[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

Oh, man, I was hoping this thread would be about managers who have mastered the art of time management and are doing their jobs in a few hours per week.

One of my old managers had it. I would rarely see the dude -- except for once or twice a month, when we'd happen to be in the same meeting. He'd wait until the last bit of the meeting, and then he'd come in -- calm and measured -- with a comment that would blow everyone away. While everyone was nodding at what a good point it was, he'd disappear, never to be seen again until next quarter.

Meanwhile, I'm over here working a steady 50 hours/week and barely keeping up. Most weeks are wall-to-wall meetings, combined with a few over-caffeinated nights writing up some doc or another, and then it's a stumble into the weekend with just enough time to recover and start the whole thing over on Monday.

I'd like to hear from those kinds of AWOL managers. I have no idea how they do it.

[toomuchtodo]

Have you considered slowing down to no more than 40 hrs/week and starting to interview for jobs that don’t exploit you?

[trimethylpurine]

I'm not sure if I qualify here, but I typically work just a few hours a week. I travel with my family most of the year, renting ABB after ABB for months at a time, and not for work. I also have a permanent home that I don't rent out. I'm an official employee and collect a biweekly salary. A handful of people report to me. Some have the same freedom I have. All have access to me for questions and guidance any time they want. I occasionally check in with them, maybe once or twice a month, just to see how they are feeling. They rarely need help with something. When I'm in town we hang out. I occasionally have calls with execs for meetings, not usually more than 4-6 times a year. If you're asking how I did this, here it is:

I started by automating systems in my department. This bought me a lot of time. I was down to around 15-30 hours a week. If my phone rang, I saw it as an opportunity to eliminate future phone calls by fixing or automating whatever caused the call. If it was something that required manual effort, I made it a one click procedure for whoever called me. They'd rather push a button than pick up the phone. After a couple of years, I was only working 10 hours a week. I still wanted more freedom, and I was bored. I thought about taking a second job, but I realized I was worth more to myself than the money of another job. I wanted time. This is critical. Realizing that I want time, not money, caused me to focus on the right thing.

I invited people who had no jobs and no skills to my house and spent the next two years training them to automate systems. I did this for free. Typically one and sometimes two at a time. We all became friends. When someone was good enough, I hired them. If I got push back from my superiors about why we needed to hire, I would ask, "Do we want this to be as smooth as the last thing I did?" Some people quit part way through learning. This was frustrating, but it's a price you have to pay to get really really good people who trust you.

The handful who stayed earn better than average full time salaries, work 10 hours a week most weeks, sometimes none at all, and maybe a couple of weeks a year they buckle down to rebuild something, or change something for a customer. They don't carry second jobs.

The last part is also very important. If you or your team carries a second job, then you don't care enough about the importance of free time to invest a ton of time when it matters to meticulously automate the shit out of everything, down to the finest detail.

There is almost nothing to call my department about. Everything almost runs itself, including my people, and their people.

Culture is key. I don't run the company, but I run the culture in my little corner of it. It's a culture of making time, not money. And, not just for ourselves, for others. When we make time for other people they don't have any reason to care when we are "AWOL."

[tennisflyi]

What? It’s not that they’re crushing everything, it’s that they’re doing nothing and letting you be crushed