Just aim for 90 minutes

0:03 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to aim for 90 minutes of focused work most workdays. Even if you can't spend hours on heads-down work each day, you can get a lot more done when you protect at least a small amount of of time.

0:35 Today's tip comes from the book Ultra Productive by Eric Partaker and Dr. Christian Punzgen. I recently interviewed Christian for Before Breakfast, so if you haven't already, please check that episode out. Most of the lessons in Ultra Productive are built around the idea of 90-minute cycles. For instance, if you would like to boost your energy, aim to get at least 90 minutes of deep sleep a night. something that usually requires being in bed at least seven hours, but is trackable with different apps and wearables. We can also think in terms of 90 minutes at work. 90 minutes tends to be about as long as people can work without some sort of break. A good workday might consist of 90 focused minutes on one project, followed by

1:25 a real break, then 90 minutes on another project, and so forth. Of course, many workdays look nothing like that. You do 30-minute or 60-minute meetings, often back-to-back. Time not spent on meetings is fragmented into emails on different projects, answering Slack messages, and so forth. But the authors argue that you can massively boost your productivity by getting just 90 minutes of focused work time each day. You protect one block of 90 minutes and choose important work to do during that time. Most people get just a few minutes of focused work time each day, the authors say, and their work suffers as a result. What I love about this tip is that it feels doable. Whenever I suggest people block time for focused work, I hear excuses

2:26 about how many meetings and Slack messages and whatever else people are dealing with. they can't carve out three-hour blocks of focus time day after day. So, don't. Even if you have a lot of meetings or a lot of urgent requests, I am guessing most people in knowledge jobs could carve out 90 minutes, even if that means starting a little early. Put your first meeting of the day at 9.30 a.m. Dive right into your first task at 8 a.m. and go for 90 minutes. This probably won't take a lot of schedule overhaul. Or if that is not an option, you might be able to do a 90-minute stint covering the time when many people take their lunch breaks. Most people won't really question a block of noon to 1.30 with no meetings either. Or for that matter,

3:22 it might be no meetings after 4 p.m. And you work on focused work from 4 to 5.30 p.m. though I suspect many people's energy won't be so great at that point. But whatever 90-minute time slot you set, you just have to be good about protecting it. And herein lies the problem. Though not the problem you may be thinking, the problem is often not other people. You might be able to do just fine not putting meetings until 9.30.

3:55 But then many of us Interrupt ourselves. It's kind of exciting to see what is in our various inboxes. We like to check headlines and feel on top of things. We want to look at our texts and then look at all the other alluring things that happen to be on our phones. Working 90 minutes straight on something challenging is really hard. So we interrupt ourselves to work on other things and then claim that the world won't let us focus. I get it. I have been guilty of this myself. But it might be worth trying to see what you can get done. Push through the first few hard minutes and then get into the flow. When you take a break 90 minutes later, you will probably feel like you really earned it. Now, I am not sure

4:53 that this will actually quadruple your productivity or anything like that. One of the upsides of working for myself in a creative business is that I do carve out 90 minutes or more for focused writing probably most days. And I don't think I am four times more productive than anyone else. But many people do feel frustrated that they don't make progress on big projects, or they have to carve out time at night or on the weekends to get work done.

5:22 One simple block of 90 minutes, treated carefully, might solve that problem. I get that people can't lock themselves in a tower, but you might be able to lock yourself away for 90 minutes if you are careful about not opening that tower door yourself and shouting, hey everyone, come bother me. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening.

5:52 And here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thank you.