Hello Friends,
And happy Monday!
I am taking a break from publishing for the rest of the summer.
I will still be curating lots of fascinating ideas when we meet back in September.
Last one until then, on ruthless focus:
Three or four hours 3min
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.
Charles Darwin, at work on the theory of evolution in his study at Down House, toiled for two 90-minute periods and one one-hour period per day.
The mathematical genius Henri Poincaré worked for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon.
Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Ingmar Bergman and many more all basically followed suit, as Alex Pang explains in his book Rest.
For those who know me, this is also the archetype of the 80/20 principle.
You are most likely delivering most of your day’s value in 1-2h max. The rest, as important as it might be, is not as critical. Those 1-2 hours you can’t afford to underperform.
Thanks for reading, and have a focused summer ahead,
V