It's Not Really About Time
It's about Energy. But our current system tends to squeeze your time, not value it.
How often have you heard it’s not about the TIME you devote to things, it’s about the energy?
On some level, this is true. McKinsey research on executives has shown that working in a flow state can be 5 times more productive than when we are experiencing unnecessary friction. People love to cite this study. But what is it that executives do, primarily? They make decisions.
Also, what do most knowledge workers do all day? We make decisions.
Unless we are just responding to our boss, and cranking out what someone else needs from us. Then maybe we make fewer decisions. I would argue though that most of us do complex work that requires us to think, plan, and communicate.
This all involves dozens of micro-decisions in a day.
Each of those decisions takes energy. This is one reason I’m a big fan of taking a 90 minute lunch break (or two hours, if you can manage it). If you’re a parent, and you cut lunch breaks short to make school pick-up time, I get it.
Our brains aren’t truly designed for so many high-level decisions in one day.
Though some studies suggest we make roughly 35,000 decisions in a day, most of these are largely automatic. Don’t quote me on this. AI has taken over Google Searches, so it was taking me time to find the original source studies for this (and we ought to be a little concerned about this)1.
Our subconscious habits drive many of these decisions. But for the harder ones, we need to apply our mental and physical energy to deliberation. This has an energy cost. Whether it is large or small depends on how much resistance we have to the results of those decisions, perhaps.
When I first thought about a title for this newsletter, I also thought: time is an illusion. Why do I even want to advocate for 30 hours? What about Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour workweek?2 Am I not being aspirational enough?
Unfortunately Tim’s book relies on the use of underpaid virtual assistants in different countries to execute the tasks in his business. Granted, this outsourcing of labor was bound to happen when the digital revolution truly took off. Back in 2009 it felt radical.
Today, with self-employed people outsourcing many tasks to AI, perhaps it is worth another look.
Many of the entrepreneurial books I’ve read in recent years have taught me that it’s not about time, it’s about VALUE. If you’re not delivering value to your customer or clients, and you haven’t factored in a profit margin, pretty soon you won’t have a business.
Why didn’t I advocate for a 20-hour work week then?
Perhaps that’s where this newsletter will go next year, as AI begins to do even more of what humans used to do. We may want to spread the paid workload further, as they did in the 1930’s temporarily. Or maybe it will be about the emerging notion that our work will be independent from our income. This sounds radical.
For now, I want to reflect on how one hour of truly focused work (without social media, and without pings, dings, or interruptions) probably equals what used to be four hours of work in a traditional workplace.
IF you manage your attention, energy, and focus, that is.
Therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?
Our attention has eroded with addictive technologies and ever-present inboxes that seem to scream for our attention. Over twenty years ago I realized I had ADHD. It meant that Twitter (Oh, Sorry Elon: I meant X) was crack for my brain.
I just couldn’t.
It messed me up. I became an “early rejector” back in 2007 before most people had even heard of the company. Of course, I joined a wave of GenX facebookers and that was probably a mistake. It wasn’t such a distraction before I got my first smart phone but after?
Endless notifications. Split attention.
Meetings where people were there, but not really there. Always thinking about the next thing. I might have realized it before others did. Because I’d been operating that way for ~30 years without knowing it. Once I had meds, I leaned into the benefit of my “hyperfocus” superpower.
But this was also a recipe for burnout. I nearly always started work earlier than most to get some quiet focus in, and stayed late after meetings to finish up.
Fortunately there was a gym at my workplace. So I often took a slightly longer lunch and worked out when I could. Working out gave me another ~2-3 hours of focus in the afternoon.
On days when I didn’t work out, I engaged in “presenteeism” - pretending I was working but really just doing things like filing my emails. I don’t think anyone wastes time with that anymore. But when managers believed seat time meant we were working, pretending felt necessary.
When we tune into the energetics of our cycles, we might end up working far less than 30 hours. Or there may be more seasonal variation on what is required.
Do you notice a difference in how much you can get done in the morning versus the afternoon? How about in Spring versus Summer? Do you think it’s possible to step off the time treadmill? I’d love to know.
Here’s one reasonably credible article on the number of decisions we make: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201809/how-many-decisions-do-we-make-each-day
For a really funny critique of Tim Ferris book, and many other self-help books, check out the podcast: If Books Could Kill with Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri. This is the episode link via Podlink.