“Every morning, therefore, at about 9.30 after breakfast each of us, as if moved by a law of unquestioned nature, went off and ‘worked’ until lunch at one. It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots or pictures, if one works hard and professionally for three and a half hours every day for 330 days [a year]. That was why, despite her disabilities, Virginia was able to produce so very much.” -Leonard Woolf
1: You, me, we are all living different, distinct lives. Not only that, but each of our lives is constantly changing.
Which is why it follows, Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals, “if rules should serve life, rather than the other way around, it follows that we shouldn’t expect there to be many one-size-fits-all rules for making the most of our time.”
And yet, “there’s one rule that comes close,” he observes.
“If we’re a ‘knowledge worker’—that is, if we spend your days doing things with computers and words and ideas, as opposed to, say, building houses out of bricks,” he notes, “then we’ll make the most progress, and cover the most ground, if we limit yourself to about three or four hours of intense mental focus each day.”
If we have creative or deep work to do, this seems to be the ideal amount of time.
“It’s a little unnerving, to be honest,” Oliver writes, “how frequently this specific range of hours crops up in historical accounts of the daily routines of artists, authors, scientists, composers, and others.
“There’s Charles Darwin, at work on the theory of natural selection in his study at Down House outside London, concentrating for two ninety-minute periods and one one-hour period each day; and Virginia Woolf, writing for three and a half hours after a leisurely breakfast, producing nine novels, around fifty short stories, three book-length essays and scores of shorter works, despite ending her own life at fifty-nine.
“The mathematician Henri Poincaré focused intensely from ten to twelve in the morning, and from five to seven in the evening, then called it a day.
“Charles Dickens, Thomas Jefferson, Alice Munro and J. G. Ballard all engaged in focused work for a similar stretch of time, as did Anthony Trollope, who claimed, somewhat irritatingly, that he managed to write 250 words every fifteen minutes during the three-hour stint he put in each morning, before heading to his job at the post office.”
“Three hours a day,” Anthony remarked, “will produce as much as a man ought to write.”
Oliver shares many of these examples from Alex Pang‘s book Rest. Alex writes: “Because intense focus uses up energy; because it’s more effective to focus intensely during only our peak hours, rather than half-heartedly all day; and because creativity appears to depend partly on processes taking place in our brains while we’re not focusing.”
2: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
At the end of each week, we are exploring some of the life lessons Oliver shares in his wonderful book Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve explored different approaches to productivity, including words of wisdom from Dan Martell, Sahil Bloom, and last week and next, Google Productivity expert Laura Mae Martin.
Oliver offers a different perspective on this topic, which emphasizes focused work for a concentrated but shorter time period each day. He believes there are two parts to the “three-to-four-hour rule” of getting creative or deep work done.
Part 1: “The first is to try,” he suggests, “to whatever degree our situation permits—to ringfence a three- or four-hour period each day, free from appointments or interruptions.
Part 2: “Accept that our other hours will probably be characterized by the usual fragmentary chaos of life,” Oliver notes. Trying to impose too much order here is unlikely to be successful.
3: There are three benefits to this two-part plan: “To begin with,” he writes, “it acknowledges the reality that most of us don’t have the capacity for more than a few daily hours of intense concentration.
“But it also respects limitation in another important way: it frees us from the futile perfectionistic struggle to try to make the whole day unfold in accordance with our desires.”
Which “pushes back against the ubiquitous modern urge to get as much done as possible as fast as possible,” Oliver observes, “in obedience to the inner voice whispering that just maybe, if we really went hell-for-leather for the next few days, we might get on top of the work once and for all.
“That approach fails,” he explains, “not least because rest and good moods are both essential for sustained and successful work.”
Accepting this idea that three to four hours of intense work challenges the strong cultural messaging that the answer is to push ourselves ever harder.
One key insight? Accepting the uncomfortable insight that the work will never be done. “We can abandon the delusion that if we just managed to squeeze in a couple more hours of focused work,” Oliver observes, “we’d finally reach the commanding position of mastering it all.”
This wisdom is as old as time. In fact, “a central point of the Jewish and Christian tradition of the Sabbath is that we have to stop anyway,” he writes, “not because we’ve finished, but just because it’s time to stop.”
More next week!
______________________
Reflection: Am I allowing myself the permission to concentrate deeply for a few hours, or am I trapped in the belief that working longer always means achieving more?
Action: Set aside a daily window of three to four hours for focused, uninterrupted work—and accept the rest of the day’s natural chaos without guilt.
What did you think of this post?
