Ultradian Rhythms: How 90-Minute Focus Blocks Changed Everything

Thanks to Shopify for supporting the productivity show. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like ourselves the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/TPS. Welcome to the productivity show, a podcast where we believe that people like you can get the important things done without sacrificing your health, family, and things that matter to you. If it's your first time listening, welcome to the show. I'm Tam fam, all the way from Austin, Texas, and I'm the founder and CEO of Asian efficiency, where we help people become more productive at work in a life. And I do this podcast together with my co-host, Brooks Duncan, all the way from Vancouver, Canada. How are you today, Brooks? I'm all right. On going issues that we've been talking about on the show lately, my mouth looks full of stitches. So my speaking will probably be short this time, which is probably good for the listeners. But obviously I'm out of it because instead of hitting record, I hit leave session right before recording this. So we'll see how this episode goes. We'll see how drugged up Brooks does on this episode. Yeah. Brooks is undergoing some health issues with nothing like, you know, endangering his life or anything. But when you have dental visits and surgery in the same sentence, it is typically not a good recipe for great things. But I'm happy you're back. I'm happy that we can do this podcast. And today's topic is a little bit focused on how we can use 90-minute cycles to help us be more productive and efficient. So we're going to be talking a little bit about how you can set up your day, and structure it in such a way so that you can take advantage of it in a way that aligns most with your body and your natural capabilities to get stuff done. So excited to dive into that. If you are new to the show, just want to quickly introduce what we do here on the productivity show. So Asian efficiencies started back in 2011. It was a passion project of mine, where I was just publicly documented everything I was learning about productivity. And over the years, we kind of started this podcast back in 2015 and developed our own methodology around productivity. So one of the three philosophies we talk about often here on the show is one, happy people are productive people. Two, one tweak a week is all it takes to make massive productivity gains over time. And then three, we want everything to be simple and actionable, including our courses, programs, newsletters, but also this podcast episode. And so we always like to start off with our top three favorite resources. So related to today's episode, the first resource I want to share with everybody is an app called Forest. So Forest is an interesting focus app because what it does is as soon as you open up the app, you can set a timer to force yourself to focus kind of like a Pomodoro timer. However, as you start to timer, you see little seeds being planted and you see like little trees growing on your phone. And as soon as you start using your phone or you get out of the app, guess what? The tree dies. Or the forest that is growing starts to die off. And what's the purpose of this? Well, the app wants you to focus and force you to focus so that you can see the tree growing to its fullest capabilities and capacity. And so if you can set the timer and let it grow, that means that you've been focusing on doing your work. And so as a result, you'll see a beautiful forest on your phone. So it's a really fun, gamified way to get yourself focused. And that's the Forest app. The second resource I want to mention is something that I recently just bought myself is the anchor laptop power bank. So this is like a little brick that you have in your hand. And it can basically power your iPhone, your tablets, your MacBook Pro, or whatever device you want to charge. It's originally designed for people who kind of go out in nature and need power as a backup solution. And I've been hearing this around town at any time I'm traveling. And it gives me a lot of confidence to know that, "Hey, if I ever need power, I could charge multiple devices and not be stressed out whatsoever." And it charges your devices really fast as well. So we'll have a link to it here in the show notes. And then the third one, speaking of power and cables, is the Bayzius USB-C to USB-C cable. Now what's different about this one is that it has a retractable cable. So if you're like me, so if you're like me, you change locations quite often, having those dangling cables in your bag or just around you is a little bit of a noise. However, with a retractable cable, it has this little circular, let's just call it a dock. And then you can just pull the cable and extend it that way. So it's retractable. And then once you're done, you just kind of like tug at it and it will retract again. So it's a really portable way of traveling with your cables. And I've been a big fan of this and I want to give a shout out to my friend Nick Gray because he's the one who showed it to me. And I've been loving it since. So recommend you check that out as well. And we'll have, again, links to all of this here in the show notes. We're just swiping the phone or in the app where you're listening to the podcast and you'll see it there as well. Man, I don't want to say that I haven't been focused on what you're saying because I have been, but as you were talking to us now, I put that USB-C cable into my cart because this is exactly the sort of thing that I would find really helpful. So thank you, Tan, and thank you, Nick Gray for the recommendation. Yeah. For those who use laptops, phones quite often and are on the go, this is, I think, now a must-have. So I'm glad we're able to kick off an episode with a tip to get Brooks