The Art of Working for Six Weeks, Taking Two Weeks Off

By Neale Orinick, Guest Contributor 

It’s radical. Unthinkable! It will never work. 

How could one possibly work for only six weeks at a time and then take two weeks off? 

But, if somehow you could, would you?

Imagine how your life would be different. With two weeks off every six weeks just think about how much time you would have to read, finish that DIY home remodeling project or visit family and friends. You could get all your errands done like getting the car serviced, the dry cleaning dropped off and picked up, have time to read that novel cover to cover, or finally start writing one. 

That’s the reality Joe Martin of Martin Creative lives and he wrote a book about it called 6 Week Cycles.

He opens the book with this:

“While this book is a step-by-step framework for working in 6-Week Cycles, it’s ultimately about respecting time. I was at a business skill-building workshop on time management when the coordinator asked, ‘when someone is on their deathbed and you ask if they’d like to have more time or money, which one do you think they’d pick?’”

Of course, faced with death we would all pick more time because without it all the money in the world is irrelevant. Sadly, though, our American work culture celebrates those who put in long days or never use all their vacation time. In our technologically advanced world too often we are always working- connected to work through our smartphones, tablets, and laptops. 

“Time for money. The one thing we can’t ever make more of, we frivolously trade away.”

I know what you’re thinking. You could never work six weeks straight with no time off day after day after day. No one can and that is not how 6-Week Cycles works. Everybody keeps regular business hours from nine to five for the most part and are off on the weekends. The difference is in how each day at work is spent, carefully planned with clear expectations for everybody involved, Martin’s team and their clients. The work is not about how much time is invested, it is in the results accomplished with each task. 

Time Time Time, See What’s Become of Me

Whether you prefer Simon & Garfunkel’s version of “Hazy Shade of Winter,” or the more modern rock take by The Bangles, the message of time always rapidly passing and you need to “look around” or you will miss your life, endures. How many people have gone from “the springtime of my life” only to look around and discover they are living in a “hazy shade of winter?” 

Author Joe Martin was determined not to let that happen to him. Building off an idea by Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, he decided to rally his team and create six-week work cycles; work six weeks then everybody gets two weeks off to do what they want.

This book could not be more timely as Americans are quitting their jobs in droves, flat out refusing to end remote work to return to the office full time, and demanding more flexible schedules. Clearly, more time is as important to many people as more money. 

According to Joe Martin, you can have both. It’s all about the planning. When you nail that down the rewards reaped are priceless. The positive effect working six weeks cycles has had on his entire team of twenty people, including four working internationally, have been astounding. 

Productivity exploded with everyone on the same page working towards a definitive goal that would be accomplished in six weeks. Everyone was less stressed and more focused because they knew what they had to get done and the reward at the end was a  luxurious two-week break that would repeat every six weeks instead of once a year. 

“With 6-week cycles, my team feels accomplished. Our mentality has shifted. It’s not about getting through the thousands of things that need to be done, it’s about completing the tasks we’ve planned to move the organization forward right now.”

Planning is Everything

In the course of careful planning, Martin realized that if deadlines were missed the problem was more easily defined and dealt with. Was the team member who missed a deadline stretched too thin or unrealistic about what they could get done in a day or a week? Or was it that the team as a whole had set unrealistic expectations for themselves and needed to change that to ensure nobody was falling behind? 

With a clear timeline and expectations, everyone on the Martin Creative team became better at time management and really began to understand their capabilities and limits. More importantly they learned how to deal with the things that come up and build that into their master plan to stay on schedule and complete each day’s tasks.

“Humans are awful at estimating time. Often it’s because we omit the smaller steps involved in completing a task. Or, we simply haven’t taken the time to define the subtasks involved in our larger tasks.” 

Expect Failure

The Martin Creative team’s first effort to plan a six-week work cycle fell apart immediately when something came up. They went back to the drawing board, came up with a new plan only for it to promptly implode. So they tried again, and again until they finally nailed down a system. 

