The last time Nebraska made a bowl game seems like forever ago.

Nine years, to be exact.

My oldest son, Gideon, and I flew to San Francisco the day after Christmas to watch Nebraska battle UCLA at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

We had a great trip. Nebraska won in the last few minutes.

On the way out, I picked up a copy of the oft-talked Tim Ferriss classic, the Four Hour Workweek.

This book has become nearly required reading for entrepreneurs and those who want to find more accessible paths to success.

It gave me some fun insights and a look into Tim Ferriss’s mind and his ability to document, outsource, and scale.

A few years later, our favorite blue-shirted expert, Michael Kitces, worked on a lead advisor time study that found some revealing insight on a very different work week.

The study found that advisors’ average work week was 43 hours. However, when the study broke down the averages across the functions of being an advisor, the averages actually came out to 53 hours.

It is far from a fantasy number that feels worthy of bragging about your flexibility and freedom to your college roommates.

Here is how the time breaks down in Kitces’s study:

Total Work Week: Lead financial advisors work an average of 53 hours per week.

8.8 hours | Client Meetings – connecting with current clients.

5.3 hours | Meeting Preparation – just getting ready to see clients.

6.6 hours | Financial Planning and Analysis – analytical work to respond to client queries.

6 hours | Client Servicing Tasks – follow-through tasks for client servicing.

9 hours | New Client Acquisition – securing new clients consumes nearly 4 hours of meetings and 5 hours on marketing and business development.

5.5 | Investment Management – investment-related tasks, like research and trading.

4.2 hours | Administrative Duties – minding all the admin responsibilities.

3.2 hours | Professional Development – staying up to date with education.

4.7 hours | Management Responsibilities – running the business and people who make the office work.

That’s a lot of hours.

What does this mean for us?

We need to invest in containing our tasks and creating efficiency.

We need to seek and destroy the things that add waste and learn to hire and delegate.

Tim Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Workweek” contrasts conventional norms with a focus on maximizing efficiency and freedom. While there’s no real path for great advisors to work 4 hours a week, there’s still wisdom to be gleaned from his central thesis. The book’s DEAL framework—Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation—outlines a path to redesigning your work life:

Definition: Reimagine success to pursue your passions now instead of waiting for retirement. What do we want our practices/firms to really be like?

Elimination: Use the 80/20 rule to focus on the most impactful tasks and minimize distractions. What moves the needle most for you and what moves the needle the most for your clients?

Automation: Outsource and automate tasks to free up time. We see many opportunities for firms to automate their data management to free up time and automatically deliver mission-critical insights.

Liberation: Break free from the 9-to-5 grind and geographical limits to enjoy “mini-retirements.” This is a function where advisors can start to model key learnings that can even inspire clients. Lets face it, fully retiring can be incredibly difficult, but we can model a hybrid approach to help everyone see a path that incorporates rest and rejuvenation.

How many hours are you putting in each week and is it how you want to be spending time?

How are you getting back time?