Reclaim Hours – Even Days! – From Your Workweek with Anna Burgess Yang

SEASON 7, EPISODE 2

A big reason why many of us feel drawn to freelancing is because we love the freedom and flexibility that it offers:  we can work when, where, and how we want.

Still, even as freelancers, we might feel pressure to adhere to working a “full-time job” – a 40-hour, or even longer, week, despite not needing or wanting to. But we have the power to opt out. We can work when it suits us best, setting boundaries with ourselves and our clients to make this possible. 

In this episode, Wudan talks with guest host Anna Burgess Yang. 

Anna is a freelance writer and workflow consultant based outside of Chicago. She is super passionate about time management and a big proponent of time-blocking, or setting aside chunks of time dedicated to certain tasks or clients. You can follow her on Twitter, Substack and Medium.

Anna talks about how she condensed her workweek down to about 3.5 days while still earning enough to support herself and her family. She also shares tips and tricks so that you, too, could shave hours (or even days!) off your week.

Full Transcript Below:

Wudan Yan - Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Writers' Co-op. I'm your host and executive producer, Wudan Yan. A big reason why many of us feel drawn to freelancing—or stay with it—is because we love the freedom we have over our schedules. We can work where we want and when we want. In fact, here's a fun factoid for you: In the United States, it's illegal for people who hire contractors to dictate when and where we work. And if you also live in the US, the 40-hour workweek is a familiar concept, especially if you've had a full-time job. Show up, Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. But freelancers, we're usually not pulling 40 hours a week, even though we're socialized to believe that's the gold standard. And some people think that freelancers need or have to work even more. There's sort of this limiting belief that those who are self-employed are constantly working. If they're not doing projects for their clients, there's always administration, marketing, outreach. The list could go on. So the option of continuing to work is always there. But we can also opt out. When I talk to my self-employed peers, one message rings clear: A lot of us want to work less, not more. We want to integrate work into our lives, not the other way around. And it's worth to say that sometimes it's not always possible to work fewer hours. For instance, I definitely worked more at the start of my career, because I wanted to try all the things. And because I was still really learning the skills associated with interviewing, researching and writing. I also was totally not as efficient as I am now. And of course, over time, that changed. I developed protocols for many of my services, which ultimately has allowed me to spend less time working. Since 2020, I've been experimenting with a four day workweek. I know of countless other freelancers who don't work a 40-hour week. If you have caretaking duties, if you live with chronic illness, or are neurodivergent and work best in bursts, a shortened workweek may also be a part of your MO. Then I began wondering, one day just sipping my coffee: Are there people who can work even less, who really reap the benefit of working as little as possible and on a schedule that suits them? And also who earned enough to support themselves and their family in a major metropolitan area? And importantly, like, how do they do it? I'm excited to dig into these questions with my guest today, Anna Burgess Yang. Anna is a freelance writer focusing on banking and finance based outside of Chicago. She is also a workflow consultant who is super passionate about time management and organization. I'm really excited to share this conversation with you. And I hope this might inspire you to condense your workweeks as well. Hey, Anna, thanks so much for coming on the Writers' Co-op. I'm excited to dig into shortening the workweek with you.

Anna Burgess Yang- I'm excited to be here and chat as well.

W- Yeah, I, you know, had a fun time when I put this call out on Twitter, because I work four days a week, and I find that it mostly works for me. But one day, I was just drinking my coffee and thinking: Is there somebody else out there who does even less? You know, we've all heard about The 4-Hour Workweek and other such random things in popular culture. But I put that call out, and I remember somebody being like, 'can you make a living doing this?' So I was really excited when you reached out and said yes.

A- Yes. I have a goal in life, basically, to really kind of condense my work so that I have time to do other personal interests, hang out with my kids. And I found a really good balance that way, so excited to be here to talk about that.

W- Yeah, actually, if you're comfortable with it, I want to start with some myth dispelling, especially, you know, the people who are like, 'can you even work that little and still make a living?' So how much are you able to make roughly on a monthly or quarterly or whatever basis you're analyzing your data on? And who else are you helping to support with that income?

A- I have not been freelancing for a full year yet. I've been freelancing for two years, but only went full time a couple of months ago. And right now I earn about between 6,000 and 11,000 a month. I have a family of five. My husband is a software engineer, and we have three kids. But I left a world where I was bringing in a salary, and so my goal when I started freelancing was to be able to replace that salary, and I've been able to do that.