“We messed up sooo many cycles planning to plan a project within a cycle. Only to find we had vastly underestimated the time & effort we needed to invest in the project’s completion. Which would ruin the meticulous planning we had done for the cycle. In turn, upsetting the team, and making us think cycles were stupid and never going to work for us.” 

Stuff Always Comes Up-Plan For It

There is no way to know what is going to come up in a six-week work cycle so the author’s team realized they had to plan for stuff to come up. 

Someone would get sick and miss several days of work. Or someone on the team would have a family emergency that necessitated a trip out of town.

A client would change their mind about something and whatever they were working on for them would have to be scrapped and started over, or changed to some degree.

“The idea that,’ too much stuff comes up, we can’t plan ahead,” is not a feasible excuse. And dammit! Too many people use this excuse not to plan because they think it’s too hard. In reality,  we just need to plan for things to come up.”

Martin details how his team learned how to plan for the unplanned and how to get back on track when plans got derailed. It is not as simple as it sounds, but his team was on board. Everybody wanted to make 6 Week Cycles a success, so they did.  

Reality Check

While I was excited by the idea of working for six weeks and taking two off I was skeptical that it could actually work. So, I reached out to the author, Joe Martin, for a reality check.

My first question was how did clients react to the idea that their project would be completed in six weeks then his team was out of there for two?

“We have structured our initial package to be completed in 6 weeks. If a client does want to continue with us after that time we will provide a 12-month engagement, but everything is broken into cycles.”

I pushed him further about how his clients viewed the six-week work cycle. Surely some of them had to be unhappy about it, right?

“I expected a lot more pushback from clients — who wouldn't?! But it's worked out really well. I believe a big part of it is setting proper expectations from the beginning. 

At the beginning of each cycle, we outline exactly what we will be completing over the next 6 weeks in our cycle kickoff meeting. Then we meet with them weekly to update them on progress or work through items that need their feedback. Then we have a cycle close meeting at the end of those 6 weeks.”

Clients know they can still get a hold of us during those 2 weeks, but honestly, I think they appreciate the time away from us — they have enough other stuff going on.”

So, not everyone is entirely disconnected from work, then? 

“During the two weeks off we still monitor email, run A/B tests on client sites, and respond to any necessary emails. It just isn't as regimented, there are no required monthly meetings, and if a client really needs us we'll jump on. They just don't need us very often during those times — which, again, I believe comes from setting those upfront expectations with the client.”

I am convinced Joe Martin is really making this six weeks on two weeks off work cycle work. Now I was curious; what did he do with his time off?

“I'm awful about this because I still love working on my two weeks off. It turns out my hobby is 'more work'. Though the focus shifts to being able to work on the business instead of in the business. I get a little more of the full picture. It also gives me time to reflect. I'm allowed the mental capacity to look back at the last 6 weeks and ask, ‘what went well? what didn't?” Then afforded the ability to make changes in the next cycle that helps fewer things 'not go well.'

While it still needs more testing — I've found these two weeks require my time as a leader. But my team has a little more flexibility. One of my guys needed to have his gallbladder removed, pushed off his surgery until the upcoming 2-week break because he knew he could miss that time. Another employee was planning a vacation with his family, was able to do it over that 2 week time and it didn't cause any additional stress on the rest of the team.”

A New Normal?

Obviously, a six-week work cycle with two weeks off is not feasible for many companies. However, the idea and the methods Martin writes about in 6 Week Cycles are appealing and plausible for many entrepreneurs and small companies. 

He really nails down what many of us learned working from home during pandemic stay-at-home orders; we could get a day’s work done in four or five hours instead of eight or nine at the office. Sometimes we could get a week’s worth of work done in a couple of days!

Getting that time back, a precious resource that when it is gone it is gone forever has changed the way Americans view their working lives. If for no other reason than the pleasure of daydreaming what you would do with two weeks off every six weeks to pursue life outside of your career I highly recommend you pick up a copy of 6 Week Cycles by Joe Martin (you’ll get a cool handwritten thank you note when you do!). It will allow you to consider how you might make it work to some degree in your life.