This is the Perfect Frequency for the Things That Matter

The most religious woman I ever met was an elderly lady in Georgia who everyone called “church Aunt Syl,” because of how dedicated she was to her church. How did people know? She didn’t just go to church on Sundays, like her devout friends, but on Wednesdays and Fridays as well.

Then there’s Alan, who lives about 800 miles of North of Aunt Syl in Brooklyn. He’s one of my best friends from growing up, and he has a different religion: food.?

Since the day he moved to New York, he knew which restaurant openings to wait in line for, which closings should be lamented, and honestly, which ones should be celebrated. Unsurprisingly, he's now an award-winning food editor. How often does he, who loves restaurants more than anyone else I know, go out to eat? Two or three times a week.

To do something twice or three times a week is a sign of focus and commitment. It’s how often experts say to go to the gym, how often we hopefully call our best friends or our parents . Something as simple as eating fish, the American Heart Association and FDA recommend eating two or three times per week – eat it everyday and you risk mercury poisoning.

Any married couple who had sex three times a week would be in the top 8% in the entire country. If you tended your community garden two or three times a week, you could probably just call squatter’s rights and take over the whole thing.

Other than brushing our teeth and going to the bathroom, there’s almost nothing in our life we do every single day. Things we do everyday are chores, the basic drumbeat of life. But the melody, the things that make life come alive, we tend to do two or three times a week.?

And yet to this day, I continue to hear leaders talk about going to the office two or three days a week as a sign of indifference, or worse, a self-defeating lack of commitment to your work or your team.?

Nothing could be further from the truth. People haven’t settled on two or three days a week because they’re lazy, or because they want to thumb their nose at their boss.?They’ve settled on two to three days a week because that’s basically the absolute maximum that anyone normal does anything.

There are extreme examples of people who walk out their door and go to the same place five days a week by choice, but it’s a small and compulsive group. My gym rat friend goes to the same gym five times a week: three times for the gains, and twice because he doesn’t know where else to go.?

I’m not trying to be pedantic, it’s just shocking that many bosses or commercial office landlords still don’t get this. Two to three days a week is a wonderful, committed, full-throated endorsement of something. I say this as someone who runs a company, Industrious, where about 1/3 of our employees have to come into the office five days a week because of the specifics of their role. I feel indebted to them for it, and know that it’s a compromise they make because of other things they love about the job. It’s almost no one’s ideal frequency.?

In fact, I’d finish by asking you to think about whether you liked your college years. Most people did, and it’s not a coincidence. In high school, everyone has to show up to the same place five days a week, with little variation. In college, students go to class two or three days a week. Sometimes they skip class altogether to go the library to study. And pretty much everyone prefers it to high school. Alums are more likely to donate to their college, often stay closer to lifelong friends there, and certainly prefer the academic experience of college life.?

I suggest you should think of your team that way — like college students, not high schoolers. If your colleagues come in two or three days a week, recognize that as something to be celebrated. It isn’t a mass conspiracy or “quiet quitting,” it’s how often we show up for the things that matter.