How to design a 36-hour week that grows your business and your life

Executive overview

Working longer hours kills decision quality and creative output. The fix is mapping your schedule to your energy, not the clock.

The core insight: you can't manage time — you can only manage the energy you bring to it.

Energy-first scheduling

• Work out and eat clean; physical inputs directly affect cognitive output
• Do creative, high-stakes work in the morning when mental resources are fresh
• Reserve afternoons for collaboration, meetings, and lower-stakes tasks
• Ask "what would make this easier?" whenever work feels like work — it's the question that unlocks schedule design

The 10X Vision Map

Four-quadrant framework to design an integrated life, not separate work and personal silos:

• Team — the 50 people you'd build businesses, take vacations, and do life with
• One business — focus on a single business until it hits $10M+ revenue; diversification before scale kills momentum
• Empire — what the core business unlocks: investments, projects, causes you fund once resourced
• Lifestyle — health, fitness, conversations, vacations; define the vibe you want, not just the money

The slingshot planner

• Set a 3-year target (revenue, team size, key metrics), then back-cast to 2-year and 1-year
• Break the year into four quarters; each quarter gets one new initiative and two upgrades of existing efforts
• Constraining to four new bets per year forces prioritisation and avoids scattered execution

The perfect week template

• Before the week starts, list every commitment, desire, and connection you want to make
• Map items into morning / afternoon / night slots, batching by energy type
• Hand the logistics (timing, travel, conflicts) to an assistant; only escalate genuine conflicts
• Treat the week like the day before a vacation — defined constraints unlock output