+1: #590 The 4-Hour Workday

You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about the fact that we need to train our recovery the same way we train our deep work. We want to create nice rhythmic waves in our lives and prioritize Rest. One great way to do that deep play. I briefly mentioned the fact that, as Alex Peng tells us in his great book Rest, when we look closely at the routines of some of history's greatest, most creative and most prolific creators, what we find is that they don't actually work that much. Here's how he puts Figures as different as Charles Dickens and Ingmar Bergman, or working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a passion for their work, a terrific ambition to succeed, and an almost superhuman capacity to focus. Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, were just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the results of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest working hours. He continues by saying if some of history's greatest figures didn't put in immensely long hours, maybe the key to unlocking the secret of their creativity lies in understanding not just how they labored, but how they rested and how the two relate. That again, is from a chapter he calls Four Hours. As in, the greatest creators tend to work about four hours a day, but they put first things first and they go deep. Then they recover. The Four Hour Workday. That would be an awesome book, by the way, for those paying close attention. You may recall that we actually had a very similar plus one not too long ago, featuring wisdom from Anders Ericsson and Tony Schwartz. We called that one the 4.5 hour workday. Check it out now. I love how we come back to the same wisdom again and again and again. As Tony Robbins says, repetition is the mother of skill. Or in our case, repetition is the mother of wise optimizing. One more little parenthetical aside, I'm reminded of a recent philosophical ping pong chat I had with Cal Newport. We talked about the fact that all great traditions come back to the same themes. And I remarked that optimizing by integrating ancient wisdom, modern science, and practical tools like we do is kind of like looking at all the facets of a gem from different angles so you can appreciate its full beauty. One more little facet of today's gem. Then we'll get back to our four hour workday. We've talked a lot about Scott Adams and Stephen King. Alex talks about their daily rhythms and tells us this quote, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert was works about four hours a day on the Strip and other writing. As he points out, my value is based on my best ideas in any given day, not the number of hours I work. Stephen King describes four to six hours of reading and writing as a strenuous day. So there you go. Get clear on what matters. Go deep daily accrete value in your most important work. Recover deeply. Repeat. That's today's plus one. Now go enjoy your four hour workday.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.