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One thing I've been reflecting on this last week is that many of the people who changed the world worked deep hours, and remarkably few of them.
I did some research and found 7 examples that might change how you think about your day, and the belief that grinding long hours is the best way to success
Charles Darwin worked two 90-minute blocks each morning, then a single hour later in the day. Between sessions: naps and long walks
On this schedule he wrote 19 books (including On the Origin of Species)
4 hours a day, and he changed biology forever
Roald Dahl wrote from 10am-noon, then 4pm-6pm. 7 days a week. No exceptions
He spent six months on a single short story. His words: "Writing is not inspiration. It's keeping your bottom on the seat"
On 4 hours/day, he became one of the most beloved authors who ever lived
Henri Poincare worked 10am-noon, then 5pm-7pm
He solved problems mentally in breaks, then committed them to paper
A psychologist who studied his routine in 1910, found working longer achieved nothing extra
4 hrs/day, and he reshaped Topology, planetary physics and chaos theory
Literature
Hemingway started at first light and stopped before noon. 500 to 1,000 words, standing up, pencil on paper
He famously stopped mid-sentence so he'd have momentum the next morning
~5 hours a day and a Nobel Prize in Literature
Novelist Anthony Trollope paid a servant to wake him at 5:30am.
He wrote from 5am to 8am with a watch in front of him - 250 words every 15 minutes. Then he went to his day job (at the Post Office)
3 hours a day, 47 novels over 35 years - all before breakfast !
Tchaikovsky composed at his desk for about 4.5 hours split across morning and evening
But he also took a daily two-hour walk, timed to the minute, composing in his head as he walked
In ~4.5 hours at the desk he captured what the walk created
The rest was letting the mind work
·
"But what about Musk, he works 80-100 hr weeks?"
Look closer
He schedules his day in 5-minute blocks
90% of his time is meetings and design reviews. That's executive coordination (and he's brilliant at it) - a different kind of work from the deep creation these others did
"But what about Picasso, Balzac and others who worked big hours?"
Picasso painted for long stretches. But he alternated intense work with long social meals and downtime within the day
Balzac wrote 16 hours a day fuelled by industrial quantities of coffee (he also died at 51)
I've seen this firsthand. One founder I coached was working 80-hour weeks, on the point of burnout. I shared 4 productivity strategies, got him to cut back to 50-hr weeks and go home to his family
NPS scores, Q12 ratings, RPU all improved. The company exited 2 years later
The pattern across all of these: short duration, consistent deep focus, real rest between sessions
They protected the hours, protected the recovery, and they didn't confuse hours with output
The lesson:
Perhaps working more isn't the secret?
Perhaps working deeper is?
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