The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor. This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work 200 years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today.
Like our ancestors, we’re expected to put in
eight-hour days, working in long, continuous blocks of time, with few or no
breaks. Heck, most people even work right through their lunch hour!
This antiquated approach to work isn’t helping us;
it’s holding us back.The Best Way To Structure Your Day
A study recently conducted by the Draugiem Group used a computer application to track employees’ work habits. Specifically, the application measured how much time people spent on various tasks and compared this to their productivity levels.
In the process of measuring people’s activity, they
stumbled upon a fascinating finding: the length of the workday didn’t matter
much; what mattered was how people structured their day. In particular, people
who were religious about taking short breaks were far more productive than
those who worked longer hours.
The ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work,
followed by 17 minutes of rest. People who maintained this schedule had a
unique level of focus in their work. For roughly an hour at a time, they were
100% dedicated to the task they needed to accomplish. They didn’t check
Facebook “real quick” or get distracted by emails. When they felt fatigue
(again, after about an hour), they took short breaks, during which they
completely separated themselves from their work. This helped them to dive back
in refreshed for another productive hour of work.
Your Brain Wants An Hour On, 15 Minutes Off
People who have discovered this magic productivity
ratio crush their competition because they tap into a fundamental need of the
human mind: the brain naturally functions in spurts of high energy (roughly an
hour) followed by spurts of low energy (15–20 minutes).
For most of us, this natural ebb and flow of energy
leaves us wavering between focused periods of high energy followed by far less
productive periods, when we tire and succumb to distractions.
The best way to beat exhaustion and frustrating
distractions is to get intentional about your workday. Instead of working for
an hour or more and then trying to battle through distractions and fatigue,
when your productivity begins to dip, take this as a sign that it’s time for a
break.
Real breaks are easier to take when you
know they’re going to make your day more productive. We often let fatigue win
because we continue working through it (long after we’ve lost energy and focus),
and the breaks we take aren’t real breaks
(checking your e-mail and watching YouTube doesn’t recharge you the same way as
taking a walk does).
Take
Charge Of Your Workday
The eight-hour workday can work for you if you break
your time into strategic intervals. Once you align your natural energy with
your effort, things begin to run much more smoothly. Here are four tips that
will get you into that perfect rhythm.
Break your day into hourly intervals. We naturally plan what we need to accomplish by the end
of the day, the week, or the month, but we’re far more effective when we focus
on what we can accomplish right now. Beyond getting you into the right rhythm,
planning your day around hour-long intervals simplifies daunting tasks by
breaking them into manageable pieces. If you want to be a literalist, you can
plan your day around 52-minute intervals if you like, but an hour works just as
well.
Respect your hour. The interval strategy only works because we use our
peak energy levels to reach an extremely high level of focus for a relatively
short amount of time. When you disrespect your hour by texting, checking
emails, or doing a quick Facebook check, you defeat the entire purpose of the
approach.
Take real rest. In the study at Draugiem, they found that employees
who took more frequent rests than the hourly optimum were more productive than
those who didn’t rest at all. Likewise, those who took deliberately relaxing
breaks were better off than those who, when “resting,” had trouble separating
themselves from their work. Getting away from your computer, your phone, and
your to-do list is essential to boosting your productivity. Breaks such as
walking, reading, and chatting are the most effective forms of recharging
because they take you away from your work. On a busy day, it might be tempting
to think of dealing with emails or making phone calls as breaks, but they
aren’t, so don’t give in to this line of thought.
Don’t wait until your body tells you to take a break. If you wait until you feel tired to take a break, it’s
too late—you’ve already missed the window of peak productivity. Keeping to your
schedule ensures that you work when you’re the most productive and that you
rest during times that would otherwise be unproductive. Remember, it’s far more
productive to rest for short periods than it is to keep on working when you’re
tired and distracted.
Bringing
It All Together
Breaking your day down into chunks of work and rest
that match your natural energy levels feels good, makes your workday go faster,
and boosts your productivity.
Do you notice your energy and focus waxing and waning
according to the cycle described above? Please share your thoughts in the
comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
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