Wouldn’t it be nice to have a three hour workday? The rest of the day you can follow your flow wherever it may lead. Some people including psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi think that’s as good as life gets. Here are some time management tips how to do just that.
It’s like that moment when you’re surprised and say, “where did the time go?” Think back to days where you had a really productive morning and blew off the rest of the day. What was the quality and quantity of your work? How did you feel? Relaxed, focused, alive? Did you make significant progress on an important project?
We now know from neuroscience that we only get about three hours of quality focused thinking time a day. The rest of the day we are basically phoning it in using mental models and habits to keep us from falling off the rails.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of mental models and habits. If you want to learn more about the former you should check out my friend Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street Blog. But back to the three hour workday, what should it look like?
Here’s how the Three Hour Day is structured.
The three-hour Set is broken up into three Sessions. First a 90 minute uninterrupted Solo or Duo thinking session. It can’t be with three people, that would be a meeting and that’s got different rules. In those 90 minutes, close your door, do not answer your phone, turn off notifications, do not check email, do not pass notes. The point is to get to the bottom of whatever challenge or opportunity you have chosen to invest the better part of your working day on. This needs to be important but not necessarily urgent. It’s probably strategic or at least tactical, instead of operational.
The next session is a 60 minute Jam Session for making beautiful meetings with others—whether in person or on the phone or video conference. It’s not only for jamming with them like a jazz ensemble but also to jam the time out of most those interactions. I say most because two different kinds of meetings do benefit by taking your time and letting everyone including the meeting breath. Those are the two types of divergent meetings: for creative solutions, and purely social gatherings to build relationships.
I lump writing complex emails into the Jam Session. When a phone call or meeting just won’t do sometimes you have to put it in writing. For this you need to have an open-minded listening mindset. That’s why I like to take complex emails out of the deep thinking session because it needs you to use your communication skills a little more than your focus skills. Thinking sessions can be abstract, disjointed, chaotic. That’s not a good mindset for conversing.
Then there is a 30 minute session for rapid task Finales. These are for any little projects that can be completed in 30 minutes or less and that probably don’t need you to turn on your focused mind. Things like paying a bill, purchasing an item, a quick thank you call, run a mundane report. Frequently these tasks are just scanning or sorting items, not highly engaging with them. If the Solo sessions are long and deep, the Finales sessions are short and thin.
Juggling Snowballs in a Tornado
Here are some other time management tips. You can choose to do these in any order. That’s a matter of style. Tornados like to get the little things done so they can concentrate on the big things. Snowballs like to get the big things done first and the little things last, just like stacking snowballs. And Jugglers just do whatever they want whenever they want. I like to call these styles—Juggling Snowballs in a Tornado. In other words, if you don’t intentionally stick with your style—you or someone else may get snow splashed on their face.
Now, if you have no choice but to work a standard 8 hour day, I suggest you do a 3 Hour Set before lunch, and another after lunch. This still leaves you with about 2 hours a day for Improv. Improvisation is a mental state of, “Yes, and…” which is open mindset instead of, “No, but…” which is closed-minded.
If you don’t have an open-mindset around your team then you’re probably micro-managing and that’s probably not going to end well. Micro-managing may be necessary if you are in an exacting business with exceedingly high quality standards—but those businesses are getting rarer and rarer because of technology’s help.
But if you truly are an artisan, and you truly do something that no one else on your team could do—then a closed mindset may be required. I’ve heard it called being a tyrant for quality. If quality is your product or service, and only you have that magic touch—then go for it. If not, life is much more enjoyable when you delegate.
There is some current thinking that you cannot motivate someone. All you can do is give them some autonomy, have them be with other like-minded folks, and make sure they have the skills they need to grow. Once these people and the team catch their rhythm you’ll have a drumbeat everyone can dance to. A good manager or supervisor needs to focus on trusting, supporting, and encouraging—instead of doing their people’s work for them. That’s what really eats up the day.
If you can just work three hours a day and follow this system, then each day you will be doing only the most important things for success, doing whatever communicating that requires, and quickly tidying up those little loose ends. It’s like a mini-day. And one of the little things is to plan what tomorrow’s Set looks like before signing off for the day.
During the rest of your day you will get insights into course-corrections or adjustments you’ll need to make. This is the divergent part of your day. Why not leave a bit of your best “thinking time” for choosing what to think about, first?
The 3 Hour Set in the morning was mostly convergent. It’s kinda like do-ing and be-ing. Do be do be do. While Do-ing will get you there, Be-ing is choosing where to go. You need both, now more than ever. Societal innovation is fast and only getting faster.
Now, again, depending on your style you might like to get your convergent thinking done at night rather than in the morning. You may be a early bird or a night owl, maybe a crow that squawks at dusk and dawn. It’s a similar theory to juggling snowballs in a tornado. Style is important.
You probably already know which you like best. I know for myself, when I’m tired I can have an unusually creative session. That’s because my “inner critic” my convergent self is too tired to put up much of a fight and my creative mind can come out to play. More and more, it’s those creative solutions that account for the really BIG wins.
It’s not about working hard, it’s about working smart with a rhythm. What’s your DRUMBEAT sound like?