The best hack from "The Power of One More" by Ed Mylett

Last summer, I listened to a few Ed Mylett interviews and was impressed by his presence, the passion in his speech, and the depth of his character. Therefore I decided to read his book, The Power of One More. While Ed's speaking talent did not transfer into writing, and while most of the ideas he writes about are general self-help stuff that's in every other book out there, I got one interesting hack out of it:

Dividing your day into multiple days.

Ed tells us that he has several days in one day: that each 6-hour block of time is its own day, and he sets goals and schedules for each of them. Now, Ed's a superhuman who can do anything without limits. Here's a version of this hack for normal laymen:

Do one day's worth of work in the morning, have a long break, and another day's worth of work in the evening, doubling your productivity.

How I do this is I work three to four hours before noon, working on all my ongoing projects and thus getting one day's efforts in before lunch. Then I go to the gym, read and meditate, eat lunch, and then have another three to four-hour session before 7 p.m.

The key difference between this and a "regular" 8-hour workday is that if you do the whole thing in eight consecutive hours, you'll drag, take breaks, procrastinate, and half-ass your work, because you dread the long stretch ahead of you. But if you set a time limit of three or four hours to do all of the work you expect to do in eight hours, you'll get to work instantly and grind without breaks until the work is done, because you're racing against the merciless clock. What's more, the long break between the two sessions resets your discipline battery, and you'll be able to do the whole thing again.

And thus, magically, you've accomplished two days' worth of work in one day.

RK