Here in Sweden it’s 3 hours before lunch and 3 hours after lunch. A six hour day you are at your most productive. My day is 3 hours work out/food 2 hours work 3 hours.
Sounds like a good system.... I currently do 5 - 11 and find that after that my brain is about shot. So easy stuff and workout in the afternoon for me as well. But I'm always testing different schedules to see what works.
I was failing at trying to do different things every day (studying, playing guitar, drawing) although I would block out the time and I'm really good at concentrating (I don't even use social media by now), 4 hours seems to be optimal for me and I find it really hard to go beyond 6 hours, and if I play/study guitar for 3 hours then I would only be capable of studying calculus for 3 hours before being exhausted. It seems we should always consider our own maximun hours of daily creative work each day and organize the activities throughout the week so that they don't compete with each other (also switching task is mentally taxing).
Spot on! It's good to recognize our natural limitations. I believe 4 hours is our biological max for concentrated work like you've described.... If you haven't already I think you'd enjoy "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. One of the chapters talks about world class musicians and how studies found 4 hours a day was their magic number - diminishing returns or damage beyond that point.... Thanks for watching!
Helpful info! Would be great to know how breaks & lunch factor into the 7.5 hours. Are these counted in that total? What are the ideal lengths of breaks and how frequently?
Oh, good question! Breaks are not factored into the 7.5 hours - it's just the actual work. I would recommend 90 -120 minute work sessions minimum. I like going 4 hours in the morning on my big task for the day. As for the length that isn't something I've researched. I think anything more than 20 min is too much but that's a personal preference - I don't have data to back that up
So glad i found this video. currently in a phase of burnout and hoping i could go back to work sooner but something in me is a bit repulsed, also taking perspective on what those indicators were leading up to this. Also usefully feel a sense of guilt with how much i work in a day (one of my indicators), didn't realise that i should be doing 4hrs max of creative work and that that could be a large reason where i am currently. Thanks for the info.
It's hard not to feel guilty when it seems like so many people are putting in more hours... The studies were very eye opening to me and helped with removing that sense of guilt.... The book DEEP WORK by Cal Newport is a great resource on how to make those 4 hours the most productive part of your day.... Wish you the best in recovering
@@JasonAWhaling I mean less is more isn’t it. I just get so addicted to my work I find it hard to gain the energy to go and do recreation. But when I am more refreshed from doing my hobbies etc I work better. Double edged sword as I enjoy my work, it’s just complex at times. Thank you I will check that book out!
I work 8 hours a day (sometimes it's overtime for about 30 minutes) from Monday to Friday, and 5 hours on Saturday. I work doubled as a Social Media Officer and a Copywriter. I spend the 8 hours for writing, schedulling posts, and creating reports. At home, I have to recheck all of the clients' social media whether there are mistakes in the posts. I only have Sunday to rest my brain after 45 hours working. I'm also only given one day to take a leave in a month. It's totally exhausting, and I don't have any ideas how to manage my time so that it'll be a work-life balance. Could you please give me some advice, sir? Thank you.
That's really rough and hard to maintain. What I would suggest is focus on optimizing the time you can control; your time off. You may find you need more than 8 hours of sleep. Another strategy is to spread your choirs throughout the workweek so that Sunday truly is a rest day. Cramming all of your choirs, shopping, cooking, etc. into the other 6 days will make a world of difference.
In my situation, I do creative work for 2 hours then take a 1 hr break then go do a "Job" for an hour (i work online so i can work anytime) then it repeats 3 times. would this burn me out? in the end it adds up to 8 hrs of creative work per day. Is the constant breaks in between change anything? Because I dont work straight hours at all.
Hello, thank you so much for this video, it helped me a lot. I did not know how many hours a week I should work and I felt like Im not doing enough. It helped me to get some perspective on it. You have cool channel, I subscribed and look forward to your videos! have a good day :-)
Fantastic to hear! This video came out of that same frustration of not knowing if I was doing enough. Hope this helps you stay motivated, productive, and burnout free.
Good question. I would not recommend going 7 straight. I find that doing a 4 hour stint in the morning works really well. A break and the additional hours after a meal or workout...hope that helps!