distracted. And speaking of distraction, I think that's a problem and challenge most of us have, right? Including myself. And sometimes we get the, you know, the itch to check something out, even though we have something really important going on. And then going on, hence Brooks had to add something to his cart while he was at it. And, you know, we are prone to this as well, right? Even though we're talking about productivity and systems and talk about best practices, there's a lot of things that just makes us human and we're not always perfect in everything that we do. However, there are some good ideas and strategies that you can implement to allow us to focus on a more consistent basis. I think recurring theme here on the podcast is that perfection is something you really shouldn't be aiming and striving for because it's just not realistic. Just like if you have 1500 items on your to-do list realistically, you're never going to get all of them done. So you have to prioritize. You have to say, hey, I have the 1500 things I might have. What are the top maybe five things I can do today or the 10 things I can do this week to move myself forward? And that means making difficult choices, making trade-offs. And it's the same thing with focus. I feel like with focus because we have so much more opportunity now, there's so many more things vying for our attention, we could literally spend all day being distracted, doing absolutely nothing productive and still feel like we had a decent day. Right? How often do we go about our days where we're doing a lot of work, we're very busy, but then when we're reflecting on it, we go, ah, man, I was quite busy today, but I didn't actually move things forward. One was the last time, Brooks, you had this feeling where you're just like cranking out, doing stuff, and you just go, oh, man, today was super busy, but I actually got nothing done. Yeah, it's funny. I actually felt that way on Friday and it's funny how sometimes this comes to you in a strange realization too. Like I specifically remember end of day Friday, I'm like getting ready to shut down my laptop and I was actually pretty happy. I was like, you know how sometimes you get to the end of the day and you're like nailed it. You're like, you know, I checked off so many things in my test manager, did great, but then I realized, wait a second, like, yeah, I did a bunch of stuff, and maybe it was stuff people were asking me or just stuff that I saw in my test manager, but there's one thing that I wanted to make progress on. I hadn't made as much progress as I wanted to. So that was a great wake up call to me that these feelings of nailed it can be, can be deceptive. And the flip side of that too, by the way, I should say there is a flip side to that, because this is something my wife and I talk about quite a bit, is sometimes you feel like you're not busy, you're not, you're not like checking off lots of things and you feel like, ah, you know, I just didn't really get that much done today, but then if you take a step back and look at the things you did do, maybe in raw numbers, it wasn't a lot, but maybe you did something really high impact. So there's kind of like two different sides to this coin. It's just a matter of figuring out the best way to kind of meet in the middle. Yeah, I think there's just no more of getting as many tasks done as a dangerous trap, because I was on this call, I don't know, maybe a week or two ago, and I was coaching this college student about AI stuff. And we were talking about what it would take to get as much work done as possible using different AI tools. And he was measuring his output in terms of how many tasks he got done, which I think is the natural inclination to do. But then I kind of challenged him. I said, hey, if you get 15, 20 things done because of AI, that in itself sounds good. But when you think about your priorities and the organization that you're working for, what matters most to them? And he said, well, based on this quarter, this is the thing that we're actually trying to focus on. And then I said, okay, I was the 20 things that you could do, and maybe got done. how many of those things on that list actually aligned with the organizational goal. And he said, oh, there was actually only one thing that was actually on there. Everything else was kind of like a personal thing that I wanted to do. Which inherently is nothing wrong with that. And so when you think about outputs, you can think about task done, which is one way to think about it. Another way to think about it, which I think is more effective, is outcomes actually accomplished. So the difference between a task and an outcome is a task could be anything, right? But an outcome is typically a very clear, defined objective or destination where you want to get to. And oftentimes outcomes could have multiple tasks to get there. So for example, the outcome could be, hey, I implemented a new system that now allows us to save X amount of hours per week because we implemented a different AI solution now. That could be a great outcome where, maybe you're saving two or three hours a day, but it might take 10 different tasks to get there. And so if you think about your to-do list and you're just measuring your performance based on task done, I think you're missing one half of the coin. And when we're talking about today's topic about focus and circadian rhythms, I always liked a line with, okay, if we can block off 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes on our calendar to work on something, instead of thinking about what's the number of tasks or things I can get done in that time block? I rather start to focus and think about, hey, what is the outcome that I can get done during this block of time that I have on my calendar? And when you start thinking about