What Alex Hormozi Gets Wrong

Today I’m taking on one of my mentors, as I was gobsmacked when I saw him share that working longer hours will solve most of your problems. It actually creates more problems.

This doesn’t take away from what I do learn from him, and let it be a lesson that we don’t have to agree with everything our mentor says in order to learn from them.

Listen as I share how working more hours isn’t the answer to your problems so you don’t push through longer than you need to today.

Love this episode? Get my best tips on how to stop wasting time at https://www.vikkilouise.com/guide

Transcript :

hello hello lovely people so excited to be back with another podcast this week and um this one kind of hit me bam in the face while I was scrolling social media so yes you can be a time hacker work a 15-hour week and scroll social media and there's nothing wrong with you um so I am a fan of Alex or Mosey I think he's got a lot of useful things to say I've recently started following his wife too Layla uh so just like love learning from different people and taking in different information and I will preface this by saying that I've learned lots of good stuff um from him and then I was scrolling and I came across a post where he said that most of our problems can be solved by working longer hours I mean for those of you that know me it's no surprise that I am here um talking about this and wanting to talk about this because I do think when we are um Educators when we are informing people we want to be mindful of like taking that responsibility of what we are teaching so I want to go into specifically why he says because he did give reasons um and I'm going to discuss with you why he might be wrong and how working longer hours can actually create more problems for us so as I said this isn't shocking for those of you that know me but I think it's really important to be addressed I think a lot of people are following him and just going to be taking this on board and I wonder how many people the day that they saw this post just stayed working longer hours because of reading this and what it's actually going to cost them so the first thing that he says is you make more when you earn more you make more when you work more so therefore you should be working longer hours and I just have to call [ __ ] like the most the most well-paid people in the world the richest people in the world are actually working fewer and fewer hours um the wealthiest countries in the world work Less hours um actually the longer hours that you are working typically the less you are being paid per hour of work so it's not true that when you work more you make more the data absolutely shows the opposite and obviously you guys know my story and know about my clients and traditionally typically um when we are working less we are earning more it allows us time to think creatively allows us time to rest it allows our brain time to reset it allows us to like settle into information so when we are working more we are it's like constantly being on a treadmill constantly um being an actor in action um and that used to be that the way to earn more when we were working in factories and it was just how many boxes can you build and ship but that's no longer what we're doing with our work so that's just complete [ __ ] um the second one is less the less time you have to spend the money you make so working longer hours solves most problems because you have less time to spend the money you make and there's two things that I want to say here one actually we've radically reduced the time taken to uh online shop to shop online shopping didn't even used to exist but definitely um to shop we can do it in a fraction of a Time places like Amazon or supermarkets can literally store our data and we can just re-reorder stuff with a click of a single button I want you to think about what it used to take to spend money you used to have to get dressed get out of the house maybe get in a car or get on some kind of public transport arrived to a place walk through the place select things put them into a basket maybe try them on maybe taste them who knows take them off again if they were closed not if it was food you know take food off again um go check in go stand in the queue to buy the things then you know have a cashier check through every single item bag it then go back all the way however you came there go back home um and that was how it used to be but nowadays shopping is so fast that working long hours is not going to be what solves you an overspending problem if you have an overspending problem you're still going to be able to spend and also to add to that it's not just shopping it's like we have so many conveniences now and so many fast ways to make money that it maybe it used to be when you're working longer hours you just for example didn't eat but nowadays you're able to order and spend plenty of money delivering food to the office or wherever you are you're able to order taxis home if you're working late all night um and so on so there are actually lots of ways to spend money very fast when you are working long hours so it's not true that working longer hours gives you less time to spend the money you make it gives you less time definitely but spending money no longer requires time and the third one he said it gives you less time to think about the problems that never mattered to begin with and I kind of like this right we don't want to be giving time to thinking about problems that didn't matter to begin with but if the only way we know how to not think about problems it didn't matter is too busy ourselves then we are going to keep ourselves busy busy busy in work in our personal life like the solution to thinking about things that we don't need to think about is not to busy ourselves it's to learn to quieten our brain um so I would be very mindful of using overworking as a way to stop thinking about things not to mention for a lot of my clients for a lot maybe a lot of you guys listening overworking can be a trauma response it's a way we actively avoid thinking about things and it's a way we avoid thinking about things that's like celebrated by Society so if you avoid thinking about things by over drinking or overspending or you know overeating maybe people will be like hey you're