W- Yeah, that's incredible. So tell us a little more about your freelance journey. What led you to freelancing? And what kind of work are you taking on right now?

A- You know, if you'd asked me a few years ago if I saw myself in a freelance life, I would have said absolutely not. I really didn't expect this for myself. But I started my career in FinTech and spent 15 years working for FinTech, including work as a product manager. And then in very early 2021, I quit my job. I was, you know, an early person in the Great Resignation and was just looking for a change overall. So didn't even look at staying in the same industry, completely pivoted and went into content marketing and journalism. So over the next year and a half or so, I worked at two different content agencies. First as a content marketer, then as an account manager. And I was maintaining some freelance clients on the side. It was just people I knew that had reached out to me, knew I was doing content work, and asked me to help. But I realized that I wasn't happy. Even with that big career pivot, I just wasn't enjoying the work that I was doing. And each subsequent environment had its own challenges. And so finally, I just decided 'you know what? I'm going to just take the plunge, see if I can build up an additional client base, and go in to work for myself.' I was very tired of job hopping. I felt like I could manage my time and my work well, so I had a good network, and just decided to go for it.

W- Yeah, that's amazing. Sometimes you just got to go swimming.

A- Exactly. Just dive off the deep end.

W- Yes, exactly. So, speaking of the deep end, did you go straight into working your three to three and a half days a week?

A- I did, mostly because I didn't have an entire full roster of clients off the bat. So you know, I was putting feelers out there and was getting some inbound interest from people in my network. But I realized—and this was a little bit of a leftover from working at a content agency where there's a very high expectation of production—I knew that writing all day, every day was going to burn me out. And I would not be able to maintain a lifestyle as a freelance writer if I did that. So I kind of had in my mind, 'I can only write for maybe a couple of hours a day, and I need to find the type of work that can sustain that type of lifestyle.' So I kind of work half days Monday through Wednesday. Kind of work a fuller day on Thursday, and then don't work at all on Fridays.

W- And it sounds like if I were in your position, going from a full-time job to working for myself, what was that mindset shift like? Especially when, as Americans, we are socialized to believe that like, you don't work unless you work a 40-hour workweek, five days a week.

A- So really interestingly, the FinTech that I was at in 2010—so it's been a while—moved to something called a results only work environment, and moved away from the entire model of working a 40-hour week. The idea was: You just do whatever you need to do to get your results done. So sometimes that did mean a longer week. But sometimes that meant a shorter week, and nobody had to feel guilty about it. There was no pressure to fill the time or find other work to do. And so like summers, in particular, it was really slow with clients. I had very light weeks. And so I learned to just kind of adapt based on whatever the workload was. And remove, from what you said, that pressure that we have societally, that 40 hours is a full week. Over that period of time, I've learned that 40 hours doesn't have to be a full week.

W- I think that's a really cool experience. And I saw something on Twitter the other day that was like 'it's wild for people to justify how freelancers will spend their time to complete a project. When you order a steak at a restaurant, you don't want to like talk to a chef about how they prepare and make and marinade their steak. You're just paying for the product, right?' So that results-oriented way of perceiving what work gets done, I think that's a really cool mindset shift to experience in a full-time job environment.

A- And also, it made me very efficient.

W- Yes.

A- Because...because if I got my work done in less time, I had more time to do other stuff. My stuff. My stuff with my family and anything like that. And everybody at the company experienced that, you know. And so we found, collectively, ways to just reduce busy work and reduce kind of non-necessary work and not go above scope. You know, a lot of projects at the company were custom work with clients. And so that was another way that kind of forced us to say 'we're gonna do what we've been asked to do, and there's not a reason to go above and beyond, unless you get paid more.' That was my first experience. And then after that—at one of the agencies that I worked for—the agency practice a four day workweek, which was new for me, on top of that. Nobody worked on Fridays.

W- love that.

A- That was glorious. I was like...because, you know, even with a flexible environment, there wasn't really any time to myself. And all of a sudden, having a four day week, it was like, Fridays were just my day. I could go grocery shopping. I could work on my own projects, because my kids were in school. And so having that, I was like, I could never go back. I could never go back to working a five day week, because that day is just Anna day. Forever.

W- Yeah. My Fridays, usually in the summers if the weather's nice, I'll go out for a hike. Sometimes in the winter, when the weather's crappy and rainy, I go to the spa—

A- Nice

W- It sounds self indulgent, but I get a full break from my phone. And if neither of those things are appealing to me, and I actually have a long list of errands, I will just do all my errands on Friday, which feels better than being rushed and yelling at customer service Monday through Thursday, when I'm so busy doing other things.