The answer is a big fat 'it depends.' Out side of the data offered in this video; I'd suggest looking into techniques for improving the quality of the time you spend studying so that you get more out of the hours you are already putting in
I wouldn't include that. For "work" it's more about the amount of time your asking your brain to work produce an output. Lucky for us learning new skills one our own (school work counts as work ) can fall under recreation time 👍
thanks for your advice , if you allow me i want to add a remark : all depend on what are you doing for me I work at least 8 hours per day. why? if I want to achieve my goal learn to code in different technologies I need to study the syntax of Langage and after that start by coding to check my understanding and after that, I have to be creative with new applications. the only way I found really productive was to cut one hour to 25 min work +5 min break and repeat for each task and each task before starting I cut it to do list for focusing more. what do you think? Thanks in advance.
This is based upon studies of people doing work and of course that can change from person to person. If we are talking about deep intellectual uninterrupted work, then 8 hours is probably the limit that someone can do every day without burning out.... You have to consider there is a BIG difference between studying and developing a new application from scratch when it comes to the load it puts on your brain..... And you can train yourself to go longer. So eventually you could go up to 90 minutes before you need a break 👍
@@JasonAWhaling Cal Newport says deep work has an upper limit of 4-6 hours but somehow you nearly double all of yours. You said the study said 4 hours for creative work, then you went for 7.5 for yourself. Then Cal Newport says 4 hours deep and complex work and you double that. 8 hours office work is for easy tasks. No one does heavy and complex math for 8 hours or. Day. Nearly impossible.
Ok, I went back to college recently and I have been really feeling burned out. My studies are heavily research-based. Would you consider formal education creative work?
I would suggest you check out 'Cal Newport Blog'. He's a professor and has excellent posts on getting into deep work for creatives as well as time blocking for making the most of your time.
I found extra sleep while doing college is important. What you are doing is what the video refers to as a creative work. I prefer the term "mind work" instead though. Learning is an especially exhausting part of mind work so I find when I have to learn a lot of new things I need extra sleep. That sleep helps process the information and makes it more reusable. Fellow students would ask me how I found time to sleep and still pass exams. I said I'd fail the exams without them. I'd always have 1/2 to an hour blocked out after college classes to just sleep. It really helped.
I found this video to be really useful to me as I am a beginner to learning about how to be the most productive person. I am currently a university student and I’m entering my fourth year as a CIS major. I just recently started to do research on getting the most productivity out of my day because I had a huge mental breakdown about a week ago. I was constantly working 8-11 hours a day for at least a month and I was very very burnout to the point that I was experiencing stress, anxiety, and depersonalization symptoms. This really was eye opening to me and I never knew that being a workaholic can be very dangerous to my mental and physical health. For many years I have never even questioned my work routine until this moment happened, now I just want to help myself and see the optimal hour limit for doing my studying, and other creative work. I plan on starting with 3 (90 minute intervals) a day for 5 days a week and at least 30-40 mins breaks in between each interval. I hope to eventually increase the number of time intervals to at least 4 a day, but I’ll have to play around with it to see if I can even be that productive, depending on my limitations. Is there any book you can recommend me that helped you with getting the most productivity out of your day? Maybe even a book that also explains how to get the most out of studying, creative work and other types of work? Anyway thank you for this video and I hope my journey to bettering myself will payoff. Best of wishes to you good sir!
That must have been tough. You're not alone in experiencing something like that and it's something similar that sparked this video in the first place. It sounds like you have a sold plan to move forward and props for taking the time to come up with a plan. In terms of books here are my favorite two. Start with the first since it will be more relevant to studying: 1) Deep Work by Calnewport 2) The ONE Thing by Garry Keller / Jay Papsen
@@JasonAWhaling thank you so much for the book recommendations! I really appreciate your advice and your videos. May there be much success in your future good sir.
You'll find that your quality of work goes down once you pass 7-8 hours. Its' better to add more work days than make the day longer... Hope that helps!
Studying would fall in line with what's outlined as ideal work hours. Instead of studying more, I'd recommend learning different techniques to make the time you do spend more effective.
I usually do 5am to 6pm but quite a few of the other workers are off and I'm the only one who can the jobs they do so i do theirs & mine so since last week I've been doing 5am to 10:30pm plus the 2 hour drive home so I've been working a full week off of 4 hours sleep and honestly I'm fucked😂 but after today i get a full 3 weeks off 🙏😫
Sounds like you were dealing with a crazy schedule, bud! I hope your load is much lighter now and you get to enjoy life more! Wishing you all the best! 🔥
Focusing on how many hours you work each week is a great way to waste your life. Instead, focus on getting important things done in a time frame that your happy with.
