my programs with time-consuming bells and whistles. I used to offer things that created ongoing costs in time and energy—until I realized most "value adds" are just people-pleasing in disguise.
For example, I used to teach something new every quarter in one of my programs. This required creating content, making slides, hosting the workshop, etc.
Now I know the most valuable thing I can offer is also the easiest: showing up, being present, and having real conversations - zero prep involved.
There’s probably more I can add, but I think you get the idea! If you like what you learned in this blog post and want to dive deeper into my approach to business, then check out Say Yes to Desire and I’ll see you on a future Tea Party call!