A- Yeah, it's kind of a dedicated, like, catch up on life day.

W- Totally. So if you're working three or three to five days a week, how many hours is that? Or maybe better yet, can you walk us through what a typical day looks like for you?

A- Sure. So I wake up insanely early. You will see me on Twitter around 4am. And that's just the way I operate. That's when I get a lot of focus work done. But that's personal writing. So usually from about 4 to 6am, I'm doing some kind of work for myself. My kids get up and then I've got to get them off to school and get breakfast and all that, so there's this giant break in the morning. Around 8:30 or 9, I'll start, you know, replying to emails, doing some interacting on social media. And then I hit my first real big block of kind of focus client work time around 9am maybe until about 11:30 or so. Then I take another giant break. I eat lunch. I take a nap almost every day. And then I do another client session in the afternoon, if I need to, if I haven't finished up from the morning. So maybe like 1:30 to 3 or so. I might have a client meeting in there. But my kids get off the bus at 4pm everyday. So that's really the end of my day. I'll only catch up in the evening if something just totally threw me off for the day and I felt like I didn't get done.

W- So it sounds like a 5am to a 3:30, 4pm day with a few hours of breaks built in.

A- With some pretty big breaks. And also that some of that work is personal creative work. And so my client creative work is maybe four or five hours a day.

W- Yeah. To some people that actually might feel like a long day, just like if we take the book ends.

A- Sure.

W- But I wonder, like, how you weigh the benefit of condensing work into those three, three and a half day, versus having it more spread out throughout the week? Like how do you think about that trade off?

A- I think, one: I like the large breaks during the day. One thing I found when I was working at a foreign agency in a four day week environment, was those were very intense days. You know, it was 8 to 4...or 8 to 5. Everybody was working pretty synchronously, and everything was crammed into that amount of time. So that was a long day for me. I was exhausted at the end of the day, especially from my prior company, where it was results only and so it was a lot more fluid during the day. So that was probably the hardest that I'd worked in a while in terms of hours. So even though it's kind of, you know, it sounds like a long day, because I'm taking such large breaks, it doesn't feel long. And because part of that time is dedicated to work that I really consider for myself and not for clients. So I enjoy kind of that breakup of the day.

W- Yeah, when you outlined your day, it sounded like that focused, self writing time first thing in the morning, and then more client work in blocks through the rest of the day. And I think that relates to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about, which is time-blocking. You have described yourself as a time-blocking evangelist.

A- Yes.

W- So can we just define what time-blocking is? And how do you set that up in your schedule?

A- Yeah. So time-blocking is really putting in chunks of time on my Google calendar, like this is what I'm going to do during this chunk of time. So for example, like on on any given week, it'll say on my calendar on Wednesday, you know, 'morning client writing block,' 'afternoon client writing block.' And then I look at what I've got due that week, and I'll kind of slot clients into those times that I have available. I have shorter blocks set aside for catching up on email. Giant block of time for lunch/nap. But when I look at my day, I have a pretty good idea of how the day is going to unfold. And also, that helps me really evaluate how much time I have available that week. I only have a certain number of client blocks. And I'm very unwilling to go above that unless there was some really specific special circumstance. And so that helps me, you know, communicate with clients, like when I can deliver, how quickly I can turn something around, because I know if my blocks are full or not. And I also have blocks set aside for administrative tasks, you know, once a month to send invoices and other little things like that. But basically, that I'm trying, as much as possible, to organize my work around when I'm most productive and how much time I think I need.

W- And I think how you think about blocking out time for separate clients, you must have a sense too of how much work that particular client or project needs. And I feel like that's something only people can really get with tracking their time to begin with.

A- You know, I've been freelance writing for a while, for about two years. So I do have a pretty good sense of how much a particular word count might take me, particularly because I stay very niche and focused on the type of projects that I take on, and the types of clients that I work with. So usually, I'm not trying something completely new. And that was intentional, when I started freelancing full time, was that I didn't want to get into work that would make me really uncomfortable. Just because I didn't want to deliver work that wasn't good. You know, I wanted to be able to establish myself as a reliable, high-quality freelancer. So because of that, and because of, you know, staying in the FinTech, the knowledge that I have, and those are the types of clients I work with, I know pretty much how long a block of time will take me. And then I have, you know, basically two blocks per day, and it's very unlikely that it would go above that. And if I get done sooner, great.

