The Entrepreneur's Guide to Working Less While Achieving More

For the first two years of building Ertiqah, I wore "hustle culture" like a badge of honor.

Seventy-hour weeks. Working weekends. Answering emails at midnight. I believed working more hours was the path to success.

Then something clicked when I looked at our year-end results. Ertiqah turned one—and we quietly bagged 10M+ impressions and grew to a modest 5-figure ARR. Built something hundreds raved about. All without raising capital.

But here's the thing: most weeks, it didn't feel like we were winning. Most weeks, it felt like we were behind.

That realization forced me to fundamentally rethink my approach. What I discovered changed everything: I made a deliberate trade—visibility for leverage.

I spent 2 months invisible so I could spend the next 2 years inevitable. Gave up LinkedIn posting, newsletter consistency, YouTube presence, daily visibility. Invested in cleaning up 200+ garbage articles, building a custom CMS, creating content systems, hiring the right team.

The results: 8-9x traffic increase, average position 55 → 7, 400K monthly impressions, automated content pipeline. The house is clean. Now we scale.

This guide shares what I learned about achieving more by working less strategically.

The Working Hours Illusion

Let's start by confronting a myth: more hours doesn't equal more success.

Research on knowledge work consistently shows:

• Productivity peaks around 50 hours per week
• Hours beyond 55 show severely diminishing returns
• Above 70 hours, you may actually produce less than if you'd worked 50

For entrepreneurs specifically, the consequences are worse:

• Decision quality degrades with fatigue
• Creative problem-solving requires cognitive resources exhausted by overwork
• Strategic thinking suffers when you're constantly reactive

The entrepreneurs building the most valuable companies aren't working 100-hour weeks. They're working 40-50 hours of high-quality, high-leverage time.

The Leverage Mindset Shift

The key insight that changed my approach: not all work is equally valuable.

Some activities produce massive results. Others produce almost nothing despite consuming significant time.

High-leverage activities for entrepreneurs:

• Strategy and long-term planning
• Hiring and team development
• Key customer and partner relationships
• Product decisions that affect many users
• Systems that scale

Here's a real example from LiGo: Our MRR doubled not because we added hot new features or did nice marketing plays. The primary reason? We correctly identified the root cause of churn.

43% of new users never explored the "full product." They'd use one feature, love it, then churn because "it's missing features and too expensive for the functionality."

The fix was literally one micro-change: incentivize users to explore all features before upgrading. Higher conversion rate, lower churn. One UI tweak > months of feature building.

Low-leverage activities (that feel productive):

• Most email and messaging
• Meetings without clear decisions
• Tasks others could handle
• Perfectionist polishing of minor details
• Busywork that creates motion without progress

tl;dr: Don't always default to adding more activities. Fix the friction in what you've already built.

Auditing Your Time Honestly

Before optimizing, understand how you currently spend time.

The time audit process:

Track every working hour for two weeks. For each activity, note:

• What you did
• How long it took
• Whether it required your specific skills
• What outcome it produced

After two weeks, categorize activities:

• A: Only you can do this, high impact
• B: You do well, but others could do it
• C: Doesn't require your skills
• D: Doesn't need to be done at all

Most entrepreneurs discover that A activities represent 20-30% of their time at most. The rest is B, C, and D work that shouldn't be consuming their hours.

The Four Strategies for Working Less

Strategy 1: Eliminate Ruthlessly

The fastest way to work less is stopping activities that don't need to happen.

Common entrepreneur eliminations:

• Meetings without clear agendas and required decisions
• Reports nobody reads
• Perfectionist iterations on good-enough work
• Activities done because "we've always done them"
• Vanity metrics tracking

Questions that reveal elimination opportunities:

• What would happen if I stopped doing this?
• Who is actually using this output?
• Does this activity move us toward our goals?
• Would a customer care if we didn't do this?

Elimination is harder emotionally than it seems. Activities that feel productive are hard to stop, even when they're not producing results.

Strategy 2: Delegate Effectively

Entrepreneurs often struggle with delegation because:

• They can do most tasks better than anyone else initially
• Delegation requires upfront time investment
• Mistakes feel personally threatening
• They enjoy hands-on involvement

But holding onto work you could delegate is mathematically irrational.

The delegation equation:

If your time is worth $200/hour (based on value creation potential), and you can hire help for $30/hour, every hour you spend on delegate-able work costs $170 in lost leverage.

Effective delegation steps:

1. Document the task thoroughly
2. Train the person properly
3. Accept imperfect execution initially
4. Provide feedback without taking the task back
5. Gradually increase complexity of delegated work

LiGo Social is an example of how I've automated and semi-delegated my LinkedIn presence. Instead of spending hours on content, I spend minutes reviewing AI-assisted drafts. The leverage multiplication is significant.

Strategy 3: Automate Systematically

Automation extends beyond simple task handoff—it creates systems that work without your involvement.

Entrepreneur automation opportunities:

Customer journey:

• Automated email sequences for new leads
• Self-service onboarding for new customers
• FAQ and knowledge base reducing support needs

Operations:

• Automated reporting and dashboards
• Scheduled social media posting
• Recurring invoice and billing processes

Communication:

• Templates for common messages
• Voice-to-text for rapid content creation
• Scheduled sends for email batching

Contextli helps me communicate efficiently. Instead of typing every message, I speak naturally and the AI formats appropriately for each context. This automation saves an hour or more daily.

Strategy 4: Concentrate Strategically

The time you do spend working should be concentrated on highest-leverage activities.

The 80/20 principle for entrepreneurs:

Roughly 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results. The goal is identifying that 20% and spending as much time as possible there.

