How The 4-Hour Work Week Forced Me to Rethink Defining Sonder

I did not expect a productivity book to slow me down.

I picked up The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, thinking it would help me optimize my time. Instead, Chapter 5 did something more uncomfortable. It forced me to confront how much of my “work” was actually rooted in fear and avoidance.

The chapter focuses on Parkinson’s Law, the 80/20 principle, and asks a question at the end, which forced me to sit and re-think my approach to Defining Sonder.

• If you had a heart attack and could only work two hours a day, what would you do?

• Then, if you had another heart attack and could only work two hours a week, what would you do?

After a few hours of reflection, almost everything I had been doing fell apart.

The uncomfortable realization

As you may or may not know, I am building a new business called Defining Sonder. It is rooted in human connection, curiosity, and helping people stay grounded in moments of disagreement. I care deeply about this work, which is exactly why I have been overthinking it.

I kept asking questions like:

• What could this become?

• How many formats should it have?

• Should it be a blog, vlog, podcast, newsletter, workshops, virtual sessions, or all of the above?

• How could it eventually generate sustainable income?

Honestly, those questions felt responsible and strategic, but they also kept me from committing to anything concrete.

Chapter 5 (The End of Time Management) made it clear that if I only had two hours a day, I would not be designing futures. I would be focused on running something real.

What the 80/20 rule exposed in my work

The 80/20 principle asks you to identify the small set of actions that produce most of the results. When I applied that to Defining Sonder, the answer was obvious and not the sexy entrepreneurial outcome I was hoping for.

Eighty percent All of the value came from one thing - running the live Thanksgiving workshop where people practiced staying human in difficult conversations.

Everything else I’ve been doing (writing, refining language, thinking about scale, imagining future offerings) felt productive, but did not move this work forward in the real world.

The truth was hard to admit, but it’s clear I've been confusing possibility with progress.

The shift that changed everything

Instead of asking "what could this become", I started asking a different question:

• Can this reliably help one person in one real moment?

That question helped strip away the noise.

Defining Sonder does not need to be a movement. It does not need to scale. It does not need to exist everywhere at once.

It needs to work in a room, on a specific day, with real people.

Once I accepted that, the business stopped feeling overwhelming, and it’s now becoming operational.

How I reframed my business using Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law says that work expands to fill the time you give it. I realized my thinking and preparation were doing the same thing.

So I imposed constraints.

• One workshop.

• One outcome.

• One room.

• One date.

• One clear promise.

Instead of giving myself months to “figure it out,” I gave myself a deadline that is 22 days away and created a repetition plan. I have committed to running the same workshop six times over six months before evaluating anything else.

That constraint did more for my clarity than any planning session ever had.

What Defining Sonder actually promises now

This was the most important outcome of my exercise today.

Defining Sonder is no longer a vague idea about empathy or connection. It has a clear promise:

• It helps people interrupt automatic judgment and stay human in moments of disagreement.

People will walk away with:

• A pause they did not have before.

• A new way to see the person in front of them.

• A small set of questions they can use immediately.

• The felt sense that disagreement does not require disconnection.

• That is specific enough to practice and repeat.

The lesson I am carrying forward

Chapter 5 of The 4-Hour Work Week did not teach me how to do more. It taught me how to stop hiding behind thoughtful busyness.

Meaningful work does not need infinite possibilities. It needs focus, repetition, and the courage to be small long enough to become real.

For now, Defining Sonder does not need to become anything else.

It needs to work once this month. And then it needs to work again next month.

An invitation, if this resonates

I am testing all of this in the most grounded way I know how.

I am running a small, in-person workshop called Staying Human When You Disagree, where we practice pausing judgment, staying present, and choosing how we show up in difficult conversations.

It is simple, practical, and rooted in real moments people are navigating right now.

If this piece resonated with you and you are interested in joining in person on January 25th, 2026, I would love to have you there.

No performance. No fixing. Just a room where we slow down and practice staying human together.

With love & gratitude,

Dre