W- That makes a lot of sense. So to put a pin back on something that you mentioned before, you talked about when you are most productive for a particular task. And I'm curious, you know, you kind of have to know this in order to figure out like, what blocks go where in your schedule. (I'm imagining this is like a magnetic puzzle piece that people like move around, and the constraints that they have are like a 4 by 7 weekly calendar of some sorts). But if somebody has never gone through that exercise before of identifying when they're most productive for what, how would you suggest they figure it out?

A- Yeah, so I'll start with just describing how I figured it out. And it was kind of by accident, and a little bit out of necessity. I've always been a morning person. Like, even going back to college, I was the person who woke up early to desperately finish my paper the morning that it was due. So I knew that about myself. During the pandemic, my kids were home from school for remote learning. Our schools were closed. And I could not get anything done during the day, no focus time available whatsoever. Because, you know, I was trying to wrangle three kids in class and teachers emailing me all the time saying, 'why isn't one of your kids in music class? They're supposed to be here.' So the only way that I could really get work done was to capitalize on that morning time. So I intentionally just started setting my alarm and waking up at 5am. I realized that I got a lot done during that time. So then I started doing 4am. And then, you know, and a little earlier. And part of it is because nobody's emailing me at that time. Nobody's sending me a Slack message during that time. I mean, I can close all of those apps, but, you know, the temptation's still there. So that was really a way for me to realize I work really well in that time of day. And because I wake up early, I'm exhausted by around noon. That's why I need a nap. But that also means that my afternoon is not as productive. I've been awake for a while. I'm starting to kind of wane. So I'm able to organize my day around knowing that I have to work when my brain is best. My husband is the exact opposite. He is a night owl. He does his work in the evening if he needs to catch up on anything. So I think it's about listening to your body and really identifying like: When is your brain most alert? And using that time for your most difficult or intensive work.

W- Yeah, when I've coached freelancers who want to create structure around their day, I usually tell them, like, 'you are in a creative field. You're a creative professional. Like, when are you most creative? Because that is so valuable. And once that period is gone, you kind of don't get it back, so plan everything else around that.' But yeah, I, you know, I'm not a morning person anymore, but when I lived overseas in Southeast Asia, the beginning of my day was like, evening US time. And I experienced the same incredible experience of not getting badgered by emails or Slack or Facebook or anything during those morning hours. And I would just write or research or do something really intense. And then like, enjoy my day before I was back on email when everyone in America was waking up

A- When everybody else was up.

W- Mhmm

A- Yep, exactly.

W- So I feel like what you're sort of saying is like, pay attention and experiment with increasing that time block of productivity or going in either direction, really.

A- Yes. And another thing that I've experimented with more recently is, I very much enjoy yoga. I kind of fell out of practice during the pandemic, and I've really been dedicated to getting back into that. The yoga class I enjoy happens to be in the morning. So I've had to weigh like, how important is it for me to go to the class? And can I adjust my blocks of time around that? So I'm still kind of experimenting with that, and trying to make sure that that's going to work for me. But because I'm working a shorter schedule overall, I have some wiggle room to try to add that additional me time into the week. Just seeing how it cascades throughout the week. If it doesn't work, you know, I'll maybe try to go to an afternoon class or something. But I'm playing with it right now.

W- Yeah, definitely. And also constraints sometimes make you feel, you know, they force you to be a little more productive. Suddenly, you know, your amount of time decreases, because you have to transport yourself to a class or a gym or something. And then you realize, or at least I have realized, that sometimes I can do a lot more with less available time.

A- Right. My goal would be not to necessarily adjust my blocks the way that I have them right now too much, because that has been working for me. So I'm trying to figure out, you know: Can I do a little bit less time? Can I work it...Can I take a slightly shorter lunch break that day, or something like that, and still stay within the kind of half, half-ish days that I'm working right now.

W- I want to talk about the duration of your time blocks. Can you walk us through how you figured out how long you can work without taking a break? I also love long breaks, by the way.

A- Yes. So I'm familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, which is basically to work intensely for 25 minutes, take a five minute break, repeat. That did not work for me. Because with writing, I needed more time to kind of really...there wasn't much I could do in 25 minutes. It would interrupt my flow. So I have a little timer that sits on my desk, and I just kind of experimented with...what if it's 45 minutes? What if it's a little bit longer? What I found as a sweet spot was actually an hour and a half, because I was able to kind of get the bulk of either an outline or really good work into a draft, and then take a longer break. Really step away, and then come back and do another longer session. That worked for me. I do know other writers that work in kind of shorter sprints and take shorter breaks. But that's why I have that morning client block and afternoon client block to basically focus on a single piece that is due for that day.

W- Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And again, I love the experimentation. I feel like that's a big ethos of what the Writers' Co- op encourages tons of people to do. It's start somewhere, but then depending on how you feel about, say that Pomodoro method—which I've never used, by the way. I don't think I can repeatedly hit a timer every 25 minutes. I usually want to work for longer, similar to you—so yeah, start somewhere and then adjust accordingly. Anna, what if your day-to-day kind of changes? Like you have children.

A- I do

W- What if one of them comes home from school or daycare sick and all of a sudden, you know, there's an interruption. I think also a fair share of freelancers identify as being neurodivergent, which also gives them like a little more freedom to work when they can. And you know, they have bursts of productivity. I guess my question here is: Do you think reducing the workweek is feasible for everyone?

A- I do. And I think that a reduced workweek gives a lot of buffer time. Because that happened to me yesterday. I got a call from school, and my son had a stomach ache and a headache, and I needed to go pick him up in the middle of my afternoon. And I have basically some built-in time in my week. I could work on—if I had to—I could work on a Friday. And really right now, I preserve Thursdays for my catch up day. In many respects, for all kinds of work. So Thursday is actually my biggest day. But it's meant as an overflow from things like that, that come up. It could be writer's block. It could be me not feeling well. Any number of things that kind of interrupt my blocks throughout the week, I kind of spill them over into Thursday. And the reason I don't push into Friday is because that is my time. I know that if I can't get everything wrapped up on Thursday, that I'm going to have to give up my me time. And I really don't want to do that. So that kind of prevents me from abusing my own system. And not slacking off too much, or recognizing that there are still things I need to get done. But really using that Thursday—and communicating to my clients, usually, I'm like 'I'll deliver on Thursday.' I may finish it on Tuesday, but I'm going to deliver it on Thursday, just in case, so that if there's an overrun or anything happens, I've still got some time to catch up.

W- Your system is really admirable, Anna. I feel like I have a lot to learn. I kind of just look at my week at a glance, and I make a wild guess at what I'm able to get done, knowing how I work and then just pray for the best. And I was a bullet journaler for a while, so, you know, if I didn't want to do something, or if I didn't get to it, it would just get the arrow and go in the next day. But ultimately, you're right, like there is an overflow, and then we are businesses of one, and then we have to deal with it.

A- Exactly. And I did experience, you know, in some of my early days— first as a freelancer and then certainly as a full-time freelancer—where I was packing things too tightly. Or taking on basically more—you know, I'd still want to confine my week, but I was taking on more work than I really should have. And that stressed me out because then all of a sudden, I'm on Thursday and not everything's done. And I don't want to work on Friday. And now what do I do? So it's been kind of a process in really identifying how long is something going to take me? How much can I do in a given month? And then being able to communicate to a client, 'well, I got this on this date, this is when you'll get it back.' Because a lot of my work is ad hoc, not a ton of recurring work, which I enjoy, and I'm fine with. But then I have to set the right expectation for delivery.

W- Yeah. Let's talk about the client management side of things. Because even if you're working an abridged workweek, because you're self-employed and have the freedom to do so, what is it like to deal with clients? I mean, I've heard you say that instant communication is killing our productivity. So it sounds like you're just setting lots of boundaries. And how have clients received your boundary setting?

A- You know, it started a really long time ago with setting boundaries way back when I was working in FinTech. And I was working remotely. The whole company was. Our clients weren't exactly aware of that. But I remember getting an email late in the day from a clien. It was like 4pm. And the client said, 'oh, it's 4:05. I tried to call you. I couldn't get ahold of you. I guess you must be done for the day.' And I thought why...why would you assume that? I actually wasn't done for the day. I was on a call with another client. But that made me realize, like, they have no idea what we're doing. They have no idea how busy we are, and how many clients we're working with and how many deliverables we're juggling. And I don't need to explain myself to any client in how I work or how much I work. So at the bottom of my email signature, it says: 'Because I work flexibly, my hours may not be the same as your hours. Please only respond during your working hours, and I'll do the same.' I try to respond, you know, the same day, at least. Or, you know, within 24 hours, at least acknowledging the client's communication. I'm in a lot of clients' Slack channels, so I have to kind of set the boundary that I'm not going to just be responding. I have Slack notifications turned off, so I'm not distracted by that. But I don't want them to get used to me always being available for them. And I also—part of my blocking and my scheduling—I don't want to always deliver work when it's done. I may finish the work in an early block, but I don't want them to get the idea that I can work faster than I actually do. So I just—I still deliver it on the day that I said that I would. Because otherwise I think I'm setting myself up for more pressure and more failure if I overdeliver. And that kind of keeps my buffer in there in case something ever happens and I can't deliver ahead of time.