🤔Completely agree that you need to be happy with the time frame. My goal here is to point out there is a point of diminishing productivity returns and how much you can work before it begins to affect your health P.S. - Your expat living videos on Chiang Mai were super helpful! 🙏
We may have different definitions of 'work' or you've figure out how to operate with less sleep than the rest of us... either way awesome you're not stressed with your workload 🔥
I'm figuring out how to operate without a social life. :) Real work, with timer and without distraction. The key, for me, was one insight for a youtube video: "Keep the tasks you hate to be no more than 10% of work." And yet, I whaste so much time every week and keep looking for the magic pill. Btw, thank you for good content.
Here in Sweden it’s 3 hours before lunch and 3 hours after lunch. A six hour day you are at your most productive. My day is 3 hours work out/food 2 hours work 3 hours.
Sounds like a good system.... I currently do 5 - 11 and find that after that my brain is about shot. So easy stuff and workout in the afternoon for me as well. But I'm always testing different schedules to see what works.
That's because Sweden is one of the best countries ever.
I was failing at trying to do different things every day (studying, playing guitar, drawing) although I would block out the time and I'm really good at concentrating (I don't even use social media by now), 4 hours seems to be optimal for me and I find it really hard to go beyond 6 hours, and if I play/study guitar for 3 hours then I would only be capable of studying calculus for 3 hours before being exhausted. It seems we should always consider our own maximun hours of daily creative work each day and organize the activities throughout the week so that they don't compete with each other (also switching task is mentally taxing).
Spot on! It's good to recognize our natural limitations. I believe 4 hours is our biological max for concentrated work like you've described.... If you haven't already I think you'd enjoy "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. One of the chapters talks about world class musicians and how studies found 4 hours a day was their magic number - diminishing returns or damage beyond that point.... Thanks for watching!
Helpful info! Would be great to know how breaks & lunch factor into the 7.5 hours. Are these counted in that total? What are the ideal lengths of breaks and how frequently?
Oh, good question! Breaks are not factored into the 7.5 hours - it's just the actual work. I would recommend 90 -120 minute work sessions minimum. I like going 4 hours in the morning on my big task for the day. As for the length that isn't something I've researched. I think anything more than 20 min is too much but that's a personal preference - I don't have data to back that up
So glad i found this video. currently in a phase of burnout and hoping i could go back to work sooner but something in me is a bit repulsed, also taking perspective on what those indicators were leading up to this. Also usefully feel a sense of guilt with how much i work in a day (one of my indicators), didn't realise that i should be doing 4hrs max of creative work and that that could be a large reason where i am currently. Thanks for the info.
It's hard not to feel guilty when it seems like so many people are putting in more hours... The studies were very eye opening to me and helped with removing that sense of guilt.... The book DEEP WORK by Cal Newport is a great resource on how to make those 4 hours the most productive part of your day.... Wish you the best in recovering
@@JasonAWhaling I mean less is more isn’t it. I just get so addicted to my work I find it hard to gain the energy to go and do recreation. But when I am more refreshed from doing my hobbies etc I work better. Double edged sword as I enjoy my work, it’s just complex at times. Thank you I will check that book out!
Thank you for this. It helped me a lot 🙏🏾
Happy to help! Sincerely hope this helps you with finding a healthy and sustainable level of work for ya💯
I work 8 hours a day (sometimes it's overtime for about 30 minutes) from Monday to Friday, and 5 hours on Saturday. I work doubled as a Social Media Officer and a Copywriter. I spend the 8 hours for writing, schedulling posts, and creating reports. At home, I have to recheck all of the clients' social media whether there are mistakes in the posts. I only have Sunday to rest my brain after 45 hours working. I'm also only given one day to take a leave in a month. It's totally exhausting, and I don't have any ideas how to manage my time so that it'll be a work-life balance. Could you please give me some advice, sir? Thank you.
That's really rough and hard to maintain. What I would suggest is focus on optimizing the time you can control; your time off. You may find you need more than 8 hours of sleep. Another strategy is to spread your choirs throughout the workweek so that Sunday truly is a rest day. Cramming all of your choirs, shopping, cooking, etc. into the other 6 days will make a world of difference.
