I've gotten a few emails asking to clarify my suggestion of the 90 minute work schedule.
This is nothing new-- it goes back to the day's of Davinci.
Simply put; instead of working an eight hour schedule from 9-5 which most of us have been doing since the 1800s you schedule 3-4 blocks of 90 minute sessions of work.
During those sessions you turn everything else off other than what you are working on.
No Phone
No email
No internet
No quick looking something up and then ending up watching a cat make a peanut butter sandwich on YouTube
No chatting it up with colleagues
No coffee breaks
No bathroom breaks
I'm not kidding here.
So that means you prep, just like you would for a race-- you go to the bathroom, you pour yourself a large cup of coffee, you select some music or in my case you run Netflix on your iPad with an episode of Columbo that runs 90 minutes.
Then you start-- and you don't stop until those 90 minutes are up.
Give yourself a reward-- I can have that second cup of coffee when I get to the 90 minute mark, I can have a cookie, I can check my email, whatever works for you-- but above all else you work those 90 minutes straight on your project.
Then you take a 20 minute break.
Go sit on a couch, go for a walk, go to the bathroom and hide, get a cup of coffee-- it doesn't matter. You need those 20 minutes of cooling down.
Then you repeat.
I even give myself 10 minutes of prep time to get ready for the next work session which evenly spaces out these 90 minute work sessions to two hour blocks.
Here it is exact:
850-900am- pour a cup of coffee, pull up a playlist that runs 90 minutes (or as I said a Columbo episode. If it's TV or a movie it needs to be something you've seen before and you won't actually watch. It's just there as a companion, it's there for sound, and it's there to keep you on time. You can also do it with an alarm but I deal with those enough in the morning that I don't like to invite them back later in the day). Choose four tasks you will accomplish today.
9-1030am - Work session 1
1030-1050- break. Mid morning snack, email check, dog walk.
1050-1100am - prep for the next session.
1100-1230pm - Work Session 2
1230-100pm - Lunch
1-230pm - Work Session 3
230-250pm- Dog walk, coffee break, email check.
250-300pm- prep, check schedule for tomorrow
3-430pm - Work Session 4
430pm- done for the day or continue if there is more work to be done.
I guarantee you'll get more done working this way, feel more relaxed and less stressed and most importantly IN CONTROL if you use this method.
Try it.
