The 40-hour Work Week is F*cked. Here’s Why and What to Do To Reclaim Your Time & Sanity.

You feel it in your bones.

You’re not “just tired.” You’re over it—over the back-to-back meetings, the unpaid emotional labor, the creeping sense that you’re spending your one wild and precious life inside a spreadsheet.

The dream was freedom. Autonomy. Time.

What you got? Google Calendar-induced claustrophobia and a relationship with Uber Eats more intimate than most of your friendships.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed—to keep you productive, compliant, and too busy to ask better questions.

This isn’t about hating your job.
It’s about refusing to trade your aliveness for inbox zero.

This post won’t tell you to run away to Bali or sell everything you own.
But it will show you what it actually takes to break the cycle, reclaim your time, and rebuild your work-life on your terms.

Let’s go.

The system isn’t broken. It was built this way.

Here’s what they don’t print on your college diploma or the back of your business planner:

The 40-hour workweek was not divinely designed for your wellbeing.

It’s a leftover relic from the 1800s—a time when factory workers were churning out widgets and someone decided that 8 hours was a humane compromise between total exhaustion and civil unrest.

Fast forward two centuries, and somehow we’re still using the same outdated blueprint to run creative, service-based, knowledge-rich businesses.

Except we’re not producing car parts—we’re solving problems, writing ideas, creating art, and managing clients through the algorithmic chaos of the internet.

But we’re still playing by rules that were written to keep Victorian laborers quiet, compliant, and clocked in.

Why?

Because obedience scales.

And questioning the system doesn’t look good in a KPI dashboard.

Something is deeply wrong…

People are more obese than ever. Mental health crises are spiraling. Burnout is so normalized it’s become a badge of honor.

We’re connected to everything and everyone—and lonelier than ever.

Our food is fast, our thoughts are fractured, and our bodies are hunched over spreadsheets we resent.

The average first-world human spends over 90,000 hours at work.

That’s 90,000 hours you could’ve spent creating, dancing, building a greenhouse, writing a novel, having sex, making soup, or learning how to be still without guilt.

But instead, we gave it to Outlook calendars and 3-hour long zoom calls that should have been a goddamn email.

Time poverty is profitable:

Let’s be clear: your constant exhaustion isn’t some personal failing or “season of hustle.”

It’s by design.

When you’re chronically time-poor—too tired to think, too busy to breathe—you’re the ideal consumer.

You don’t have time to cook, so you Uber Eats your third $22 sad salad this week.
You’re too wiped to clean, so you pay for convenience.
Too overwhelmed to feel joy, so you scroll until your thumbs go numb.
You shop to feel better. You binge to forget. You subscribe to escape.

That’s not random—it’s the system working exactly as intended.

The more depleted you are, the more you outsource your life.

And that means more profit for the people selling you solutions to problems that exhaustion created in the first place.

Because the moment you’re rested and regulated?
You start making different choices.

You stop auto-renewing subscriptions you don’t use.
You cook meals that actually nourish you.
You pause instead of panic-buying something shiny.
You opt out of the noise. You remember what matters.

And that, my friend, makes you dangerous.

Tired people obey.
Awake people rewire the whole damn thing.

Meet the prisoners of wealth:

Meet Bob.

Bob earns six figures. He’s got the stainless steel watch, the high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows, and a Bluetooth espresso machine that cost more than your first car.

He also has high blood pressure, a sleep disorder, and a child he bribes with the latest iPad because he’s too exhausted to kick a soccer ball.

Bob eats lunch from his lap in traffic. He hasn’t cooked a meal in three years, but his Uber Eats bill is thriving.
He upgrades his iPhone more often than he remembers to call his mother.
He hasn't had a deep breath—or an original thought—since the Obama administration.

On paper, Bob is winning.

In reality, Bob is trapped in a high-earning, low-presence life.

He’s got the income, but no freedom. The status, but no peace. The options, but no time to choose.

He’s not alone.

There are millions like him—chronically overscheduled, numbed out, and spiritually bankrupt.

Too overworked to question the game.
Too medicated to disrupt it.
Too financially entangled to walk away.

But some people do.

And when they do, everything changes.

The new 1%

Now meet Sarah.

Sarah works three days a week. Not because she “manifested it”—because she architected her life with precision.

She’s in control of her calendar. In charge of her income. And fiercely protective of her peace.

She doesn’t run on coffee and cortisol. She doesn’t bolt down protein bars between back-to-back Zooms. She doesn’t need a weekend away to recover from her life.

Her mornings start slow—coffee in bed, sunlight on her skin, a journal in hand instead of a Slack ping. She lifts weights at 10am because her body is the priority, not the afterthought. Her laptop opens when she’s ready—not out of panic, obligation, or someone else’s urgency.

She’s not chasing six figures to prove something. She earns enough to fund her version of a good life: one with space to think, breathe, and be.

