A Tale of Two Hours

It’s amazing how one hour can be so different from another.

One hour, I’m ripping through emails, sending tons of messages, making quick decisions, and pushing the ball over the line.

The next hour, I’m moseying through a few things I don’t want to do, checking social media, getting up to eat snacks, and getting distracted by phone calls from friends.

Both of these hours are 60 minutes each. But they’re so different from one another.

I bet you’ve had hours like these, too. Productive hours and wasted hours. What always surprises me about those productive hours is how much I can accomplish in such a short burst. If I string together even just two or three hours like this in one day, I’ve made a lot of meaningful progress on the day. I can afford to get distracted after that, or take a long lunch, or finish up early.

It’s also surprising how little I accomplish during those wasted hours. I’m “working”, sure. But I’m not getting anything meaningful done. It’s a haze of busywork, and when the fog clears, I see I haven’t moved at all.

We need to notice the differences between these hours. The practical, specific differences in conditions around us. For me, the productive hours come after coffee. They come when I turn on a 50-minute focus timer. They come when I set my phone across the room. They come when I have a short list of things to do for one client. They come when I close all the other tabs. They come when I shut the door to my office, and turn on some music.

What are your ideal productive conditions? What specific things help you focus? The next time you ride one of those productive hours through a big list of meaningful tasks, pause for a moment. Write down how you got there. Then take a break and do it again.