Daily Writing Practices, Working Hours, and Fixing Broken Stuff

A friend shared this TEDx talk on writing stories about what happens every day. Seems like a good idea – I've tried off and on to establish a daily writing practice, either morning pages or an evening five-minute journal. Both paradigms are cool, but the value increases the longer the habit is sustained.

I’ve been thinking a lot about number of hours of work per day, spurred by talking to some people who believe in long hours, like 55+ hours per week. I’ve thought for years that those long hours are pretty pointless, and probably not very productive, although I don’t just want to seek out confirmation of my bias. It would be pretty convenient if the way to maximize productivity was to step away from work regularly and not work so long. Nevertheless, there are a lot of indications that this convenient situation is reality. In this video, Cal Newport mentions that it’s not sustainable to do more than four hours of deep work per day. He mentions that more hours of less intense focus are possible, but that might be counterproductive in terms of output, either in quality, quantity, or both.

For some reason, I keep coming back to this 80,000 Hours podcast with Tara Mac Aulay, which is basically (my words) about her career getting awesome results by fixing broken stuff. I love fixing broken stuff – it’s a satisfying feeling, and that satisfying act combined with correct prioritization can do a lot of good.