The 8-Hour Workday Is a Myth.
Let’s be honest with each other.
Almost nobody works eight fully productive hours a day.
Not you. Not your boss. Not the executive team.
“But Rolf,” you say, “my boss is always on my a**. He constantly tries to micromanage me.”
Well, how much does he try to micromanage you? Is he constantly looking at your computer during the entire 8-hour shift? Or is he there for a couple of hours and maybe for a couple more at the end of the day?
Ah, exactly. He has an erratic pattern. Because he isn’t actually working the 8-hour shift. He’s micromanaging you because he has nothing else to do. He’s not working when he micromanages you. He’s working whenever you finally get a break from him.
That’s another matter entirely, however. We’ll check on that at the end of this newsletter. For now, let’s go back to how people don’t work eight hours a day.
What actually happens?
Let’s say you’re in charge of “project development at BS Dynamics.” Your usual workday looks like this:
Three hours of focused work. You get a couple of Very Important Tasks™ and eventually finish them.
A couple of meetings. Normally, these Very Important Meetings™ are there so you can oversee the tasks you just did.
Some emails. Likely going over the meetings you just had.
A bit of Slack theater to prove you’re alive. You answer the notifications, you hope that your boss leaves you alone for the day, and that’s it.
And then… time killing. This last one is interchangeable with the penultimate part. You’re likely feeling like you’re “slacking off,” but what could you actually be doing right now?
Not much, right? Scrolling. Waiting. Pretending to be “available.” Sitting in case something comes up. Maybe something does come up once every three days or so. Then it’s back to the usual.
The modern workday isn’t eight hours of labor. It’s three hours of effort wrapped in five hours of presence.
And yet we’re told we must dedicate all eight hours to a single employer.
Why?
Because the system benefits from your idle time.
If you’re tied to one company for eight straight hours, they control your schedule. They control your availability. They control your income — even if they’re not fully using your capacity.
Especially in managerial roles, this becomes obvious. You’re not laying bricks for eight hours. You’re coordinating, delegating, solving bottlenecks, and the like. That type of work doesn’t really require nonstop output; it requires structured bursts of attention.
Something that, in reality, you could be taking advantage of. With that in mind, why are you working only three hours a day and giving the rest of the day away?
No, seriously. Why does your boss get to have you for eight hours when there’s other stuff that you could be doing?
Imagine this instead:
Three hours for Job A.
Three hours for Job B.
Two hours for Job C.
It’s the same eight-hour window, but you’re tripling your revenue streams. You’re not just making your presence known for five hours this time.
This is what people misunderstand about Job Stacking. We don’t focus on hustling or working more hours. On the contrary, we focus on allocating the time you’re already spending more intelligently.
What I want you to consider is whether you’re really exhausted from working eight hours a day, or if you’re exhausted because you’re stuck in an unproductive loop with terrible employers who make you feel like dirt while simultaneously demanding extreme loyalty.
Spoiler alert: it’s likely the second scenario.
Stacking lets you earn your time back. You can combine multiple remote jobs under the same 8-hour workday and convert that fragile paycheck into multiple streams of income.
The 8-hour myth survives because people don’t question it.
You should.
PS: About that boss of yours, perhaps you should also consider ditching the types of jobs that won’t serve your interests. I’ll get into that in the next newsletter.
Until the next time,
Rolf.
