Why It’s Time for Marketers to Ditch the 40-Hour Week Mentality

40 hour work weeks.

Mythical creatures, folklore even, that seem to elude even the most productive marketers.

And that’s a good thing.

Creating great content takes time. Consistently creating great content takes a new mindset.

Factor in the importance of developing your own personal brand or side-hustle and you’re over that 40 hour limit by Wednesday.

In this digital age. One that rewards those who hustle. One where, with enough work, you can carve out a solid income for yourself doing what you love.

You have the power to push boundaries. Craft stories. Document your journey. To help shape what’s possible with marketing. To innovate, experiment, connect, share, curate, and go Live until your heart is content.

I’ve had the incredible privilege to speak with some of the world’s top social media marketers about what they do, how they do it, and their work habits day in and day out.

In these conversations, I’ve found that virtually none of them work the typical nine-to-five. Each on of them invest the extra time and effort to create a unique experience for their communities.

In every situation: Ditching the 40 hour work week mindset was crucial.

Why it’s so hard to let go

In-between your hustle to create that high-impact content, there’s the job.

The coordinating, the posting, the meetings, the monitoring, the emails, the distractions?—?you know, the normal work things that people experience in all sorts of jobs.

And so what happens, because of the normal work things, is that marketers get their core tasks done during the day. The things that you would see under a traditional job description.

Which is great.

But as a natural result, the things that have the potential to change your future often get pushed back for another day.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to myself, “I’ll get that video done tomorrow!”

Or, “I’ll send a video response to my top Twitter fans first thing in the morning.”

Or “this is the month where I blog consistently.”

What’s a marketer to do?

In my personal experience and through conversations with other successful marketers, it comes down to two options:

• Prioritize high-impact tactics during normal hours
• Treat high-impact tactics as your side-project

If you’re running out of time during normal working hours to do all of the things you’d like to do?—?treating high-impact marketing tactics as your side-project (option #2) is the best way to get to where you want to be.

Evenings and weekends are perfect for learning, experimenting, and tackling all of the crazy things that you think just may work.

Take this Medium post for example.

Medium is one of those platforms that has exploded onto the scene over the last few years, but I’m not quite sure what sort of impact this will have on marketing efforts. So I’m writing this on a Thursday evening while watching football.

Or this video:

The idea, script, and graphics were constructed during “normal working hours,” but I filmed the video when the light was best around 6:30 p.m. I then edited it and shipped it the next morning as a mini experiment.

Idea-execute-ship-analyze-repeat.

Marketers know all too well that the digital world never sleeps.

It’s during those important times?—?when you’re on and others are off?—?that the marketing magic happens.