I have worked with some extremely successful and famous artists and musicians, some follow the pattern outlined here, some do not. I know one musician who would work for 36 or 48 hours or more without a break of any kind including sleep, so as to complete an idea without losing the thread. The proof is in the pudding and there are many many recipes.
Four Hours of Concentration
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Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#62Unbelievable, 40+ comments and not one contrary opinion. Alright, I'll be that guy. I have no trouble doing more than 4 hours worth of mentally strenuous work in a day, and neither do most of the people I work with. Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline. You'll generally find that the most successful people who are best at what they do have no trouble with t…
I think you may be missing most interesting point of article which is about the cognitive limits of enhancing skill through deliberate practice.
There was an academic paper a few years back "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance" ( a nice summary here - http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the...). The paper breaks down 3 types of activity: work, play and deliberate practice. Work is exercising skills you already know; Play is creativity, fun, exploration; Deliberate practice is building a skill - where expertise is achieved through focused training in a particular skill. The article suggests there is evidence that it takes about 10yrs to acheive expert status in a skill. Malcom Gladwell introduced a similar topic through pop-sci writing "Outliers" - suggesting there was evidence that becoming an expert required 10k hrs of practice.
To me, practice requires the absolute most concentration - unlike 'work', with 'deliberate practice', by definition, you can't supplement skill with experience for efficiency.. to learn you have to evolve skill from more experiences. And I believe thats why the linked articuled a 'cognitive limit' of 4 hours by way of a violinist practicing in spurts of 2x2hrs=4hrs per day.
The last paragraph in the article talks about "four hours of intense concentration per day", and I'm not sure I buy that abstraction because "concentrating" and "training" are 2 different things. The author (and interviewee) is inferring that concentration is the constraint, but I'd suggest its more likely learning/trainability speed constraint.
So, a different interpretation, but I may be agreeing with you own observations. I think deliberate practice shows an upper bound for cognitive limit - but in the sense of new patterns being formed in the brain. I don't think deliberate practice necessarily shows the upper bound for concentration based on the information presented.
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#63Unbelievable, 40+ comments and not one contrary opinion. Alright, I'll be that guy. I have no trouble doing more than 4 hours worth of mentally strenuous work in a day, and neither do most of the people I work with. Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline. You'll generally find that the most successful people who are best at what they do have no trouble with t…
What is a typical day for you? You are a founder so I assume your day is broken up into many different roles. This is very different from a programmer or writer who is focused on doing basically one thing for his whole work day. Do you have any health issues?
> Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline
I think many of us have done this here. What I've noticed from doing this is I start to make lots of mistakes that I wouldn't normally. At a certain point, this turns into a vicious cycle where I think slower and make more mistakes so I need to work more to fix them.
Maybe you're superman and can really work all those extra hours at full concentration...but probably not.
Here's an easy way you can check. Use a timer and throughout the day start the timer when you are going into work that requires full concentration and then stop it when you're done or someone interrupts you or you need to go to the bathroom or you break off from your task. Meetings and emails don't count.
I think you'll be surprised at the results.
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#64Unbelievable, 40+ comments and not one contrary opinion. Alright, I'll be that guy. I have no trouble doing more than 4 hours worth of mentally strenuous work in a day, and neither do most of the people I work with. Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline. You'll generally find that the most successful people who are best at what they do have no trouble with t…
It might be correct about the 4 hours. It might also be irrelevant for most people. For most disciplines, accomplishing anything consists of some cognitively very demanding work, and a lot of 'admin'. Some violin players and mathematicians may get by on doing only the hard stuff, but most have to apply for grants, participate in conferences, transcribe/arrange, maintain equipment, etc.
For a startup founder I think this is especially true. A lot of the things you do won't be very cognitively demanding. That doesn't mean you can skip it if you want to get anywhere. It doesn't even mean those 'menial' task create less value in your context than the hardcore 100% concentration parts.
Maybe when you've settled down to a predictable working pattern and managed to configure your environment to cater to all the necessary but trivial tasks (and create enough value in your 4 hours to pay for other people taking care of the rest) you can realize this. I'm not there yet.
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#65[deleted]
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#66Unbelievable, 40+ comments and not one contrary opinion. Alright, I'll be that guy. I have no trouble doing more than 4 hours worth of mentally strenuous work in a day, and neither do most of the people I work with. Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline. You'll generally find that the most successful people who are best at what they do have no trouble with t…
I have happily programmed for long stretches - refactoring, doing project work, mentoring others. Once you've been a developer a while, you can produce magic without very much mental strain.
Break away from that and do something truly difficult - specification meetings where you're designing a process for huge pieces of hardware that haven't yet been built - studying something complicated and unfamiliar to you - etc - and perhaps you'll find - like me - that you've only got a few hours available to you before your brain turns to mush.
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#67There's a difference between being maximally productive at any given time and coming out cumulatively ahead. The strong claim is to state that one is always net less productive when working sub-optimally at any given time. I doubt that this is true but i suppose it depends on how quickly productivity falls off with strain. I suspect that it's probably ok to work long hours to get through repetitive learning but its best to reserve a fresh focus for your more creative moments.
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're largely paid to be on-site and aware for 40 hours a week, not to necessarily produce anything This really bugged me early on in my career before I understood this. When I started work I would feel disappointed that I couldn't be productive for 8 hours per day. Then I realised that no one else around me was getting probably more than 3 hours of work done in a day so I set my aim for each day at 4 hours of pro…
You have to frame your rate in terms that demonstrate the value you'll be providing. Eg you could say you'll only be working 20 billable hours per week and suddenly it sounds like they will be getting some of your time for free. The rest of the time is actually taken up with marketing, administration, training etc.
Don't forget that some clients value face time. Sometimes I wonder if a client is just paying me to be around him...
Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#69Unbelievable, 40+ comments and not one contrary opinion. Alright, I'll be that guy. I have no trouble doing more than 4 hours worth of mentally strenuous work in a day, and neither do most of the people I work with. Frequently enough I've put in sustained 12-16 hour days for weeks on end to meet a tough deadline. You'll generally find that the most successful people who are best at what they do have no trouble with t…
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Re: Four Hours of Concentration
#70Do we have any idea what it actually _is_ what is getting depleted when we start to run out of energy or concentration? It's something I've wondered about already a few times - I mean I can pretty much feel running out of steam myself. Which means there is some way in which my mind is able to measure whatever it is that it causing this.