I normally try to take Thursdays off from work so I can give myself some semblance of sanity by breaking up the string of 12-14 hours days, cook a meal at home and eat it while it’s still warm, and get some errands done that otherwise wouldn’t happen. As the result of essentially being my own business (even while working in a commercial facility, a fact that a lot of trainers should consider if they want to become more successful), I tend to work for a solid 8-12 hours, even though it’s considered a day off. While I may not be training clients to get dieseled out and become superhuman “half-man, half-machine, half-amazing” forces of nature (that’s right folks, three halves. That’s how I roll), I’m still putting in time.

Malcolm Gladwell said in his book Outliers that in order to become an “expert” in something, you have to invest roughly 10,000 quality hours in it. What this means is that by simply working 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks a year, it will take roughly 5 years to reach “expert” rating. Let’s break this down further. Most people don’t invest “quality” time for their entire day, and tend to fill it with the odd water-cooler conversation about how the Oilers are kicking ass and taking names, playing Angry Birds or checking the Facebook status update of their friend who puts up nothing but pictures of their cat (you know who you are), plus the obligatory coffee/lunch/smoke/bathroom break, and you can probably assume most people will spend about 5-6 hours each day working on getting better or learning new stuff, that is if they haven’t checked out completely and are just simply going through the motions.

Of those 5-6 hours each day, let’s assume 80% of them are highly productive and involved, bringing the total down to about 4.5 hours each day of “quality” work. Subtract sick days and medical days and “hit the snooze button too many times” days, and you’re probably down to 48 weeks in that work year. This means instead of pumping in 2000 hours each year, you’re only getting about 1080 hours each year that can accumulate into your total for considering yourself an “expert” at what you do. This means to get to 10,000 hours you will need about 9 years.

Flip this with someone like Bret Contreras, who is finishing his PhD, training clients, reading everything under the sun, writing like a banshee, and pretty much eating, sleeping (occasionally) and breathing strength training, and he’ll get to his expert level of practice in about 3 years after cranking out 100 hour work weeks for 50 weeks each year (assuming the odd day off or surgical recovery from being too dieseled).

That being said, my off-days are rarely ever “off.” Where’s a brief synopsis of what I did yesterday:

dropped the car off for winter tires and ran some quick errands after picking it up

Cooked lunch, dinner, and tomorrows meals

Completed 3 nutritional analyses for clients, 6 programs, 1 distance training program, and gave technical feedback on a distance training clients workouts

2 loads of laundry and 2 loads of dishes (no dishwasher in our place)

Studied for an upcoming exam – 2 hours

edited 3 promotional videos for an up-coming project

Wrote this blog post, 2 others, plus submitted some ideas to T-Nation and a few other sites

Registered canfitpro courses and exams for all of 2012

answered about 50 emails

read six papers on spinal stability and dynamic stabilization

Organized a marketing plan for an upcoming launch

Like I said, it was an “off” day. All told, I put in solid career work for about 9 hours, and did personal stuff and errands for about 6 hours, making my workweek that much more productive and also getting some of the household chores out of the way for at least a few more days. For me, the concept of a 4-Hour Workweek is foreign, as I get bored easily and like to do a lot of what I like to do, which is train people and find new ways to get better at what I love to do.

Now while I won’t sit back and say I’m the hardest working guy in the industry, there are a tonne of people out there busting way more ass than me to make themselves better. As a result of that, in order to keep up and stay ahead of the trend, I have to work hard and make the bets use of any available time I have at my disposal. If I was only putting in the requisite 40 hours each week, I would still be at the level I was at 3 years ago, instead of progressing to where I am today.

Let’s say you’re satisfied with the status quo, and choose to invest only the amount of time and effort necessary to maintain your current foothold in life. This is what something like that looks like in a graphical format.

To look at this another way, let’s assume everyone else working their tail off is now the standard, not the exception. To keep up in the world you have to kind of match them, otherwise life starts to look like this.

This rings true in any industry or career, not simply in fitness. If you’re not keeping up, you’re falling behind. So if you’ve ever had to ask yourself why you aren’t a hyper-successful anything, you could also ask yourself what you do on your days off. You are the direct result of the actions you choose, and every obstacle in life is one that was placed there by you, and as a result is one you can easily remove to reach your goals. Athletes who are successful are so because they out-work everyone else and can find solutions to problems imposed by their opponents. Business people are more successful than the average Joe because they outwork or find new solutions to common problems. Successful trainers are successful because they outwork their competition and can solve more problems more efficiently than anyone else. Notice a trend?

So what about you? What are you doing to keep up with the trends and to exceed and excel at what you do? Drop me a comment below.