Just four hours. Do not ‘maximise your time’ or ‘optimise your day’

Taken from an article by Oliver Burkeman:

• Give up demanding more of yourself than three or four hours of daily high-quality mental work
• Do not ‘maximise your time’ or ‘optimise your day’ – instead, specifically ringfence three or four hours of undisturbed focus (ideally when your energy levels are highest).
• Stop assuming that the way to make progress on your most important projects is to work for longer. And drop the perfectionistic notion that emails, meetings, digital distractions and other interruptions ought ideally to be whittled away to practically nothing.
• Focus on protecting four hours – and don’t worry if the rest of the day is characterised by the usual scattered chaos.

The truly valuable skill here isn’t the capacity to push yourself harder, but to stop and recuperate despite the discomfort of knowing that work remains unfinished, emails unanswered, other people’s demands unfulfilled.

There aren’t many hard-and-fast rules of time management that apply to everyone, always, regardless of situation or personality, but I think there might be one:

You almost certainly can’t consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day.

SOME HARD TRUTHS:

We live in a system that demands too much of us, leaves no time for rest, and makes many feel as though their survival depends on working impossible hours. But it’s also true that we’re increasingly the kind of people who don’t want to rest – who get antsy and anxious if we don’t feel we’re being productive. The usual result is that we push ourselves beyond the sane limits of daily activity, when doing less would have been more productive in the long run.

How far you can check out of the culture of unproductive busywork depends on your situation, of course. But regardless of your situation, you can choose not to collaborate with it.

You can abandon the delusion that if you just managed to squeeze in a bit more work, you’d finally reach the commanding status of feeling “in control” and “on top of everything” at last. The truly valuable skill here isn’t the capacity to push yourself harder, but to stop and recuperate despite the discomfort of knowing that work remains unfinished, emails unanswered, other people’s demands unfulfilled.

So damn good.

Hope you enjoyed this takeaway as much as I did.