In my situation, I do creative work for 2 hours then take a 1 hr break then go do a "Job" for an hour (i work online so i can work anytime) then it repeats 3 times. would this burn me out? in the end it adds up to 8 hrs of creative work per day. Is the constant breaks in between change anything? Because I dont work straight hours at all.
Breaks can help with recharging, but the total limits for the day still applies. What you've outlined sounds very sustainable though.
Hello, thank you so much for this video, it helped me a lot. I did not know how many hours a week I should work and I felt like Im not doing enough. It helped me to get some perspective on it. You have cool channel, I subscribed and look forward to your videos! have a good day :-)
Fantastic to hear! This video came out of that same frustration of not knowing if I was doing enough. Hope this helps you stay motivated, productive, and burnout free.
What would cold dms and outreach be classed as. Deep work?
Thanks for sharing!
Hope this sheds some light on what's possible and reasonable with your own work week :)
Amazing! Thank you :)
Happy to help and hope it brought some clarity to what is possible and healthy. Thanks for watching!
Do you have any specific time intervals for breaks per day? or is it 7.5 hours straight?
Good question. I would not recommend going 7 straight. I find that doing a 4 hour stint in the morning works really well. A break and the additional hours after a meal or workout...hope that helps!
@@JasonAWhaling Thank you!
You just earned a new subscriber!!! :)
So I'm a student. I study for 5 hours at home and my school is for 6 hours. I focus for like 2 hours there. So how many hours should I study at home
The answer is a big fat 'it depends.' Out side of the data offered in this video; I'd suggest looking into techniques for improving the quality of the time you spend studying so that you get more out of the hours you are already putting in
Does thus includes upskilling yourself like learning new computer language or it's just pure work?
I wouldn't include that. For "work" it's more about the amount of time your asking your brain to work produce an output. Lucky for us learning new skills one our own (school work counts as work ) can fall under recreation time 👍
Hey Jason, do you have the references for the studies please? Thank you - great vid :)
Thanks!
I'm showing your video in a workshop I'm doing about stress to a group of social entrepreneurs :)
Hi Jason
I need the reference to those studies as well.
thanks for your advice ,
if you allow me i want to add a remark :
all depend on what are you doing for me I work at least 8 hours per day. why?
if I want to achieve my goal learn to code in different technologies I need to study the syntax of Langage and after that start by coding to check my understanding and after that, I have to be creative with new applications.
the only way I found really productive was to cut one hour to 25 min work +5 min break and repeat for each task and each task before starting I cut it to do list for focusing more.
what do you think?
Thanks in advance.
This is based upon studies of people doing work and of course that can change from person to person. If we are talking about deep intellectual uninterrupted work, then 8 hours is probably the limit that someone can do every day without burning out.... You have to consider there is a BIG difference between studying and developing a new application from scratch when it comes to the load it puts on your brain..... And you can train yourself to go longer. So eventually you could go up to 90 minutes before you need a break 👍
@@JasonAWhaling Cal Newport says deep work has an upper limit of 4-6 hours but somehow you nearly double all of yours. You said the study said 4 hours for creative work, then you went for 7.5 for yourself.
Then Cal Newport says 4 hours deep and complex work and you double that.
8 hours office work is for easy tasks. No one does heavy and complex math for 8 hours or. Day. Nearly impossible.
Ok, I went back to college recently and I have been really feeling burned out. My studies are heavily research-based. Would you consider formal education creative work?
I would suggest you check out 'Cal Newport Blog'. He's a professor and has excellent posts on getting into deep work for creatives as well as time blocking for making the most of your time.
I found extra sleep while doing college is important. What you are doing is what the video refers to as a creative work. I prefer the term "mind work" instead though. Learning is an especially exhausting part of mind work so I find when I have to learn a lot of new things I need extra sleep. That sleep helps process the information and makes it more reusable. Fellow students would ask me how I found time to sleep and still pass exams. I said I'd fail the exams without them. I'd always have 1/2 to an hour blocked out after college classes to just sleep. It really helped.
This is interesting, why not including the references for the study you cite ?
