I'm using the Pomodoro technique, and I get much more done that before, working the same amount of hours, or even less. It's not about quantity, but quality. If you work for 10-12 hours a day but don't make the most of that time by having laser focus, then there is no point in forcing yourself to sit on the chair for that amount of time. What would you prefer, 2x, or even 3x productivity for 30 minutes intervals in, let's say 8 hours, or 1x for 12 hours?
Absolutely right! Sleeping fewer than 7 or 8 hours is a really good way to destroy your health. Your body repairs itself during sleep. Give it time to do so.I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure sleeping 3 hours every night for a long period leads to, at least, serious health problems. In some extreme cases, the lack of sleep leads to plain death (mentioned on Learning How To Learn course on Coursera). If you want to be an entrepreneur and play the long run, you need to take care of yourself. There might be some exceptional days when you can sleep for 3 hours, but that's not even half of the sleep a normal person needs.
I think that being obsessed with working "many hours" is a big mistake. How do I know? Because I've been obsessed as well, and I'm still trying to get rid of that mentality. But I'm starting to see that's the wrong metric. I'm using the Pomodoro technique, and I get much more done that before, working the same amount of hours, or even less. It's not about quantity, but quality. If you work for 10-12 hours a day but don't make the most of that time by having laser focus, then there is no point in forcing yourself to sit on the chair for that amount of time. What would you prefer, 2x, or even 3x productivity for 30 minutes intervals in, let's say 8 hours, or 1x for 12 hours?
I also read recently that after more than 50 hours per week, productivity declines too much to pay off the effort and the cost it creates over time.
I also use the Pomodoro technique, though I work better in 50-minute sprints. I believe you must determine your own pace, but taking a break of ten or fifteen minutes between sprints is essential for physical health, at the very least, especially if your work is sedentary. I use a Chrome extension pomodoro timer that lets you set up different length work periods, so I select the length of time I expect to take to complete a task (between 15 minutes and 50) and focus on that task until the timer stops me. No Facebook, no Fastlane Forum , no phone calls (I silence my cell phone and ignore the landline), nothing but that one task. You'd be surprised what you can do when your focus is complete.
One thing you mentioned has me wondering. You said you spend most of your time figuring out what step to take next or waiting for results after you take action so you can move to the next action. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like a lot of sitting around waiting. What could you be doing that is related to your business, productive, and not busywork? Without knowing your business or what are the actions for which you are waiting for results, I can't make specific suggestions. However, I suspect you could at the very least be reading about best practices in copywriting, advertising and marketing, time management, etc. As Stephen Covey directed in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, sharpen the saw.
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.