A great quote I heard from Jim Rohn and it’s such an important lesson on how to build a good future.

It's about practicing and honing fundamentals in order to improve our lives. Health, wealth and relationships. I would like to concentrate on one example here and examine the ability to perform on a skill basis.

Consider first how much time elite sports people spend practicing and developing expertise at one particular skill to then execute that skill at a sports match. In comparison, could you imagine how productive we would be working one day a week at business if we spent the other four days a week studying and improving our skills. For the rest of our lives?

Could you imagine how much value we could create on that one day in the work week? We get experience and learn skills in our work environment, but are we always up to date with what we need for our future? New and better ways of working and are always coming out and not every business is keeping up with training.

The ‘reverse’ four day week is an extreme example and not practical for all but it is to talk about one end of the spectrum. How about somewhere in the middle like 2-3 days of continuous skill improvement. Could you imagine the compounding effects of that? You would develop some serious expertise in no time.

The point I am trying to make is the accumulated benefit on working on yourself. While it would be somewhat difficult to achieve a one day working week in a practical sense, studying and learning one hour per day will have a dramatic compounding effect and we can more realistically start with that. We just need to look to the medical profession or software developers for example. They will typically take on a lifetime of continuous study and updating their skills in order to stay relevant. Could you imagine if we all took on that same self-improvement continual learning updating skills philosophy and how much that would translate into more successful career prospects? We should all demand this of ourselves.

Working on our communication skills, such as writing and speaking skills is a biggie. I just heard yesterday that Warren Buffett believes that people could increase their income by up to 50% by just having better speaking and writing skills. I think we all agree that the ability to get our message across, get on with people and influence others makes our lives and relationships easier whether we are talking to kids or adults.

In we concentrate on actual work in a business for a moment, four day work weeks are now trending and picking up momentum in some countries with the assumption that people will be more productive consolidating their five day week into four days. If that comes our way, we should all consider the opportunity to seriously consider studying continuous improvement upgrading our skills rather than let the extra day go.

I think I would benefit from 52 days in a year on working on my communication skills. Bring on the four day week!

What are you working harder on yourself that you do on your job?