it that way, I oftentimes find that you want, have to prioritize, but then also to, it's much easier to figure out what you actually have to focus on and do. And it could be actually two or three tasks that you do during this time block, rather than dedicating a whole time block to it, because you know, Brooks, you and I have talked about this before, and we'll fill up the, you know, the tasks that you give it to, right? So if you're saying, hey, I'm gonna do this task in the next 60 minutes, guess what? It will take the whole 60 minutes to do it. And if you say to yourself, hey, I'm going to get this outcome done in 60 minutes, great, but then you might actually execute two, three, four different tasks to get the outcome that you want, which is ultimately what I think most of us want. (keyboard clicking) Imagine you're scrolling away and you see that one product that you've been looking for. You click the link, add to cart, and maybe even chop around a little more before finally hitting checkout. And as you're about to fill in your address, you realize you don't have your card with you, or you just can't remember the password for the website, but it's okay, that's when you see it, that purple pay button that is all your information saved, making checking out as simple as a simple tap on your screen. (keyboard clicking) Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From household names like Untucket to brands just getting started. Get started with your own design studio, with hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. And if you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24/7 customer support. Now we love Shopify because it will work with you no matter what stage your business is at. No matter how big you wanna grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take your business to the next level. So see less cards go abandoned, and more sales go (keyboard clicking) with Shopify and their Shopify pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/tps. Go to Shopify.com/tps. That's Shopify.com/tps. (keyboard clicking) There's always something you wanna get better at. For me, it was negotiation. Some people somehow are just born with that skill, but I am not one of those people. So I went to Masterclass and found a class taught by someone who's actually the best in the world at it. And here's the one thing I took away. Getting someone to say no is actually more valuable than getting them to say yes. Thanks to Masterclass for supporting the productivity show. And it fits in real life, audio mode, short lessons, on your phone or TV. You don't have to carve out hours. You just have to start. Plus, Masterclass makes a great gift for upcoming Father's Day. Right now, our listeners get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/tps. For example, I learned from Chris Voss teaches the art of negotiation that trying to get people to say yes just puts people on guard. No makes them feel safe. So instead of asking, can you help me with this? Instead ask, would it be crazy to, or is this a bad idea? They say no, relax, and suddenly they're more open. It really works. There are over 200 plus classes across 13 categories, business, writing, cooking, creativity, wellness, and more, with plans starting at just $10 a month, build annually. And it actually works. Three in four members feel inspired every time they watch. And 83% have applied something they've learned to their real lives. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a TPS listener, you get at least 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/tps. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/tps. Head on over to masterclass.com/tps to see their latest offer. (keyboard clicking) - Yeah, the problem with measuring by number of tasks as well is it so easily gained. Both, you know, positive and negative. Like I know somebody who was telling me that just the way their organization worked, you know, they really got into measuring, which of course is very good. And, you know, his goals for the quarter, whatever, was a certain number of jury tickets. And so what he did is he would just like take a task, take something that needed to be done, and he would like break it down into components, and there'd be a jury ticket for each component so that he was able to like juice his numbers. And I think a lot of people do that. That's another reason why I don't like personally, you know, if it works for you, great, do it. But I don't like, for me, having a reading goal of a number of books in a year, and people always talk about this, like I'm at 50 books or whatever, because what does that mean? You know, you could have a book that's like a thin little productivity book that, you know, it just gets really down to the nitty gritty, or you could read a textbook or something big. You know, that's two books, but they're completely different things. So I think you're right. I think basing things on number of outputs is so easily game, then doesn't necessarily reflect things. Well, we see this today with, for example, with oldest compute power and AI, where companies are not measuring outputs in terms of tokens burned or used. And it's kind of like a short-sighted way of thinking about, okay, yes, if you're burning more tokens, that means you're using AI more, which is kind of like what everyone wants right now, every CEO or organization wants their team and people to use more AI. And the number of tokens burned is kind of like an indicator of this, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But guess what? Then people start burning tokens for way random things that have no alignment with what you actually want to accomplish because I can tell you from using AI every day, it's really easy to burn millions of tokens per day. I have no problem