John Briggs explains the 3.3 Rule: work in focused blocks up to three hours, then take a break equal to 30% of that time. A Princeton study shows the brain cycles between focused and distractible states. The rule has three versions: sprinter (1 hour work, 20 min break), jogger (1.5 hours, 30 min), and zen master (3 hours, 1 hour break).
The most efficient workday consists of up to 3 hours worked followed by 30% recovery periods. The 3.3 rule is that. The 3 stands for the up to 3 hours worked and the 0.3 refers to the 30% recovery period. This is a very flexible framework that you can use within the way that you naturally focus. Let me get into a couple things about it. First of all, the Princeton Neuroscience Institute did a study and found that our brainwave naturally cycles between a focused state and a distractibility state. So naturally, The studies show that our brain is going to go into these patterns, that you cannot hold a focused state the whole time. There's another study done in 2011 by Alejandro Yedas in the University of Illinois-Champaign. He was looking at a lot of research and saying people are focusing on saying like, hey, your attention span is the problem. He says attention isn't the problem. Your attention is always on something. It just might not be on the thing it needs to be on. So he then took that further and did some research, and I was noticing that from a sensory standpoint, our body actually neutralizes a stimulation if that stimulant is constant. Think about the clothes that you're wearing. You, up until this moment, didn't realize that they have a sensation on your skin. The fact now that I'm bringing attention to it, you can kind of feel when you move a little bit the fabric rubbing on, on your skin. Because of the way our brain works, because that was a constant stimulus up until that moment, your brain had neutralized it. So he wondered, does the same thing happen to our thoughts? Well, the Princeton Neuroscience Institute would say We know it goes from focus to distractibility, and it follows that. So he did some studies and sure enough found out that sustained focus on a thought or work effort will neutralize the stimulus, and performance significantly drops after a period of time. We can overcome that decline in performance By adding this 30% recovery period. The recovery period allows our brains to reset. It allows us to then come back to the work focused. So when it comes to the 3.3 rule, again, the most efficient workday consists of up to 3 hours worked at a time followed by a 30% recovery period. Here are 3 rhythms that you can consider As a starting point in the 3.3 rule. So maybe you want a 3.3 rhythm of a sprinter. My good friend Mike Michalowicz, author of many small business books that you should read, he likes the sprinter format when he's writing. So about an hour at a time followed by a short 20-minute break. You can do a jogger format, which is working up to like an hour and a half. Followed by a 30-minute recovery period. So you have basically a 2-hour block. I work for an hour and a half, take 30 minutes off. I can come back and then work for another hour and a half refocused. Or if you're a Zen master, do the full 3 hours and then follow that by an hour break. Those are 3 rhythm options that you can choose for the 3.3 rule. We do have a downloaded guide that covers the information that I've covered here. The link is in the description. This is— this rule is a game changer. It allows you to be more productive. It also helps you maintain harmony in the different things that you have going on with your life and with your work because you're building in constant breaks and giving yourself rest and recovery periods. So please download the link. If you found this valuable, please share it with other people. Like, subscribe, comment— that helps the algorithms. We do want to share this information to as many people as possible, and we appreciate your help in letting us do that. The most efficient workday consists of up to 3 hours at a time followed by a 30% recovery period. Don't burn yourself out. This rule can help protect you from doing that.
