The Myth of the 20 Minute Workweek

Welcome to the Paid Search Magic Podcast – Your weekly deep dive into Search Engine Marketing, AdWords, client management, and so much more.

I’m your host, James Hebdon. You can find show notes and a complete transcript of this episode at paidsearchmagic.com/38.

Unless this is your first week on the internet, you’ve probably seen something about how some important thing in your life can be done in x number of minutes. Become a real estate investor in 30 minutes! Get back in shape in 12 minutes a day! Etc etc. There’s a popular meme called the “The Twenty Minute Work Week” which has been applied to a few things, including paid search. A while back, Amy wrote an article called “The Myth of the 20 Minute Work Week”, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

You can find the original article here.

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James: So, Amy, welcome back to the Paid Search Magic podcast.

Amy: Thank you very much.

James: This week we are talking about a kind of timeless subject. It relates back to an article that you wrote some time ago called The Myth of the 20 Minute Workweek.

Amy: Yes. I remember that one.

James: Let’s start with this. First of all, why don’t you explain just what the 20 Minute Workweek was.

Amy: Well, the 20 Minute Workweek, let’s just call it what it is, it’s a marketing tool. But the concept behind the 20 Minute Workweek is basically you can get all this stuff done really fast, if you have … if you know exactly what you’re doing and you can go and make these changes or these optimizations. Then you can do it within 20 minutes, and then you get the rest of your time back, or you’re not spending forever trying to implement on it.

James: Right. If only you’re disciplined enough and organized enough, and got your eye on the ball enough.

Amy: Right.

James: Why did you want to write about it?

Amy: I think this might even be because of you. I think that you were dealing with someone who would kind of seen one of these ideas come up and was kind of pressuring you. Right?

James: Yeah. Well I had manager that had bought in to the whole 20 Minute Workweek. I mean, it’s a really, it’s a popular notion, right? It’s been applied to a lot of different things, but specifically he really, really like the idea that everything that we did in Paid Search could be boiled down into 20 minutes of work, if we were focused enough.

Amy: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

James: I told you about it, and we talked about it, but yeah …

Amy: Well, and I think there’s a danger there because when you’re doing … you’re neck deep in optimizations and fixing an account and ways it needs to get fixed, it’s not going to be 20 minutes, which isn’t a problem unless someone expects it to be. And then they think you’re being inefficient, or they’re getting mad at you, and that can cause problems.

James: You mean like when it’s boiling up to decision makers and stuff?

Amy: Yes. Yeah, when it’s a manager or a client. He’s like, “Well, I thought this should just take five minutes.”
And you’re like, “But it doesn’t.”

James: Well, so let’s talk about some of the good points of it. I remember in your article, you actually … It was a really excellent article.

Amy: Thank you.

James: You covered a few different reasons why it was good. The beneficial or positive aspects of the idea of the 20 Minute Workweek.

Amy: Yeah. I think, especially with Paid Search, there’s so many things we can do that … it’s just this analysis of paralysis. Right? I think we’ve all had the experience where we’re just staring at like a wall of key words or search terms and just scrolling up and down and being like, “Yep, those exist,” without really knowing what action to take next. It could just be paralyzing. And there’s so much that could change. And so if you don’t have an action plan, and you have all day to do something, it can take you a while to make that decision. And so, I think having a time-bound plan for what you’re working on makes a whole lot of sense.
So you’re like, “Hey, I’m gonna set the timer … I’m gonna …” What is it? The Pomodoro method or planting a tree or whatever. “I’m just gonna do this for this long and then that’s it.” Like that’s great because otherwise the work is never really finished. But if you give yourself 20 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever, then it’s finished in 20 or 30 minutes ’cause that’s how long you spend on it.

James: So you’re talking just the general idea of setting a time limit?

Amy: The general idea of setting a timer, yeah. So the idea of a 20 minute workweek or 20 minute plan, a 20 minute audit, 20 minute optimizations, there’s no real prescription there. It’s just like, “Hey, we’re gonna give you some things to do. And it could take this long.” And again, like I said at the beginning, that’s just marketing. That’s like the 20 minute workout. And it’s actually 27 minutes when you account for warmup and cool down. Or there’s this thing, and it’s this long except it’s actually not. But we love to buy products that promise us a result in a certain amount of time.
And so selling people on that idea whether it’s selling them on … to get them to listen to your webinar or to download your opt-in or even to buy your product … It’s pretty popular to say, “I will teach you how to do this thing in this amount of time,” because we understand that.
We’re like, “Oh, that saves time. That’s valuable.” And we buy into it.
There’s not one universal understanding of what it is that you do in this amount of time period. It’s just, “Follow our certain steps in this amount of time.”