with that. Yeah, I was just literally thinking about this yesterday because I saw somewhere on probably Twitter or something like that. Someone was posting recommendations to get your team more AI first. AI focused one of the things they suggested was exactly you said like a token leaderboard for your staff. And I even thought to myself, oh man, if I ever was in that, if I ever was in that situation, I would go to town. I would just have clawed like creating all sorts of stuff just to make sure I'm up there. So yeah, I'm not a fan of things that are so easily gameed. But it's a balance to write. Yeah, I think it's a short term hack to get people to use it because tokens is a reflection of your usage. And so the biggest friction, I think, organizations are heavy down is they're just not having people use AI or AI enough. And this is kind of like a carrot to lead them to get there. But over the long term, that kind of becomes an issue in a different way. Similarly, it's something I hear often in different circles is when the police is measured based on the performance of number of tickets that they write every single week or something. Guess what? Everyone gets annoyed and pissed off when the police offers are right to take it for you. That's so, this is called dumb or for whatever reason because they just have to hit a quota. That is a byproduct of people being measured by the number of things that they have to do versus just thinking about the outcome, which is, hey, in this case, we want to make the city save. We do whatever we got to do to do that. And the number of tickets is not directly a relation to that. It's just one of the byproducts that just has to happen. In order to make the city feel safe and civil. And so why are we talking about all of this? Well, one of the things that we believe here at Asian efficiency is that the more you can align with yourself awareness about how you work and what you do best, with the outcomes that you're looking for, the more productive you're going to be. And some of the things that we've kind of like realized very early on is about our own biology and the self-awareness. And especially when I start wearing the aura right back in 2017, I started really getting more introduced about the idea of sleep and health. and wellness. And if you go down to the rabbit hole and maybe some of you are going to Apple Watch or like a whip band or an orring or a Fitbit or something like that, you probably have heard of this term called a circadian rhythm. A circadian rhythm is basically a 24 hour cycle that every human goes through. It's from day to night where we're sleeping, we're waking up, we're getting ready for the day. We have different levels of moods and energy throughout the day and then towards the end of the night when it gets dark, we get back into like a sleepy mood again and then we go to sleep and then we repeat the whole cycle over and over and over again. And that's a circadian rhythm. And so especially with Andrew Hubeman the last few years, he's kind of popularized how when you can optimize your circadian rhythm, for example, by checking out and going outside and getting some sunlight in the first 30 minutes of waking up, you can kind of reset your circadian rhythm, which is very helpful if you're traveling or for jet lag, but then also optimize your sleep that way. So it's kind of counterintuitive to say, Hey, whatever I do in the first 30 minutes of my day can actually affect what I do later that night because our bodies work in a 24 hour cycle. Now, if you understand your circadian rhythm, we can actually further optimize and tweak how we become focused and productive. And within a 24 hour cycle, we also have what we call old trade in rhythms. So what is an old trade in rhythm? So if you think about a day being a 24 hour cycle, which I just described within those 24 hours, our bodies also go through mini cycles, which are called old trade in rhythms. And these last about 90 minutes. And one of the first books that kind of talked about this around productivity was the power of full engagement by Tony Swartz, which also introduced this idea of how energy management is the key to high performance, which I think heavily influence and inspire what we do here at Asian efficiency around the T framework, which sounds for time, energy and intention. And an old trade in rhythm is basically a 90 minute cycle that we all go through where we trying to get our bodies ready to feel more alert, have high energy, have higher focus. And then it kind of like elevates and peaks and then starts to go down. And we go through this multiple times throughout the day. Brooks, before I move on, any commentary ideas and insights. So would you say a way to say this is like, I think everyone's heard of circadian rhythms, which is like when during the day, are you at your best? And then, so what you're saying is that's like the circadian rhythm, you know, some people are more mourning people, some people are more evening people, whatever. But all trade in rhythm is like a subset of that, where it's like how long can you kind of sustain your best work before you start to like go downhill and need recovery? Is that kind of like the thinking between the two? Yeah. So the best way I can describe it is imagine you wake up at 7 AM, right? That's kind of like your natural wake up time. Can you as soon as you get out of bed and open up your eyes, can you immediately go into deep work and focus? Can I? Yeah, absolutely. I'm that I were in some ways I work best that way. Okay. So I actually am not right. I have to kind of like warm up a little bit for like 30 minutes or something before I can get into it. But resulters maybe can right away. And so what you'll learn over time is, and this is part of the self-awareness is everyone has like