Great question. Here's a link to the CDC Report: www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf
I found this video to be really useful to me as I am a beginner to learning about how to be the most productive person. I am currently a university student and I’m entering my fourth year as a CIS major. I just recently started to do research on getting the most productivity out of my day because I had a huge mental breakdown about a week ago. I was constantly working 8-11 hours a day for at least a month and I was very very burnout to the point that I was experiencing stress, anxiety, and depersonalization symptoms. This really was eye opening to me and I never knew that being a workaholic can be very dangerous to my mental and physical health. For many years I have never even questioned my work routine until this moment happened, now I just want to help myself and see the optimal hour limit for doing my studying, and other creative work. I plan on starting with 3 (90 minute intervals) a day for 5 days a week and at least 30-40 mins breaks in between each interval. I hope to eventually increase the number of time intervals to at least 4 a day, but I’ll have to play around with it to see if I can even be that productive, depending on my limitations. Is there any book you can recommend me that helped you with getting the most productivity out of your day? Maybe even a book that also explains how to get the most out of studying, creative work and other types of work? Anyway thank you for this video and I hope my journey to bettering myself will payoff. Best of wishes to you good sir!
That must have been tough. You're not alone in experiencing something like that and it's something similar that sparked this video in the first place.
It sounds like you have a sold plan to move forward and props for taking the time to come up with a plan. In terms of books here are my favorite two. Start with the first since it will be more relevant to studying:
1) Deep Work by Calnewport
2) The ONE Thing by Garry Keller / Jay Papsen
@@JasonAWhaling thank you so much for the book recommendations! I really appreciate your advice and your videos. May there be much success in your future good sir.
Amazing video !!
Thank you 🙏
Can you provide the research links?
Hi mate, look up the CDC work hours study and you should find it there! Thanks for watching 💕
I work 6 hours per day but i wqnted to push it to 12 , is it wrong?
You'll find that your quality of work goes down once you pass 7-8 hours. Its' better to add more work days than make the day longer... Hope that helps!
Jason I am still waiting for the call I don't know myb my emails are not going through. Thanks in advance
I work 85 hours per week but I have worked 102 hours per week as well.
Yikes! Hope you find a way to get those hours down soon
How
How many hours can I study lesson ??? Productivity
Studying would fall in line with what's outlined as ideal work hours. Instead of studying more, I'd recommend learning different techniques to make the time you do spend more effective.
I usually do 5am to 6pm but quite a few of the other workers are off and I'm the only one who can the jobs they do so i do theirs & mine so since last week I've been doing 5am to 10:30pm plus the 2 hour drive home so I've been working a full week off of 4 hours sleep and honestly I'm fucked😂 but after today i get a full 3 weeks off 🙏😫
Sounds like you were dealing with a crazy schedule, bud! I hope your load is much lighter now and you get to enjoy life more! Wishing you all the best! 🔥
yeah it's real in my experience
Hope you were able to find a good number to keep productive without burning out
@@JasonAWhaling The best is 4 ours in my opinion. If smb works even 5 hours, he will be exhausted the next day. The truth of life, isn't it?
Focusing on how many hours you work each week is a great way to waste your life.
Instead, focus on getting important things done in a time frame that your happy with.
🤔Completely agree that you need to be happy with the time frame. My goal here is to point out there is a point of diminishing productivity returns and how much you can work before it begins to affect your health
P.S. - Your expat living videos on Chiang Mai were super helpful! 🙏
Not if you’re a employer.
Normally hit 60-80 hours per week and I consider myself an absolute lazy person who only wastes time.
We may have different definitions of 'work' or you've figure out how to operate with less sleep than the rest of us... either way awesome you're not stressed with your workload 🔥
I'm figuring out how to operate without a social life. :)
Real work, with timer and without distraction.
The key, for me, was one insight for a youtube video: "Keep the tasks you hate to be no more than 10% of work."
And yet, I whaste so much time every week and keep looking for the magic pill.
Btw, thank you for good content.
U look like someone i think i know infact cant draw lines however it is definitely a celebrity.
😳
6-8 hours a day ^^ I have to feed my family so suck it up and go to work. Actually I have to go to work right now so bye haha
Thanks for watching
30 to 40hours a weeek if u single n 16 to 20hours if u got children.....
Sounds nice and reasonable to me 😁
Makes sense. But us single parents don’t have a choice :(
Me who works 8hours and 30minutes 😫
Nothing wrong with that! We all tend to work over the optimal... but it's a goal to strive for
50 hours a week 100 hours total on your pay check that’s enough
Kinda missing the point, but yeah; that's how the math would work out
Answer? 18 per day.
That's a lot of hours, mate!