Joe O'Connor

Position AI as a win-win, where the benefits of AI-powered efficiency gains will be shared with the workforce in the form of time back. By offering this kind of powerful incentive for enthusiastic adoption and engagement, you can position your business at the cutting edge of talent and technology through a four-day workweek with high levels of AI capability and integration.

If you feel guilty about prioritizing work-life balance, either you work for an organization with a weak culture, weak leadership and weak systems, or you need to look at your own mindset as you may be the leader that's the problem.

Time blocking has been a critical technique for each and every one of the hundreds of organizations I've worked with who have successfully transitioned to a shorter work week. It starts with getting more intentional about your priorities and how you design your workweek. If the only thing in your diary is your meetings, then your meetings will own and dictate your workflow. You should use time blocking to ensure you have sufficient focused time and deep work on your most important priorities. You should also use it to take control of a busy inbox, setting aside time to clear emails and engage with Slack messages rather than letting digital distractions take over your workday.

You can't automate a process that is poorly defined or documented. You can use process mapping to properly visualize and understand your end-to-end processes, to identify opportunities for automation. What are the lowest-value, highest-volume tasks you are spending a lot of time doing? That's where you should start with finding ways to use AI and tech tools to streamline and standardize.

Take a step back and reassess your current workload and priorities with fresh eyes. What activities are taking up a lot of time in your schedule that you should stop, curtail, or pause for now? Are you focusing too much on the short term at the expense of the long term, or vice versa? It is to be expected that the level of alignment of your work activities to your goals will drift over time unless you are regularly reviewing and reassessing. And this assumes that your goals are static - they inevitably won't be. Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up.

If your to-do list includes a lot of administrative, low-value tasks, time box them (I spend an hour a day on email and minor admin typically in the late afternoon). Separate these out from your plan on a page for the week - headlined by your biggest priority, and with no more than 3-5 'rocks' or focus areas. This is where the bulk of your attention should lie. Relying on a single to-do list, even one categorized using something like the Eisenhower matrix, leaves you susceptible to overwhelm or distraction. Clear your mind to focus on the things that matter most, but set aside specific time to sift through the clutter.