creative maverick

I want to work a maximum of 4 hours per day (see this earlier post) and I’m guessing this might appeal to a lot of other people too. Given that the average office worker only does 90 minutes of genuinely useful work per day, I reckon I should do just fine on 4 hours of good work.

I’ve identified all the reasons I’m currently working too much (see How I Waste My Time) and I reckon working a shorter day will in itself eradicate many of these time-wasting behaviours.

Having more free time will allow me to meet the needs that I’m currently subconsciously addressing with ineffective behaviours like doing fun stuff when I should be doing something else. This is because I’ll know that once I finish work I’ll still have plenty of time to play around with fun projects that aren’t part of my business.

Here’s the key to my experiment. It’s all about being very focussed when I am working and the productivity gain that brings should allow me to work for fewer hours. And knowing I don’t have to work for too long should in turn help me focus.

I know this works for me because when I focus properly I can get a surprising amount of important stuff done in a very short period of time. Even 10 minutes can produce impressive results with complete focus. It’s not necessary to try to work harder.

Currently I am not used to being intensely focussed (and chances are neither are you) so I will start with a short block of time - just 30 minutes of focus followed by a break. If you are tackling something you have huge resistance to, consider a very short unit of time like 10-15 minutes.

Here’s how to approach it. This is based on a technique by Time Management guru Mark Forster.

An exercise in focus

1. Get a kitchen timer or similar that counts down (not a stopwatch that counts up).
2. Choose an amount of time you think you can focus for - in my case, 30 minutes - and set the timer
3. Minimise distractions - switch your phone off, take your email offline, close any instant messenger windows or set your status to busy.
4. Be clear what task you are going to do. It should be something that will fit into the amount of time you have set aside for yourself.
5. Write this task down on a piece of paper and place it in front of you.
6. Get ready to work - sit at your desk (or wherever is relevant) with everything you need to begin.
7. Start the timer counting down - it should be visible in front of you.
8. Work! Do the task you wrote down.
9. When the timer goes off, stop. If you haven’t finished, make a note of what needs to be done in your next block of time. Take a break - check your email, get a drink, stretch, or do something fun like surf the web.

How did it go?

I’ve just done this now while writing this post and what I notice is that 30 minutes may be too long for me. At 15 minutes, I felt in need of a mental rest. I stopped and stretched and then carried on. The bulk of this post is done so that’s a good result for 30 minutes.

The next test is to scale this up to 4 hours by doing multiple 30 minute segments with short breaks in between. I’ll be reporting on this when I get back to work in the New Year. In the meantime, leave me a comment to let me know how you get on.