I love this idea and have often observed the effect they describe in the intro.
> Instead of half-working all day, it’s better to work in focused stints, with breaks in between to recover
Yes! Super true. Strong agree.
The discipline to actually do this I find harder to muster however. When you're tired it can be difficult to realize that you're tired and unproductive. Even when you do realize this, it can be harder still to muster the activation energy to stop what you're doing and take a break. I haven't found a solution to this.
I have also found that for creative work especially (in particular for writing), I will often have long unsatisfying stints of working-but-not-working followed the next day by an amazingly productive burst of activity. That burst does not happen without the working-but-not-working period.
Then there's the other problem of how you apply this third time idea to a workday. I would love to take a 20min break after every 1 hour meeting. There are not enough hours in the day to do this.
> Instead of half-working all day, it’s better to work in focused stints, with breaks in between to recover
Yes! Super true. Strong agree.
The discipline to actually do this I find harder to muster however. When you're tired it can be difficult to realize that you're tired and unproductive. Even when you do realize this, it can be harder still to muster the activation energy to stop what you're doing and take a break. I haven't found a solution to this.
I have also found that for creative work especially (in particular for writing), I will often have long unsatisfying stints of working-but-not-working followed the next day by an amazingly productive burst of activity. That burst does not happen without the working-but-not-working period.
Then there's the other problem of how you apply this third time idea to a workday. I would love to take a 20min break after every 1 hour meeting. There are not enough hours in the day to do this.