W- Yeah, Anna, what you're saying resonates deeply with me, because I also work quickly and efficiently. And sometimes I—once I'm done, I'll just schedule send the email on my Gmail and set it and forget it. And you know what, I still made my deadline and I'm not, you know, finagling with the client's expectations of me. Because those expectations really are a two-way street. And I think it's up to us as freelancers to maintain our own boundaries, such that like other people can't feel like our boundaries are to be pushed.

A- I saw someone on Twitter say 'the best freelancers always deliver early.' And I thought 'that is terrible advice.' That's not...like, why? Because, I mean, it's just setting yourself up for, I think, future failure and the client saying, 'well you got it done in three days this time. Can you get it done three days again?' Not necessarily. I have other work that I'm juggling, and I schedule it according to when it's due.

W- Absolutely. All right, Anna, I have one last question for you. And that relates to something practical that people can do once they hang up their headphones, finish their walk, arrive at their destination. Where should somebody start if they are interested in building more structure into their workday, workweeks, and ultimately work fewer hours? What's like one or two small things they can try out?

A- So one of the first things that was recommended to me way back when I was working at a company, and we moved to this results only work environment, we were told 'go to a movie in the middle of the day. Just step away from your desk and just go do something for yourself.' That was hard. I went to a movie in the middle of the day, and I felt like I had to check my email during the middle of the movie, because I was so used to working this long day and not ever taking a break. So I would say just start with doing something for yourself, during your normal working hours. Whatever those working hours are, just go to the gym, go for a long walk, go to a movie, go shopping, do something. Because now you—just by doing that, you've reduced your day by an hour. Or maybe it's an hour and a half, and you're giving yourself reward for shortening your day. And then you don't want to give up that reward. You know, you want to build on that reward and kind of get yourself a shorter week. Then I would say, you know, experiment with ending your day a little earlier, starting your day a little later, whatever makes sense for you based on how you work and all of that. By making those incremental changes, kind of smushing your day together, you'll realize that, one: You enjoy the extra time that you have, and you won't want to give it up. And you'll figure out ways to work more efficiently and work in that condensed amount of time.

W- Yeah, I love that, because it's a small experiment, and over time, people will also realize that like probably nothing really urgent happens in the time that they're gone.

A- No. No fires happened during that first time that I went to a movie in the middle of the day. You know, everybody was still fine when I came back. And it also, I think, really forces us as freelancers to say no to clients. When all of a sudden you're asked to give up your own time, you either say no, that's outside of scope, or you say yes, but pay me more money for it. Because you're trading your own time and things that you enjoy doing. And maybe you enjoy client work, and that's fine, too. But you're giving up your free time in exchange. So that's worth something

W- Well Anna, I think that's a lovely place to finish. Thank you for your wisdom, all these small experiments that anyone can really take and run with. I think hopefully this leads to many more people shaving hours or even days off their work schedules.

A- I hope so too. Work less. That's my goal in life.

W- I love that. Alright, well, thanks so much, Anna, and I will talk to you soon.

A- Thank you for having me.

W- Thanks so much to Anna for her wisdom on condensing the workweek. You can follow her on Twitter at @AnnaBYang. She is on Substack and Medium and her eBook, Manage Your Time and Content Across Multiple Platforms, might give you even more ideas on how to wrangle down your work hours. It's available for free, and I will also link it to the show notes. Patreon All-Access members will get a worksheet that will help you think through a few questions on how to integrate time-blocking into your workdays and weeks. You can join that anytime at patreon.com/TWCpod. Membership also includes access to our inclusive and psychologically safe space on Slack. I will see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Writers' Co-op. If you've enjoyed our episodes, please rate, review, and subscribe on the listening platform of your choice. These reviews help more listeners discover us. You can join us on Patreon at an All-Access member level at patreon.com/TWCpod. This gets you access to discount codes for events, for other objects online, and our safe and inclusive online Slack community. The show is hosted by me, Wudan Yan. Our producer is Margaret Osborne and our editor is Susan Valot.