James: Right, and as an idea, I mean, that really appeals to me. Because as you well know, one of my biggest weaknesses is having open-ended projects. Right?

Amy: Yes.

James: I can-

Amy: I didn’t mean to agree quite so emphatically.

James: She said with deep confidence and a lengthy history.
No, but I mean, like the idea of having … If something’s completely open-ended, then I can spend forever at it. And I know I’m not the only person; I’m just particularly bad at it, right?

Amy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James: There’s kind of a truism to that. There’s a reality to that that we tend to fit our work into the amount of time that we have available for it. And if that’s an infinite amount of time, then we can just sit there and go down the rabbit hole forever.
So the idea of the time limit is great. But the idea that everything that needs to be done on accounts universally can be done in 20 minutes is just false.

Amy: Yeah. It’s ridiculous. And it’s taking … it’s kind of conflating some … I think there’s some really good ideas to be found in … most of the articles or presentations that I’ve seen about how to do this in 20 minutes … a lot of them do have good steps. It’s good to have … like here … I’m sitting down. I’m doing these things. I’m not … it’s not ambiguous. I’m not wondering what I’m gonna do next. I’m accomplishing these things and then I am done with it. I am moving to the next thing. That’s perfect and that’s awesome.
My only concern with this is if you literally believe the marketing that says, “And then that’s all you have to do.” Well, that’s wrong. And you will be disappointed if you’re trying it for yourself. And you will be a bad manager if you’re expecting your employees to be able to follow that with … if any real accomplishment at the end of their supposed 20 minute workweek.

James: Well, and you kind of talked about having a series of steps. And that brings up some of the other points that you’d raised in your article. I think the first thing that you had said was that more than anything it provides you with a starting point … as a
benefit. Right?

Amy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James: And as you have a starting point, then you can move into next steps. And I think this is really good especially for maintenance. Having a place to start that just you know that’s what you launch into and then having a series of steps … a prescription for how you’re moving forward, there’s a lot of value in that.
Amy: Yeah, and I would say especially for beginners. Once you’ve been around the block a few times with AdWords, then it may or may not be useful for you at that point. But if you don’t know where to start, and you’re like, “Oh, I can check this. And I can check it off the list.” That’s huge. And it’s really … it really is gonna save you some good time.

James: We have a lot of people that listen to this that are just small business owners. They’re not necessarily neck-deep into paid search like professionals in the industry might be. And I think that this sort of concept can really work for them too. If they set up a series of steps … a series of things to check or to review from time to time, that can really help them, I think, to make sure that their account is being managed well.
By the same token, if you have a completely open-ended, you’re just diving into AdWords and trying to read an article here or there, it’s amazing how lost you can get in it because you can never be done optimizing a paid search campaign in theory.
So having a series of steps for them as well, I think, is just really valuable.

Amy: Yeah. I totally agree.

James: So I think the last thing that you had mentioned in your article … and this kind of feeds into just having a time limit … it provides focus.

Amy: Yeah, it does ’cause you’re looking at the one thing. I mean, this is hard for me. I’ll be looking at … You know, I’m in a certain screen in a certain area. Before I can make a decision there, I have to change the date range. I have to go look at something else and see what’s effecting it. And then there’s so many decisions. But if you’re just following a certain sequence with a certain time limit, you’re just looking at that and then moving on to the next thing. You don’t let yourself get quite as lost … lost is the wrong word, but … You can still be incredibly productive when you’re just in that one screen doing your one specific thing.

James: Right. Okay. So those are some of the benefits of it. What are some of the drawbacks? So I remember that the first problem that you talked about was that it contains analysis with execution … or it conflates analysis with execution.

Amy: It does. And the thing that comes to mind specifically for this for me is … So I was using a contractor. He’s helping us do something … work on some accounts. And he had billed us for a certain amount of time on this project. And I was looking at the change history. I’m like, “Okay, that was like two changes, and you billed for us for three hours.” Which if you do the math, that’s like an hour and a half per change. I think that could have gone a little bit quicker. But-

James: Because if you just made those changes … like the process of making those changes is a couple minutes.

