20hrs Per Week
On a recent interview with Matt Smith, he described leaving the agency he had been at to work independently. The agency had a project for him to work on for 20hrs per week and that left another 20hrs per week to work on other projects.
My work schedule has been demanding lately (last few years really). Sometimes I work 50-60 hr weeks. I don't don't mind hard work and actually enjoy it most of the time. I'm working on good projects with interesting problems to solve and more billable hours means lots of income. But, this leaves no room for margin. Margin allows you to work on your business instead of in your business. Margin allows you to experiment, build, create, and intentionally chart your course.
I've been considering purposely/intentionally building in margin...limiting my hours in my "normal" businesses. This is a hard thing to do. As I said, I enjoy solving the problems and helping my customers and clients. Someone will still need to do the work. I may need to hire someone to share the load. It will lower my income, at least in the short term. But if I'm not planning and building for the long term how can I expect to grow?
I like the idea of the 4 day work week. Then you can use the 5th day for working other projects. If I don't set aside a whole day (as opposed to trying for a few hours per day) I'll likely drift back to regular work.