okay but when you are overworking people are like wow she just works so hard so proud of her but it's the exact same mechanism it is not a coping mechanism it's not a healthy coping mechanism to overwork as a way to avoid thinking um so that's why working long hours won't actually solve most of your problems but what I want to talk about in the framework of those three points as well is how working long hours can create problems so if you're thinking you make more when you earn more what I want to offer you to think about is how are you making less when you work more how does your earning go down because you're working longer hours and I touched on it previously with the idea that your per hour earning goes down if your example working overtime at a job it's not paying you overtime if you're taking 10 hours on a project that could be done in one hour um and it's very obvious that you are going to be earning less per the value you're creating and I also want you to think about when we give ourselves more time to do something and this is something a lot of my clients will um will experience when we give ourselves more time to do something what we are often giving is ourselves more time to doubt ourselves more time more time to feel fear more time to procrastinate more time to go back and forth on decisions more time to you know question our capability question what we are doing question whether it's right or wrong and just spiral out of things so actually I would say the opposite is true which is like if you have two people working on a project or if you have two options to get a project done do you want the person that can get it done in an hour do you want the person that can get it done in 10 hours like why might we want the person doing it less I actually heard this example recently around a dentist at a root canal so if you were going to get a root canal and you went to the first dentist and they were like yeah it's 500 I've got no idea how much root canals cost either way but it's 500 um and it's going to take two hours and then you went to the second dentist and they were like it's 500 it's going to take five minutes which one would you hire it's obvious right so it's not and then they're earning more who's earning more the dentist that can get it done in five minutes so it's not that you make more when you earn more we no longer work in factories we no longer work in a place where our output is measured by our hours um and actually when we are taking longer to do things we are inviting in inefficiencies and that's one angle I think Alex would agree with me there but what he might disagree is that you can do more things but why is doing more things the way to making more money again often the opposite is true when we are looking to fill times to fill time or to work longer hours we're going to end up adding things that maybe didn't even need to get done I know you guys have heard of the 80 20 rule um and it's like that's how we end up filling the 80 if 20 produces most of your results instead of then doing other things just double down on that double your results so um we want to be doing Less in order to achieve more wanna and I'm going to speak about this in relation to the other two as well so you spoke about the less time um you have to spend the second Point working longer hours solves a problem of overspending because you have less time to spend the money you make right we kind of debunked it before but just to reiterate actually when you are working longer hours you can end up paying for more services to cover you for those long hours so we spoke about takeaway we've spoken about cleaning and we've spoken about dog walking have we've spoken about um taxis have we've spoken about all like needing it what to pay for Wi-Fi wherever you go I don't know there's lots of different ways that we spend more when we are squeezed for time to cover up what we are no longer available for it might even be and this doesn't feel like a nice one to say but it might be true it might be buying fancy things for loved ones instead of having time to spend with them um so I really want you to think about how the opposite might be true that when you work longer hours you spend more money um yes okay so the third one is and this is really the one that I want to get into with you and I really want to get your brain thinking around which is when we work longer hours we have less time to think about the problems that never mattered to begin with and we addressed why and that might not be a problem originally but I want to think about when we have less time to think that's the part of what he wrote that really stood out to me when we are working longer hours we have less time to think and that creates problems that creates problems in terms of like we spoke about processing trauma processing our emotion making clear-headed decisions but it also solves problems because as humans the one thing that differentiates us I think about like chat gbt now and all this AI technology um and the one thing that differentiates us is our capacity to think to create to daydream and what we are doing when we are just at the bench working longer hours doing things because we think doing more is better the fastest way to earn more is we are removing and eliminating our time to think that's our highest skill that's our greatest value your ability to think creatively so if you are thinking like you want to achieve more and earn more and solve most of your problems working longer hours is actually not the way to do it what's probably more likely the way to do it is going to be to reduce your hours reduce your hours so that you can earn more reduce your hours so that you can spend how you want to spend intentionally reduce your hours so that you have more time to think more time to drink Daydream and more time um to use your greatest tool in life which is your brain so that's it from me today sorry I don't agree with you on this one Alex and I hope you enjoyed this podcast this is the first time I've done this kind of episode where I've spoken about someone else and as I said I am a big fan of him um and I think he's got a lot to teach but this really stood out for me as a huge red flag that I absolutely wanted to address I hope you've enjoyed it I will see you next week bye love