Good Productivity Ideas Are Borrowed. Great Ones Are Stolen.

<p>I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ve heard the quote, &ldquo;Good artists borrow, great artists steal.&rdquo; The quote is attributed to Pablo Picasso, although there is some doubt.</p> <p>The point is that simply borrowing or &ldquo;copying&rdquo; (as Steve Jobs altered it) is not a good strategy when developing your productivity system. What works for one person is not going to work for you.</p> <p>You and I, for example, work differently. We have different jobs, for a start, and how we work will be different. If you meet a highly productive person and try to copy their methods and techniques, you will fail. However, if you steal a concept and bend it to work for you, you will discover strategies and practices that work for you.</p> <p>I recently came across Jeffrey Archer&rsquo;s time management system. It&rsquo;s extreme, and at first, I dismissed it as impractical for my work. However, a seed began germinating in my mind over the following weeks. I realised that while Jeffrey Archer&rsquo;s system, as he practices it, would not work for me, the concept could be stolen and forged to work.</p> <p>Jeffrey Archer&rsquo;s method is to practice a &lsquo;two-hours on, two-hours off&rsquo; work day. He will begin his day at 6:00 am with two hours of writing (his core work &mdash; he&rsquo;s an author) and stop at 8:00 am for a two-hour break. He would then repeat that from 10:00 until 12:00 and so on until 8 pm.</p> <p>This means he is doing deep, focused work for eight hours a day with six hours of rest. I realised that two hours of deep focused work is the limit I have for doing deep work. After two hours, I am mentally tired and need a break.</p> <p><a href="https://carl-pullein.medium.com/good-productivity-ideas-are-borrowed-great-ones-are-stolen-debccf24c2f2">Learn More</a></p>