Take the “Success in 90-minutes” challenge

This week literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted a report on how she was doing implementing Tony Schwartz‘s 90-minute solution to being more productive.  I don’t want to repeat all that Tony said – it’d be best for you to just read his post.  His main premise is that we work best in 90 minute intervals, which need to be set apart by times of rest and renewal.  He states that we’ve adopted some unhealthy AND UNPRODUCTIVE work habits and we need to reconsider how we naturally accomplish tasks.  He also identifies something I’ve been saying for a while:  We have become addicted to, and dependent on, adrenaline to accomplish tasks. ( I think we learn this while procrastinating during our schooling days)

So, I’ve taken up the challenge and will schedule four 90-minute periods a day to get stuff done. Big stuff.  And I will do other things in between – enjoy conversation, read, work-out, rest, and renew (this does not look like social media).

My early report is that my first period went well, but I was surprised how many distractions pushed to interrupt my work.  A key for the 90-minutes is to give it total focus and  maybe that’s the issue for us well-connected folks who read blogs like this:  We aren’t aware of how poorly we focus on our work. I certainly see college students who haven’t learned how to stay on task. Perhaps it’s more of an issue for us “slightly older” folks too.

When I talked with my college students about this today, they reacted strongly. Most couldn’t come up with six hours in their day to commit to this.  Others were adamant that it would be very difficult to not have social media distractions.  One said that being focused for 90 minutes would take a lot of work.

I invite you read Schwartz’s piece and then see where you can carve out a few 90-minute sections. And be sure to report back here to let others know how it went for you.  Be sure to remember that these are offset by periods of rest/renewal (not more working!).

 

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