It’s likely your mind will beg for you to work on a problem for longer than five minutes. In some cases it might be right, but stick with the program if you can. Even experienced marathon runners often run less distance than they can, so that they can train up for speed and better endurance; similarly, we’re starting off at five minutes to make it easy on you—you need to get used to this pattern of working more than anything else.
So if you’re working on complex problems, and feel that you must work longer than five-minute intervals, initially, then do it. But for a few hours, or even a solid day, give the 5:1 setting a shot. You might find that you get more minutes out of your day in the long term that way. Remember, we’re starting off easy so that you don’t get discouraged.
After you’ve got the 5:1 thing down, it’s time to start increasing your attention span. In your first week, gradually turn up the number of work minutes in 15-second intervals. By day four, try to get up to about seven minutes. Remember to split your intervals up—in any given 60-minute set, you’re going to need at least 2 minutes to stretch and about 10 minutes to deal with email.
As not all numbers divide into 48 evenly, these stretch moments and email moments are going to need pliable time limits. Do what you think is best, but if you have to err, err to the side of rest, not to the side of work.
By day 10, try for a 10-minute work interval to a 2-minute rest interval. A 10:2 interval may seem vastly inferior to a 9:1 interval. It’s more than 60% less efficient to spend two minutes resting for every minute working as it is one for every nine. But remember, what we’re trying to do here is to lengthen your attention span. At 10 minutes, we begin to get to the usual standard of our attention span length.
Continue growing your work time as you see fit, at increments that are shorter than noticeable. Do only 15- to 30-second increases, never more than once a day, and try not to go longer than 15 minutes without a small stretch break, at least. Remember: we’re building a healthy lifestyle for you.
For this book, I worked in 15-minute work intervals with 2-minute breaks three times an hour, and a 9-minute email check at the end of every hour. I stretched, used the restroom, or otherwise didn’t look at the screen for the full two minutes, I found this helped my mind reflect and decompress, so that I could get back to writing. Sometimes those two-minute breaks turned into five-minute breaks; sometimes those 15-minute work spans turned into 20-minute ones—I’m not a stickler for time anymore.
I also did only four hours in a row of this focused task work at a time, followed by at least an hour break that was entirely away from the computer screen. I tried to schedule my day so that I accomplished all the task-oriented computer work I needed to accomplish by noon, then I could take an hour for lunch. If I had meetings in any given day, they were scheduled for after lunch and if at all possible, back-to-back and directly after lunch. If my schedule allowed, then I was back at it after the meetings were over.
It’s worth noting that I’ve started to apply this same technique to other things that require my concentration. Reading on the iPad, for instance, is tough for me because my email is just a tap or two away. In order to make a successful journey through a book, even for leisure, I’ve got to apply the same technique. The technique is about focus and concentration, not necessarily about getting work done.
The other good thing about this method is that it forces us to consciously measure the time we spend working on a computer. By building in the interval metronome, we become keenly aware of how much time has gone by, and how much time we have left to get done what we need to get done. No longer will you look up and wonder where the day went. You’ve used your executive function and accounted for it.
Finally, remember that you’re measuring your success. We set up RescueTime for a reason: to make sure that what you were doing works for you. Make sure, after a week or two of doing this, that your productivity number is headed in the right direction, and that it stays that way.
All our brains and minds are unique, and though this works for me, it may not work for you. If it’s the case that this system isn’t working for you, then it’s an opportunity for creativity. I encourage you to invent your own system for training out your attention span—and share it with us on InformationDiet.com.
Distractibility Can Be Good
It turns out that constant focus isn’t all that great, and that allowing a bit of distractibility into our lifestyles can have some benefit. Several academic studies now show that surfing the Web mindlessly, for brief periods of time, can have restorative cognitive properties[82]—much more so than things with a high cognitive load like managing email. Focus on building your attention span, but don’t forget to give yourself some breaks. Just make sure they’re set to certain limits. Spending all day focused entirely on your work is bound to be exhausting.
Chapter 9. A Healthy Sense of Humor
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
We could all stand to be a little more like Karl Rove in Washington. I met him once at a politics and technology event here in Washington, D.C. He glanced down at my attendee badge, saw the company name on it, and exclaimed: “Blue State Digital! You guys do great things for the wrong people!”
I responded: “Another half-truth from Karl Rove.”
He laughed, told me how he would have beaten Howard Dean in 2004, and asked for my business card.
Three days later, I walked into my office to find a handwritten letter with a lot of strange stamps on it. It was a letter from my cocktail companion and renowned philatelist. The letter said:
“Dear Mr. Johnson,
It was a pleasure meeting you at the Yahoo! Citizens 2.0 Conference. Best of luck with the business, but only up to a point!
If you’d like to have the picture you took of me inscribed, please send it over and I’ll sign it for you and send it back. If not, please accept this letter as a souvenir. Now you can show your liberal friends that you met the great Satan himself.
Sincerely,
Karl Rove”
Over the course of a few weeks, I found myself developing a pen pal in Rove. He and I exchanged a few letters—he romanticized “pushing atoms back and forth”—and I thanked him for helping us raise all that money for MoveOn.org. (Though I must admit, my interface with the United States Postal Service isn’t what it ought to be.) It struck me that Rove, arguably one of the most successful political architects in history, was not only funny, but he was also keenly aware and capable of poking fun at himself.
Left-of-center people may find this atrocious. Here’s a man who helped architect George W. Bush’s political strategy for eight years. Known as “Bush’s Brain,” he’s often thought of by millions of people as one of the most evil spinmasters that ever existed—alongside Dick Cheney, and Bush himself, Rove is thought of by the left as the puppeteer behind the administration that led us through the Iraq war, the botched Katrina efforts, the housing bubble, and the banking system’s meltdown.
And here he was, in a courteous and handwritten note, being hilarious though downright glib about the whole thing. In Rove’s defense—he wasn’t making fun of those things that the left has him tied up in. He was making fun of himself.