Amy: Right, yeah. You actually implement really quickly, but it can take some good time and consideration to really measure what you’re doing and the potential impact and what you should be working on. And the decision to not change things too, still takes time. To look at something in the proper context, realize, “Okay, actually, this is working just fine, so no changes needed right now.” And so it can take a while.
Your output, let’s say your KPI is not number of changes right? So it’s not like we’re gonna take the number of changes and the amount of time and figure out the right amount of time per change and back into something like that. That’s completely the wrong formula. It was kind of stupid of me. I know better than this, but when I was just trying to evaluate … “Well, how much further did we get on the account?” And I was looking at that. That was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done that.
And so then I put … what happened is I put him on the defense of having to explain to me who obviously knows this that not everything that we do outputs a change that’s made. And so he was spending time doing some other stuff. And he was right. And I just feel like in a way I kind of strained that relationship a little bit because I made it more of a trust issue of like, “Well, you have to answer for every minute that you’re working on something because things should be fast and efficient.” And that’s not how good account management works a lot of the time.

James: So you can see this sometimes with predatory marketing agencies when they’re trying to shark an account. They might go into audit it and say things like, “There’s only a few changes here. There’s 45 changes over the past three months. And if you went with us, there’d be thousands of changes.” And it’s like … that’s not a good thing. If you have thousands of changes constantly going on, then there’s probably an issue with how you’re managing the account.

Amy: Exactly.

James: So what happened with this guy? Were you able to kind of resolve it? Or was it a strain?

Amy: No, I mean, we were … we had a good working relationship. But I don’t often find myself on that side of things where I’m questioning someone’s work like that. So once I found myself in that situation, like, well, that was a poor decision on my part. And I don’t want to be-

James: And humbling.

Amy: It was humbling. Yes. And I don’t want to be in the position where I try to re- … you know … We know what KPIs are. And KPIs are not number of changes in account history.

James: Right.
Okay, well, so that’s the first problem, conflates analysis with execution. Problem two is “Follow this timeline, and you’ll miss the good stuff.” What did you mean by that?

Amy: I guess, what I meant is like if there’s a prescription, “Hey check on this. Check on this,” for the highest and the lowest and whatever, we miss the middle. We see, “Hey, this thing is working super well, so let’s do more of it. This thing is tanking, so let’s not do it.”
The idea of 80/20 is that 20% of the whatever yields 80% of the results. “So let’s just focus on that 20% that drives the most.” But you’ve got this 80% that either is or is not doing stuff. And so 80% is doing 20% well. What that probably means is there’s maybe 5% in there that’s doing super well and then 20% that’s doing horribly. I mean, you can kind of just see it’s an aggregate. That 80% represents a huge volume of work or keywords or whatever that aggregates to a total of 20% but there’s still some highs and lows within that that we completely miss if we’re just looking at the top line, bottom line, move on.

James: Okay. So problem number three, you said that it’s a map with no map.

Amy: It’s a map with no map because sometimes the steps can’t really be followed. If you ever look at WikiHow or Get Answers where they’re like, “Step one, make a million dollars. Step two …” Okay, that’s not really a step. And it ends up with just like, “Optimize for this.” Okay, that’s not really a specific way to take action. And it’s trying to cover too much ground with not enough time to actually do it efficiently. It’s like, “Oh, do this in 14 seconds.” Okay, you can’t actually do that in 14 seconds.

James: Well, I think you used the example of the lotto. It’s like, “Step one, choose all the right numbers for the lotto. Step two, confirm that you chose the right numbers. Three, cash it in and celebrate.”

Amy: Yeah.

James: So I kind of want to add just the fourth problem to this. And you can kind of see it in the other problems that you’ve listed, but it also … When you set something that’s very firm like that, you fail to see anything outside of it. And it kind of goes along with it’s a map with no map. It’s like once you have a prescription that you follow like that, you do fail to see anything outside of it. It’s like you set the train. You set your world perspective. And that can be really limiting ’cause sometimes there are changes that you can make to an account. There are things … or changes in strategy even on a more holistic level that can completely alter the landscape performance of your account.