different rhythms of how they can perform best right away. So maybe you wake up and you can go straight into it. And then I have to like warm up for like 30 minutes, get out of bed, kind of like do stuff. And then I can start peeking maybe like 30 minutes into actually focus and do deep work and whatever it needs to do. But guess what? That sustained level of performance won't be going on for five hours in a row. Like typically we kind of go and short bursts. And so our body is actually go through these cycles, so trading cycles where we go through peaks and valleys where hey, we warm up, we then peak and we have like high level of alertness and focus and creativity. And then we have to recover from that again. So our body is kind of go through this peak and valleys throughout the day. And that's what an old trade in cycle is. So why is this related to today's topic? Well, if you understand kind of like your peak cycles throughout the day, when you feel most alerts, when you feel most energized, where you feel most focused, then matching that with your outcomes, the tasks you want to get done, the things you want to accomplish allows you then to be your best at the work that you do. So for example, Brooks, I know you're a morning person. So as soon as you get out of bed, you can as long as you know, where your top three things are for that day, you can probably kind of get going. And maybe you can go through like a 90 minute block right away and just like crank out work. And then I'm going to guess you're probably not going to be able to do that for seven hours straight, right? No, absolutely not. I think like everyone else, you know, I can grind for a while. And then I realize I'm starting to, you know, you know, maybe I'm getting a little tired. Maybe I'm starting to I read something and then I just kind of like, wait a second, what did I just read or or I'm like, yeah, things just things just to grade that I think everyone goes through that for sure. The thing about scaling a business is it takes the right expertise at the right time. We found that Upwork helps growing teams quickly bring in specialized freelancers so you can move faster and take the business to the next level. Upwork is a one stop platform to find higher and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data analytics, marketing, business operations and more. You can browse profiles, review, pass work and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly with business plus you can access the top 1% of talent on upwork and with AI powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required and thousands of growing businesses already trust upwork to hire flexible high quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWORK.com. Upwork.com. Yeah, so it's not a sustainable path to go for four or five six hours straight. What is more sustainable is hey, I'm going to focus for 30, 60, 90 minutes and then take a break and then once I'm done with my break, then I'm going to go for a motorcycle of like 30, 60 or 90 whatever you can sustain yourself. Right? And you do that multiple times throughout the day and you start to realize, hey, if I can align when I feel most alert and focus with the times I can do the most important work, that's when you start to become really productive. So an exercise that's super helpful for everybody listening is you probably have self-enough awareness to realize what parts of the day when you're our most focused is that the morning is that the early afternoon is it late afternoon is it late in the evening, right? And then we can start talking about chronotypes as well as you may want to. But the bigger idea here is with these old trading rhythms, it's just unrealistic to focus for two, three hours at once because our bodies are just not designed for that essentially. We can spend 16, 90 minutes up to maybe two hours because we all anecdotally have done that before where we're just like inflow, but I guess what our performance and concentration also degrades the longer we go. And there's kind of like a diminishing return after about 90 minutes or so. And so the idea is that if you can chunk your day in like 30, 60 or 90 minute chunks, that's a great strategy just to be focusing, guess, stuff done. The way you're talking about it, it almost makes me think that, you know, the Pomodoro technique we've all heard of that, you know, 25 minutes focus, five minute break, 25 minutes, this is just a, it almost makes me think that with the Pomodoro technique, you're kind of leaving stuff on the table. You know, you're, you're stopping after 25 minutes, but it sounds like and everyone's different obviously, but it sounds like we could probably go longer than 25 minutes and still be fine. So maybe instead of just religiously stopping at 25 minutes, maybe see if you can boost that a little bit, maybe you can do two Pomodoro or something like that and just see how it goes because it sounds like you're leaving a lot of, a lot in the tank if you're stopping every 25 minutes. Yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it. And I think that Pomodoro is also more of a training wheel approach to getting stuff done because some people might have a challenge focusing for 20 minutes or 25 minutes, but it's a great way to kind of condition yourself almost. Like if you're out of shape, you want to be able to sprint, right? You can sprint for like 30 seconds, one minute, and then once you push your conditioning up and up and up, you can probably start sprinting for a little bit longer or at least have longer durations of whatever exercise you're doing. And the focus is kind of like a very similar muscle in that sense. And I think the Pomodoro technique is very helpful, but you also start to realize like when I have like my best deep work days, if I have on my