Want to be More Productive? Try Shorter Days with Longer Naps

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang published a fascinating piece - Darwin was a slacker and you should be too - in Nautilus about the work habits of the folks who have made a huge difference in their field. Darwin wrote 19 books, including perhaps the most famous science book of all time - The Origin of Species - on a schedule that essentially included 3 1.5 hour sessions and one 1-hour nap between 8 and 5:30. During the normal work day he worked about 4.5 hours and slept one hour.

Warren Buffet estimates that he spends at least 4 hours a day reading - corporate reports, articles, and books. He just closes the door and reads. Uninterrupted. This unorthodox practice has been profitable. If you do the math, he has - on average - increased his net worth by about one billion per year. His work is profitable.

As Soojung-Kim points out, a schedule like Darwin's would likely get you fired at most corporations. Curiously, I've been in dozens - hundreds? - of corporations and can attest to two things. One, this schedule likely would raise eyebrows and perhaps even get you a warning or get you fired. Two, it would represent far more focused time than most employees get inside a corporation. And it is this focused time that demands extra sleep that so often gets missed in the middle of emails and meetings.

Many of my clients are double and tripled booked for meetings throughout the day. Additionally, they will get 150 to 200 emails in a day.  They are busy. So busy. What they rarely get in their long days, though, is 3 90 minute chunks of intense focus.

My own experience with intense projects and tasks suggests that one of the many obstacles to such immersive focus, though, is a place where one can nap. More than once, my working from the home office has allowed me to punctuate my work with a nap. Curiously, I don't feel the urge for such a thing when I'm working on less demanding tasks (like, for instance, being in a meeting). When I sustaining intense focus for longer periods of time, I need more sleep. And often in the form of a 20 to 40 minute nap.

Maybe the biggest boon to productivity would be a proliferation of hammock rooms. Or at least blocking out 2 (not everyone is of Darwin's caliber) to 3 90 minute blocks of time per day during which nothing is expected to be done but the one thing that requires the deepest thought.

Darwin Turns 200 - Still Refuses TV Interviews

..."It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one most adaptable to change."
- Charles Darwin

It is hard to think of a more ringing endorsement of a man's profound understanding of biology and life than this: Charles Darwin celebrates his 200th birthday tomorrow. To me, this shows that he has, not just theoretical understanding but, practical knowledge. If any of us detractors could live so long, they might have better grounds on which to contest his claim to understand how life works.

Evolution is an idea that - like us hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour in orbit around the sun - is obviously, intuitively, and spectacularly wrong. It is wrong because it defies our own observations and the gut sense that comes from a life time of perception that sees cause and effect through the window of hours or - at best - years but staggers at the notion of causation that plays out over millions and billions of years.

For this reason alone, Darwin's odd conclusion that various life forms evolved is a stunning insight. He saw finches with different characteristics in different environments but he did not, obviously, himself watch the slow evolution of different length and shaped beaks. Darwin's insight came from observation of a result, and from this he worked backwards to a process. Try that. Imagine seeing a cake and figuring out baking.

I find in Darwin's life great inspiration as well. The man worked, on average, only a few hours a day and yet he made one of the greatest contributions to thought of all time. (Further confirmation for me that busy is too often a poor and misleading substitute for productive or - even more importantly - creative.) And the man did not release his great work until he was 50.

One of the many reasons that I admire him is that, for me, the concept of evolution seems to shed huge insight into even social change and development. After reading a great deal of history, I have become a radical incrementalist. That is, I believe that things change radically - but usually in small increments at any given time. Societies evolve.

We have come to apply the concept of evolution to phenomenon as varied as software, language, customs, markets, and technology. It is hard to imagine understanding any dynamic system without the notion of evolution.

As essential as his stunning idea has proven, it still pales in comparison to turning 200.

Darwin & The Incalculable Productivity of Creativity

I was in some meetings with two heads of a health care company’s new business division who are obese. From what I could glean, they didn’t take the time for exercise largely because they worked so many hours. They’ve compromised their own health as they are busily pursuing business solutions to health problems.

The boundary between work and home has disappeared along with the wires we once needed for phones and computers. Work hours are steadily creeping upwards.

For me, the worst thing about this is that it overlooks what research into the mysteries of the mind has repeatedly proven: gestation is a necessary component in creativity. When people are continually rushed to translate problems and information into solutions, the solutions they arrive at are almost invariably clichéd, predictable, and of little value. Research indicates that people need time after immersion in a problem to let it gestate before expecting a breakthrough.

My work with dozens and dozens of organizations has convinced me of this: there is no shortage that creativity cannot overcome. Whether the organization is short of customers, cash, or talented employees, the shortage can be overcome by creativity. Creativity, however, has trouble overcoming a shortage of time. And as organizations become less creative, they feel compelled to work longer hours, which further reduces the level of creativity.

Lest you think this hypothetical, you may be interested to know that Darwin worked only two to four hours a day. Last I heard, his insights had led to research and products worth hundreds of billions - perhaps trillions of dollars by now. You can't calculate the productivity of creativity any more than you can calculate the number of apples in an apple seed.