I Built a 3.5-Day Workweek. Here's the Math.

Before the math, the context: I used to work 60 to 70 hours a week. I burned out every 18 months. My husband got the leftovers. I was the Queen of Optimization frameworks and couldn't optimize my way out of exhaustion.

My body was sending clear signals. Waking up tired. Shoulders permanently hiked to my ears, with tension headaches that lived behind my eyes. I filed all of it under "the cost of ambition" and kept going.

On March 16, 2023, my birthday, I restructured everything. Thirty-eight months later, the math tells a story I never would have believed from the inside of a 70-hour week.

Before the Math: What 60 to 70 Hours Looked Like

I want to be specific about this because the numbers matter.

At my peak, I was running a consulting practice, managing high-profile client relationships across multiple time zones, and waking at 5 a.m. to fit in a workout before the first call. My systems were immaculate. My calendar was color-coded down to fifteen-minute blocks, and I hit inbox zero by 9 a.m. every morning.

Every 18 months, like clockwork, my body would force a reset. The burnout cycle was so predictable I could almost schedule it. The Queen of Optimization frameworks was optimizing herself into the ground.

Rock bottom came in February 2019. I looked at my calendar and realized I couldn't identify the 10% of my week that was producing results. Everything felt equally urgent. Everything felt equally necessary. That's how you know you've lost the plot: when you can no longer distinguish between essential and everything else.

The Framework: Three Day Types

Here's what the math looks like, 38 months in.

The hours: 18 to 24 hours per week. Down from 60 to 70. I work Tuesday through Thursday with three outcomes per day. Nine outcomes per week, where outcomes are the things that move the needle.

The structure: I use 3 day types, adapted from Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach model. Recharge days: no work. Reset days: prep, cleanup, admin. Revenue days: focused, high-impact work. My week starts with a default of 3 Recharge days. The other 3.5 are split between Reset and Revenue.

The revenue: I co-founded a multi-million dollar advisory business on this schedule. The math got clearer.

On a 70-hour week, the 10% that produces most of the meaningful results was 7 hours. On a 20-hour week, it's 2 hours. The new question I ask every week: do I know which 2 hours matter, and have I protected them?

What I Eliminated to Make the Math Work

The math only works if you're willing to subtract. Here's what subtraction looked like.

In the second half of 2024, I walked away from $10,000 a month in client revenue. The engagement required early morning calls that stole my mornings with my son. My body knew in January, with a knot in my stomach every Sunday evening when I thought about the Monday call, plus jaw tension before opening the project folder.

My brain admitted it in March. By May, I'd fully offboarded.

The spreadsheet said I lost $120,000 a year. My nervous system said I gained everything back. Five to seven pounds of water weight disappeared in the weeks after I sent the final invoice. I hadn't even noticed I was carrying it.

I ran a brutal audit on my calendar using three questions for every recurring commitment: Why does this exist? Is the original reason still true? What would happen in the next 14 days if it disappeared?

That audit cut 60% of what was filling my weeks. The remaining 40% was where all the value lived.

The optimization was subtraction. The willingness to stop doing things that no longer served the life I was building.

Why Motherhood Made the Math Clearer

Here's what nobody told me about building a business as a mother: compressed time creates clarity that abundance of time never could.

When you have limited hours and a small human who needs you present, you discover what a real priority is. Fast.

I read that the Latin root of "priority" was singular: THE priority. We pluralized it into a to-do list with 47 items all marked urgent only recently. Motherhood dragged me back to the singular whether I wanted to go there or not.

One priority per day. Three outcomes per week that move the needle. Everything else gets eliminated, delegated, or it waits.

Pierce's school schedule became the architecture my workweek was built around. I walk my son to school every morning. That boundary shaped which clients I take, what I put on my calendar, and what I decline. The research on working-hour reduction confirms what my body already knew: fewer hours with clear boundaries outperform more hours with blurred ones.

I take vacations without asking permission. I haven't burned out in 38 months.

How to Know If Your Math Works

If you're reading this with a calculator in one hand and guilt in the other, here's what I'd ask you.

Do you know which 10% of your week produces 90% of your meaningful results? If you can identify those hours, you have the foundation. Everything outside those hours is a candidate for elimination.

Can you name one commitment you'd walk away from tomorrow if you trusted yourself enough? The body usually knows before the spreadsheet does. Sunday-evening dread that lingers even after you've named it. Shoulders that climb toward your ears when you read the meeting invite.

The math has worked for 38 months. It requires something most productivity advice doesn't mention: the courage to subtract, plus the willingness to leave money on the table and trust that what remains will be enough.

It will be more than enough. It will be the best work of your career, built on a schedule that lets you be a whole human while you do it.