calendar, let's just say somewhere between 830 and 1130, a three hour block, I might have a blocked off on my account. But that doesn't mean that as soon as I sit down for a 30 that I just straight up just work till 11 30 and do nothing else Right what's more realistic and it goes back to this point is I might start at a 30 and then I do all this work and then Maybe an hour in or 90 minutes. I go okay. I can kind of feel this Start winning off a little bit. Let me take a break. Let me go for a walk. Let me go outside Take a 15 20 30 minute break and then come back to it and then do the second wind Where I'm just like okay, let's just do the next thing after this So even though I have it blocked off on my calendar for that three hour window I might break it up in one Break or sometimes even two breaks depending how I feel that day and So I know this for some people sounds like a luxury where you can say oh well, Tan you can block off three hours I wish I could do that right and not everyone can do that I totally understand that However, what we can do is be very intentional about blocking off times for ourselves And I remember when I was working with a client she could not block off her calendar unless it was two weeks out Because there were just so many meetings that were just blocked off for her in advance And so in order for her to work on something intentionally she had to like Make a commitment two weeks ahead of time to say hey on Monday between With say nine and noon. This is my time to work on something and That sounds crazy to some people to make that commitment that far ahead But when you're so busy, you have a lot of people counting on you and reporting to you And maybe you have to report to others as well. That might be the reality of it And so we can all do this we just sometimes have to make trade-offs and say hey Someone's asking you for a meeting on Monday at You know 10 30 you might have to say hey, unfortunately, I can't do that, but I'm happy to meet you know at one o'clock or whatever it sounds like the The 90 minute you know that you always hear this right the 90 minute rule 90 minute focus blocks and stuff like that it sounds like that's not so much a Hard rule that works for everybody. It's just almost like a starting point like hey 90 minutes for many people is a great Time period where you can focus before you start noticing like cognitive fatigue so to speak so kind of like start with 90 minutes But maybe you might well first of all if it's great if you can adjust that up to two hours like you said But maybe you may need to dial down that which is totally fine. It's not like you're you're Failing if you don't do 90 minutes. It's just that's a starting point But it's we need to like kind of adjust it to our own like like is it earlier knowing yourself? We need to adjust it to our own circumstances Yeah, I mean I the The funny example that comes in my mind right away as you were saying this is because I'm trying to count my macros as much as possible It's like okay. I might have to eat like 160 grams of protein every day if I want to like build muscle or lose weights like a high protein intake is a good idea So what are my options one? I could try to eat a hundred grams of protein in one sitting when I'm like having lunch or dinner And guess what I've tried that before and I just feel miserable right afterwards. I'm just like so sleepy My body is just wants to digest food and nothing else, right? And I had to realize and learn from just doing this that that's just unsustainable like I cannot do this every day because I take me literally an hour and a half to from to go from dinner to being foggy because my brain It's just so tired and I think my body's just like trying to digest and ingest so much protein that if I have for example up to 40 or 45 grams of protein in one sitting I'm totally fine and 45 grams of protein is pretty high amount in one sitting right that's like a chicken breast plus something else typically and I find like it's the same true with focus like there's a sweet spot for everybody where you can like do certain number of minutes in the setting to get the best out of you But if you're trying to do two three hours all at once You're just not getting the return that you're looking for and it's just unsustainable and so everyone has that own little cycle and based on you know the research and the signs like 90 minutes is kind of like the upper limits Because our bodies just go through 90 minutes cycles in that way and there's just diminishing returns because you just start to feel Fatigue and tired after about 90 minutes, but of course, there's always exceptions to the rule right we all had experiences where We did something for two three hours straight and we just lost track of time But you also know that those moments are the exception not the rule and so What I'm speaking of here today is really what is the rule that you can do every single day or every single week consistently To be productive rather than trying to be hero mode Like once every other month or so where you have like amazing throughout our block when in fact you can have Amazing 60 minute chunks three times a week every single week Yeah, it's so interesting how different things can Impact our perception of fatigue and our perception of these focus blocks like kind of like ramping down like I mean there's 80 HD that's not something I know a lot about but that is something that definitely can impact that for certain people if you're working on something that you are like Really highly stimulated by like you're you're talking you know We've all heard that term right locked in if you're locked in on what you're doing like you said you know that time can just fly by and you can go Blasting through that 90 minutes no problem and not even notice