Brian Johnson breaks down the science of sustainable work: alternate 50 to 90 minutes of intense focus with 7 to 20 minute breaks, never pushing past 2 hours straight. The research comes from Peak Performance and counters both the always-on grind and the all-in-every-day burnout.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another optimize +1 in Energy 101. We talked about a lot of ways to give our souls the energy they need to help us live our greatest lives. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, meditating, stuff like that. We also talked about oscillating and the fact that if we want to sustain high levels of energy, we want to get really good at being all in on and all in off. 100% on, 100% off. Repeat oscillating between intense work and intense recovery, making nice big waves. To do that, we need to get really good at creating bright line boundaries between our work and our recovery, lest we fall into the zone of underperformance or burnout. We'll talk more about that tomorrow. For now, I'd like to talk about the optimal work to rest ratio. The authors of Peak Performance shine some light on how to approach this wisely. Here's how they put it. I quote While the exact work to rest ratio depends on the demands of the job and individual preferences, the the overall theme is clear. Alternating between blocks of 50 to 90 minutes of intense work and recovery breaks of 7 to 20 minutes enables people to sustain the physical, cognitive and emotional energy required for peak performance. This ebb and flow runs counter to the all too common constant grind of either perpetually working in an in between zone or of moderately hard work or working at the utmost intensity non stop. Neither of these traditional approaches is ideal. The former leads to underperformance and the latter leads to physical, cognitive and emotional fatigue and eventually burnout. So research says that our ideal work to rest rhythm is roughly 50 to 90 minutes on and and pretty much never longer than two hours and then seven to 20 minutes off. Two threats to the ideal rhythm? Well, number one, you can be in a kind of sort of almost really work mode all day, which is a flatline that leads to sub peak performance. Or number two, you can be in an oh my God, I'm all in mode all day every day and think flatline that leads to to burnout. Quick check in. What's your tendency when you're wobbly? Mine, as you might have guessed, is number two. And I'm happy to say that's pretty much a thing of the past as I finally figured out just how important training recovery is. Then of course back to our ideal 50 to 90 minutes on, 7 to 20 minutes off. So today's plus one if you're feeling so inspired, how about you take our new optimal work to rest ratio out for a spin.
