The 9-to-5 Lie (And How To Beat Everyone by Working 2 More Hours)
One of the first things I do with almost every coaching client is track their actual work time. Not to micromanage them, but to get a clear picture of how productive they really are.
What's fascinating: Almost no one I've worked with clocks more than 30 hours of real work per week. Many — even successful entrepreneurs — work 20 hours or less.
This isn't about lazy people. These are driven, ambitious individuals who genuinely believe they're working their butts off. They'll swear up and down they're putting in 60–80 hour weeks.
But when I make them track their actual work time — not the time they spend "at work," but the time they spend doing meaningful, productive work — the numbers are much, much lower.
This Is Real
This isn't just my anecdotal evidence — there is real data supporting this notion.
A 2019 study by software company RescueTime looked at 185 million hours of working time. One of the key findings — workers average just 2 hours and 48 minutes of productive device time a day.
A 2018 study conducted by money saving brand vouchercloud polled 1,989 UK office workers all aged over 18 as part of research into online habits and productivity. The result — employee productivity averages 2 hours and 53 minutes a day.
At the end of May 2023, a user on anonymous workplace community Blind put up a poll asking how much people work. It resulted in over 9,000 responses from verified professionals. About 40% of the participants stated that they work four hours or less.
Why This Matters
So, 2–4 hours of productive work per day — that is the reality of most people.
Which means if you consistently put in 5–6 hours of actual work, you'll be ahead of most people — by a wide margin.
1–2 hours extra per day doesn't sound like much. But keep doing it, and this margin will compound fast. Virtually anything you want — financial success, recognition, freedom, even better romantic options — will become attainable.
Make no mistake: this is hard. Sustained focus for that long is rare. But you can gradually build your focus until this workload feels manageable, even comfortable. And then you'll reap the rewards.
The Two Types of Work (And Why Most People Pick Wrong)
Before we act on this, we need to make an important distinction. Because not all work is created equal. There are two types:
Deep Work: High-value activities that compound over time. Writing. Building systems. Strategy. Creating products. Deep work tends to require serious mental effort.
Shallow Work: Low-value, reactive tasks. Emails. Meetings. Coordination. Administrative stuff. Shallow work tends to require little mental effort.
The main difference: Deep work pays exponentially more per hour, but most people avoid it like the plague.
Why? Because deep work is hard. It requires sustained focus. It forces you to confront whether you actually know what you're doing. It's much easier to stay busy with shallow work and feel productive while accomplishing nothing.
If your work is primarily deep, you can get away with fewer total hours — but every hour must count. If your work is mostly shallow, you'll need to grind more hours to compensate for the lower value per hour.
Put differently — 3 hours of deep work beats 8 hours of email ping-pong.
Step Zero: Face the Truth
Before you can overtake others, you need to get honest about your own current reality.
Install Toggl (or any time tracker) on every device you own. For the next two weeks, track everything. And I mean everything.
Rules:
Timer only runs when you're doing real work
Bathroom break? Stop the timer
Quick Instagram check? Stop the timer
"Important" phone call with your mom? Stop the timer
Warning: This will be discouraging at first. You'll discover you work maybe 2–3 hours per day, not the 8–10 you've been telling yourself.
That disillusionment is healthy. It means you're finally seeing reality.
Most people quit tracking after a few days because they can't handle the truth. Don't be most people. Track for the full two weeks.
You cannot improve what you refuse to measure.
The Gradual Expansion Method
Once you know your real numbers, you can start expanding your capacity. But do it gradually — jumping from 3 to 6 hours overnight is a recipe for burnout.
Start with your current average plus half an hour. If you're averaging 3 hours, aim for 3.5. If you're at 4, push for 4.5.
But here's the crucial part: At least 25% of your work time must be deep work.
Let me repeat that because it's important: At least a quarter of your daily work quota should be spent on high-leverage activities that compound over time.
This means if you're aiming for 5 hours total, at least 1 hour and 15 minutes should be deep work. The rest can be shallow work — but only after you've protected your deep work time.
Your deep work block is sacred. Treat it like a medical appointment you can't reschedule.
Three Weapons for Staying Consistent
Consistency is where most people fail. They track for a week, feel motivated, then quietly quit when it gets hard.
Here are three weapons to prevent that:
Weapon 1: Public Accountability Post your daily numbers somewhere public. Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog — it doesn't matter. The fear of looking like a fraud will keep you honest.
Weapon 2: Competitive Partner Find someone else tracking their work time. Compare numbers weekly. A little friendly competition works wonders. I do this myself — my accountability partner works seven days a week. If I slack off, I fall behind. That's all the motivation I need.
Weapon 3: Quality Audits Once a week, ask yourself: "Did I spend my deep work time on needle-moving activities, or just expensive procrastination?"
Be ruthless. That three-hour "research session" that produced nothing? That's procrastination with a fancy name.
As physicist Richard Feynman famously put it: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool."
The Math of Success
Here's what happens when you actually implement this:
Scenario 1 (Most People): 3 hours of real work per day, mostly shallow tasks. Annual output: mediocre at best.
Scenario 2 (You): 5 hours of real work per day, roughly 1–2 of which are deep work. Annual output: exponentially higher.
The difference isn't 67% more work. It's 300–500% more results.
Why? Because deep work compounds. Shallow work doesn't.
That article you write during deep work time gets shared, builds your reputation, and attracts clients for years. That email you answered during shallow work time gets forgotten in an hour.
Most people are optimizing for feeling busy. Smart people optimize for creating value.
You Don't Need to Outrun the Bear
There's a teaching story that applies here: Two hikers see a bear. One starts putting on running shoes. The other says, "You can't outrun a bear!" The first replies, "I don't need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you."
Work is the same game.
You don't need to work 80 hours a week to dominate your field. You just need to work more effectively than everyone else — which isn't hard when everyone else is working 20 hours a week and calling it "grinding."
Work one or two more hours than your competition. Spend that extra time on deep work. Watch as you slowly, inevitably overtake your competition.
This will lead to:
more market share
more money
more options to live your life as you see fit
Strategic work creates strategic freedom. That’s what we are after, in the end.
I go on short walks behind our house here in Germany, back and forth on a certain dirt road. On one end, there is a big blackberry bush, and every day, a few more of them are ripe. So I walk and eat.
It relaxes me like nothing else. Every time I come back from one of these walks, I am ready to be productive again. It makes me think that planning for what recharges you is just as important as the actual work. For me, apparently, it's dirt roads and blackberries.
Talk soon!
Niels