that 90 minutes have passed Sleep obviously, you know you talked about the T framework earlier time energy and attention You know if you're if your sleep is messed up that's gonna reduce your energy which is gonna have a drag on your attention And then also the one that's the most interesting to me is motivation if you are Motivated to do something then again you can often get to that 90 minutes and Perhaps even beyond whereas if you aren't motivated to do something You know, it's kind of like if somebody hates running on the treadmill and they start running on the treadmill like five minutes They're checking like it's only been five minutes. It's the same thing with your task if you're not motivated to do something Your actual fatigue might not be different like you're not any more tired than you would be otherwise But you just feel the effects of it much more because you're just not motivated to do it So there's all these things that can that can kind of like make that 90 minute time move up and down but Like you said is being self-aware understand what's happening and then you can pull those levers to either extend or Call it if it's not if it's not happening for you So two questions for you Brooks one What does a typical break look like for you when you're blocking off time on your calendar and that Upper limit hits and you're like, okay, I need to take a break What do you typically do during a break? And then the second thing is as somebody who's had multiple kids at different ages and different stages How do you cope with this idea of you know one working from home potentially being interrupted multiple times throughout the day And what is your upper limit of focus and how do you schedule is it like 30 60 90 minute blocks? What do you do? Yeah, so as far as breaks go usually for me it involves Going upstairs getting some water maybe having a snack and then I have like an afternoon just quick snack break as well where I go upstairs and I just have a You know a book or some sort and just like read that for a little bit nothing Nothing hardcore just something just to like kind of like shift your your mindset So that's something and that's just like 15 minutes tops. So that's something I tend to do I Try my best Not to not always successfully, but I try out my best not to like Take a break from work and then all of a sudden jump on social media to see what's blowing up in the world because I find that that Doesn't end up being much of a break at all So I try to just get up get some water or that type of thing The key is getting away from my computer though I 100% of the time do that I go up my office is in my basement So 100% of the time I get away from my computer because I don't I don't consider anything sitting at this desk staring at the screen That I'm looking at right now. I don't consider anything that you do there a break personally You know different things will work for different people Now as far as your question about kids. Yeah, my kids are basically grown now So it this is you know my focus blocks look a lot different now than they did But like you said all through you know from babies to well not babies But all through toddlers to high school they were in school I was working from home and so I had a lot of time at home with the kids and Focus blocks that like you just have to be realistic focus blocks then are more about Surfing available opportunities and just understanding that Disruptions are going to happen. So I definitely did not get a lot of 90 minute focus block is during that time It's more about grabbing those opportunities when they're there actually It's funny. I I'm Right now Reading the well listening to the audiobook what to make of a life by Jim Collins, you know the good-to-great guy And I'm sure this is gonna be a future top three But I just finished listening to the chapter of Tony Morrison the author and so she started her writing career with young children And she basically had to find a way to be productive and you know while carrying for her kids and she would just grab like If she had five minutes to. she would do a sentence. If she had 15 minutes, you know, maybe she would edit something. If she had the rare occasion when she had an hour, you know, maybe she could bust out a page or whatever. And that's how she wrote her first books. And I think that is just the way it is when you have kids. You have to, I think of it more as surfing opportunities than it is super focused blocks, at least for me. So Brooks, what would be to wrap up today's episode? What would be the action item that you would tell people when they, you know, have an imperfect situation, stuff happens all the time to your points? What's the action that people can take away from today? Like I said earlier, make that 90 minutes a goal, but don't make it a measure of success. So if you have to, if you have to like surf and just grab bits of focus when you can, you got to start somewhere, but just pay attention. Look at what your focus or levels are for a few days. I think a lot of times we just go through the day, not really knowing what's, not really paying attention to what's actually happening. So this is a great opportunity to do time tracking or at least pay special attention to your focus box for a couple of days, a week, whatever, know what it is that you're dealing with and then look for those opportunities that you can improve things bit by bit. You might have to start just with a little bit at first, let's see if you can kind of like one tweak a week at, to get to that 90 minutes, if at all possible, but if it's not, that's fine too. Awesome, well that is it for today's episode of the Pro Tivity Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify because it helps us grow to show. And we can't wait to have you back again next week.