Identifying your highest-leverage 20%:

• Which activities directly generate revenue?
• Which decisions affect the most outcomes?
• What can only you do?
• Where does your unique insight create value?

For me, the highest-leverage activities are product strategy, key customer relationships, and content that builds our brand. Everything else is delegated or automated.

Building the Work-Less System

Here's the practical system I use to work fewer hours while achieving more:

The Quarterly Review

Every quarter, review:

• What produced the most valuable outcomes last quarter?
• What consumed time without producing results?
• What new activities should I take on?
• What should I stop doing, delegate, or automate?

This review prevents drift back into low-leverage work patterns.

The Weekly Planning Session

Sunday evening or Monday morning, plan the week:

• What are the 3 most important outcomes for this week?
• What activities will produce those outcomes?
• What shouldn't I do this week that I usually do?
• Where is my deep work time blocked?

This planning ensures high-leverage work happens before reactive work fills your calendar.

The Daily Structure

My typical day:

• Morning: Deep work on highest-leverage activities
• Midday: Communication, meetings, and reactive work
• Afternoon: Administrative, delegation, and automation setup
• End of day: Brief review and next-day preparation

This structure ensures my best cognitive hours go to highest-leverage work.

The Communication Protocol

• Email checked twice daily, not continuously
• Slack checked three times daily, with notifications off between
• Urgent matters have dedicated channels that do send notifications
• Response expectations set with team and customers

Most "urgent" communication isn't actually urgent. Setting clear expectations reduces interruptions without damaging relationships.

Managing the Guilt of Working Less

Here's the uncomfortable truth: working less creates guilt, especially for entrepreneurs.

Where the guilt comes from:

• Belief that more effort equals more deserving of success
• Comparison to other entrepreneurs working longer hours
• Fear of missing opportunities
• Identity tied to being a hard worker

How to manage it:

Focus on outcomes, not hours. Track results, not time invested. If you're producing better results in fewer hours, that's success.

Remember burnout has costs. Working less sustainably beats working more until you crash.

Consider your long game. Entrepreneurs building for decades need sustainable pace. Sprint-pace isn't sustainable.

Examine role models carefully. The entrepreneurs you admire probably work less than their myth suggests. Public "hustler" personas often don't match private reality.

What Changes When You Work Less

When I shifted from hustle to leverage, several things changed:

Decision quality improved. With cognitive resources available, I made better strategic decisions.

Creativity returned. Ideas need white space. Overwork eliminated that space.

Energy increased. Working less meant bringing more energy to the work I did do.

Relationships improved. Time freed from work went to relationships that matter.

Paradoxically, results improved. Despite working fewer hours, Ertiqah grew faster after I implemented these changes.

The Hard Part: Actually Doing It

Reading about working less is easy. Actually working less is hard.

The resistance you'll face:

Internal: Your identity may be tied to hard work. Working less feels like being less.

External: Others may judge you for not "hustling." Entrepreneurship culture often glorifies overwork.

Practical: Some things genuinely need your attention. Finding the balance is ongoing.

How to push through:

• Start with small experiments. Work one fewer hour daily for a week.
• Track results, not feelings. Did outcomes suffer?
• Build support. Find other entrepreneurs who work sustainably.
• Adjust gradually. Major changes are harder to sustain.

A Note on Different Stages

This advice applies differently at different business stages:

Early stage (0-$500K): You may need to work more hours initially, but still focus on leverage. Don't work 80 hours on low-leverage activities.

Growth stage ($500K-$5M): This is where leverage becomes critical. Team building and delegation matter.

Scale stage ($5M+): Working less becomes essential. You can't scale with founder bottlenecks.

The principles apply at every stage; the implementation varies.

The Ultimate Leverage: Building Something Without You

The final goal isn't just working less. It's building something that works without you.

This doesn't mean absentee ownership. It means:

• Systems that run without daily founder involvement
• Teams that make good decisions autonomously
• Products that serve customers without constant intervention
• Business that grows without linear founder time

This is true leverage—outcomes that multiply without proportional input.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I work less when there's always more to do?

There will always be more to do. The question is whether additional work produces proportional results. If your best work happens in focused hours, more hours of lesser work don't help. Prioritize ruthlessly and accept that some things won't get done.

Won't my business suffer if I work fewer hours?

It might, briefly, as you adjust. But most entrepreneurs find that focused hours produce better results than exhausted hours. Track outcomes during your transition. If results actually suffer (not just feelings), adjust. Usually they improve.

How do I stop feeling guilty about working less?

Shift focus from effort to outcomes. If you're producing results, you're contributing value. Also examine where guilt comes from—often it's outdated beliefs about work's moral value rather than rational assessment of what your business needs.

What if my team sees me working less and works less too?

Model working smart, not working little. Be visible about your focused work, strategic thinking, and high-leverage activities. Lead by example in prioritization, not just hours. The goal is everyone working effectively, not everyone exhausted.

How do I tell clients or investors I'm working fewer hours?

You probably don't need to. They care about results, not hours. If anything, efficient results demonstrate competence. Nobody wants a service provider or founder who's constantly exhausted. Quality work matters more than visible busyness.

What do I do with the time I free up?

Reinvest some in high-leverage activities. Use some for rest and recovery. Spend some on relationships and personal life. The goal isn't replacing low-leverage work with more work—it's a sustainable, effective approach to entrepreneurship.

Working less while achieving more isn't about being lazy. It's about being strategic. It's recognizing that your value as an entrepreneur comes from decisions, insight, and leadership—not from hours logged. Make the shift, and you'll build something better while living better in the process.