Amy: Yeah, that’s very, very true. And I think this kind of speaks to somewhat of a failing of dashboard reporting. A former coworker of mine had gone to this big dashboard conference. I can’t remember the vendor that was doing it. But for all the effort that they spent building out dashboards for these huge enterprise clients, which was a lot of this sort of reporting, most of them end up not getting looked at past the first session. ‘Cause you look at this information, you’re like, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense.” You don’t need to return to it all the time ’cause it just answers your question. And so when you do, just repeat the same numbers, the same metrics, looking at the exact same things all the time, for some things that really matters, but for a lot of things it’s like, okay, I didn’t learn anything new that time because I already had a sense of it. And so you end up just missing out on those bigger, let’s say, paradigm shifts where you could be doing something completely different that would drastically change things.

James: Right. And you’re not to go too far down that hole, but there’s a difference between getting a sense of things, which is what some dashboards will do, but once you have a sense of things, you don’t need to continue to have the same sense. After that, you need to know more … Are there discrepancies in performance? Are things shifting radically? … or whatever.

Amy: Right. But if you find out … if you establish that 80% of your traffic is from United States, seeing that every single week or every single month isn’t gonna be super useful for you.

James: Yeah, it’s only gonna be useful if for some reason-

Amy: It stops being that.

James: Yeah. 80% of your traffic shifts to China or India or something.

Amy: Yeah.

James: So if I was gonna sum this whole thing up, I would say that you can break the idea of this. The 20 Minute Workweek, you can break it into two different sections. There are some positive aspects of it. And there are some negative aspects of it. The positive aspects come from some general ideas like having a starting point, having a guided series of steps. Like a thing that you can just step through and do to check the most important things that usually come up, not necessarily to define everything you do on an account, but just to give attention to the things that need attention on a regular basis.
It could also be very valuable, I think, just in general as a habit to set a certain time limit so that you don’t get too far down a rabbit hole. So that … and just as far as human psychology goes, we tend to get what we have to get done in a set time if we have a set time. And we don’t if we don’t. Right?

Amy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James: And finally, the fourth thing, which is just the focus. What comes with that? When we have a series of tasks to accomplish and a set amount of time to do it in, we have the focus to go through that and accomplish it.
So the negative things … and this mainly comes from the 20 minute part, which sadly is the marketing aspect of it. Right? It’s the thing that usually gets people to pay attention. ‘Cause it’s like, “Oh, well, if I can finish everything I need to in 20 minutes every week, then booyah!”

Amy: I make … that’s equal to $8,000 an hour.

James: So that’s like the big lie of it. That’s the myth.

Amy: Yeah, that’s the myth. And I want to be clear. This isn’t pros and cons for having a strategy that you show up and follow steps. There’s just pros there as far as I’m concerned. The con would be the misapplication of a good principle. So I have an app on my phone that’s a seven minute workout. And it helps me. It gets me moving. It helps me do … get my heart rate up during the day when I wouldn’t otherwise. And it’s high intensity, and so I get a lot of value from it. There are people who are like, “Oh, that’s the worst thing. Because if you’re working out for less than 45 minutes, it’s not even worth doing.”
Well, for me, it is because if I’m doing a seven minute workout, it’s not because I was thinking about doing a 45 minute and didn’t. This is something valuable for me. It’s just like if you misapply it, and you’re like, “Oh, this is all I have to do. I don’t have to do anything else.” Well, then, yeah, that’s wrong.

James: Well, and some of the problems, just to summarize those is that the whole idea of getting it done in 20 minutes is for sure conflating analysis with execution.

Amy: Yes.

James: To do this, essentially, you’re required to have a step that takes almost no time. So you don’t get to actually do any of the work that helps you to choose what to do with the execution. Right?

Amy: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James: Second step is that you tend to miss out on the good stuff. You tend to miss out on anything that might make sense for you to kind of go off on the side and investigate because this implies that all you need are these things within this time limit.

Amy: Yeah. It’s just not comprehensive. And that’s okay, unless you need it to be comprehensive. And then it falls short.

James: Right. Okay. Well, this is a pretty quick episode, I think, this week. One thing that I did want to say is next week you have some exciting news coming up. I just wanted to throw out that Amy‘s gonna be speaking at [inaudible 00:19:01].

Amy: I sure will.

James: She was selected as one of the few community speakers that they have each year, which is a pretty competitive process. And this was your first pitch for that wasn’t it?

Amy: It was my first pitch. It’ll be my first time attending, so there’s a lot to learn about this, yeah.

James: So if you’re going to [inaudible 00:19:18], make sure that you check that out. I think you’re speaking on the first day?

Amy: Yep, Monday morning.

James: All right, so if you’re going to [inaudible 00:19:25], look for us, we’d love to chat with you. And otherwise, we’ll be back next week.