She cooks from scratch. She answers texts in real-time. She has margin in her day to feel like a human—not a machine wearing mascara.

She’s not hunched over her laptop at 11pm. She’s not booking a silent retreat because she’s burned the f*ck out. She’s not asking for permission to take a Friday off.

She’s not a productivity hack. She’s a woman who opted out of the madness—and built something better.

Sarah is part of the new 1%.
Not the ones with the most money.
The ones with the most freedom.

And while everyone else is on their fifth cup of coffee and their second mental breakdown, she’s out here actually living.

Working less  ≠ achieving less

Let’s get this straight: working less doesn’t mean you care less, dream smaller, or lack ambition.

It means you understand math.

Because the research is clear:
Microsoft Japan cut the workweek to four days and watched productivity skyrocket by 40%.
Perpetual Guardian? Same story—better output, happier humans.
The National Bureau of Economic Research found a 20% productivity increase with fewer workdays.

Not in spite of working less. Because of it.

Here’s why: you’re not a machine.
You’re a creative, strategic, sentient being. And no one—not even you—is doing quality work eight hours a day.

Most knowledge workers tap out after 3-4 hours of actual focus. The rest?
Performative productivity.
Inbox triage.
Doomscrolling dressed up as “research.”
And calendar clutter that makes you feel important while bleeding you dry.

Burnout isn’t a badge of honour. It’s a business liability.
The smartest entrepreneurs I know aren’t working more. They’re working better.
They’ve stopped measuring success in hours—and started measuring it in outcomes, energy, and joy.

The new rules of success

Let’s be honest—“success” needs a rebrand.

It’s not about the revenue milestone that made you cry in a parking lot.
It’s not the 17 Zoom calls you survived in a single day.
And it’s definitely not that one vacation you had to recover from.

Here’s what success actually looks like now:

– Deep, delicious rest—and zero guilt about it
– A slow dinner you’re present for, not one you inhale between Slack pings
– Creative energy that isn’t steamrolled by meetings, notifications, and noise
– Enough cash flow to fund the life you want—and the space to enjoy it

Because the real flex?

Isn’t scaling to seven figures with stress-induced acne and a stress ball in every drawer.
It’s building a business that funds your dream life—not one that eats it alive.

So how do you reclaim your time and sanity in a broken system?

Here’s the truth: this isn’t about quitting your job, burning sage, and moving to Bali to journal in linen.

(Unless that’s your vibe—in which case, please send pics.)

Reclaiming your time and sanity isn’t about escaping. It’s about redesigning. And that starts with asking better questions and refusing to live by someone else’s blueprint.

Here’s the framework:

• 1. Define success on your terms.
  Not the kind that looks good on LinkedIn. The kind that feels like peace in your body. Maybe it's three-day workweeks. Maybe it's never checking Slack again. But if you don’t define it, someone else will—and they’ll sell it back to you in a webinar.

• 2. Audit your life like a ruthless CFO.
  Where is your time actually going? What’s essential, what’s performative, and what’s just busywork in heels? Most people aren’t overworked—they’re overwhelmed by nonsense that doesn’t move the needle.

• 3. Design for your actual energy, not an imaginary robot version of yourself.
  You don’t need a color-coded Google Calendar if you operate like a volcano with creative bursts followed by deep hibernation. You need systems that support your rhythm, not punish it.

• 4. Simplify, systematize, and sacrifice.
  Yes, sacrifice. You’re going to have to let go of some things—maybe that offer you resent delivering. Maybe that “should” you inherited from a coach with a six-figure funnel and zero soul. Delete, delegate, automate, and make it sacred.

• 5. Protect your calendar like your life depends on it.
  Because it does. Every yes is a no to something else. Your rest. Your peace. Your literal lifespan.

Here’s the thing though—reading this list isn’t the same as living it.

You can know all of this intellectually and still find yourself face-down in your inbox wondering how it’s already Thursday again while you cry into your coffee mug.

This work isn’t just strategic. It’s emotional. It’s confronting. It requires untangling the part of you that equates being busy with being valuable.

That’s where mentorship comes in.

Because if it were just about knowing the steps, you’d already be free

Escaping the matrix

You don’t have to sell your belongings and go live off-grid (unless that’s your vibe).

But you do need to stop sleepwalking through a system that profits from your overwork.

If you’re ready to:

• Redefine success on your terms

• Design a business that buys back your time

• Actually live while you grow your empire

...then you’re in the right place.

This is what I do with my private mentorship clients.

We don’t start with Instagram strategy. We start with your actual life.

Then we build systems that support it.

Inside my private mentorship, we build a business model that funds your dream life—without the calendar carnage.

If you’re done with hustle culture and ready to build something quieter, sharper, and more profitable?

Click Work With Me to apply.

Freedom isn’t a fantasy. It’s a structure. Let’s build it.