The Productive Advantage Of Building A Personal Sanctuary.
I’ve been re-researching how Charles Darwin and Winston Churchill got their work done. Both lived in a time before computers and instantaneous communications and yet were prolific in their output. Churchill wrote 37 books and countless articles and speeches. Charles Darwin wrote one of the most influential scientific books ever written and became the world’s expert on barnacles and worms.
How did these people find the time to get their work done? The answer? Both had a highly structured life that followed a carefully curated daily routine.
Take Charles Darwin, for example. He would wake early and go out for a morning walk. He would begin work at 8:00 am and work until lunchtime. After lunch, he would respond to his letters, take his dog for a walk and take a nap before sitting down to a family dinner. After dinner, he would play card games with his wife before ending his day around 10:30 pm.
Winston Churchill was a little unconventional. He would wake around 7:00 am and would read the newspapers. Afterwards, he would eat breakfast, dictate letters or revise a speech. All of this would be done from his bed.
At 11:00 am, he would get up, get dressed, and walk before lunch. After lunch, he would work in his home office (study) until 3:30 pm, when he would nap for ninety minutes before having a bath and getting dressed for dinner.
After dinner, he would return to his study until 1 am, when he would retire to bed.
Both men didn’t work extraordinarily long hours. Darwin worked around four hours a day, and Churchill around six to seven. Yet both men got a lot of work done.
Part of the reason why they were so productive was because they had a place to do their work. Churchill’s bedroom was next door to his study, and Darwin’s study was in his home. Working from home in a sanctuary they created was part of the reason they were so productive.
Both Darwin and Churchill compartmentalised their workspace. There was a desk for writing, of course, and in Darwin’s case, he had a work table for studying creatures and plants with his microscope. Churchill had a standing desk for reading proofs of his books and speeches and newspapers — standing desks are not new — and when dictating letters and speeches, he would pace up and down the middle of the room.
This idea of compartmentalising their workspaces inspired how I created my own office and studio.
However, the key to their prolific productivity was they limited their access. When working from their homes (Down House in Darwin’s case and Chartwell in Churchill’s), they ensured the outside world could not contact them except by letter. For us, that would be email today. Letter writing was slow and could be responded to on their terms.
Darwin lived in a pre-telephone world, and while Churchill had access to a telephone, he would not have answered it, and his servants were instructed not to disturb him. Instead, they took messages and passed them on later.
We feel so overwhelmed and swamped today because we don’t limit our access or have a sanctuary from which to produce our work. We allow ourselves to be always available to everyone, so we have no time for deep, focused work. Yet one thing I have noticed about all highly productive people today is they not only have a regular place to do their core work but also make contacting them very difficult.
Take author Jeffrey Archer. When writing his books, he flies to Mallorca, a Spanish island, on the 27th of December and returns to the UK early in March. During those two months, he follows a strict structure that involves writing for six to eight hours daily. He writes in the same room that does not have a telephone or computer.
If you are allowing yourself to be accessible all day, you will be fighting a losing battle. Your focus will be all over the place, which will prevent you from being able to concentrate on anything.
You may be thinking, I have to be available for my boss, customers/clients and colleagues. But do you? Is there a better way?
When Darwin and Churchill needed to meet other people to discuss things, they would head to London for a few days. During those days, they met with the people they needed to talk with and used those days to cram in as many meetings as possible. This was when they were accessible. In Churchill’s case, this was weekly; in Darwin’s, it was less frequent. But both ensured that when they did meet with people, it did not interrupt their focused work.
Can you find two or three hours a day where you could cut yourself off from the outside world to get on and do some deep, focused work? Working a typical eight-hour day would still leave you with five to six hours a day when you were accessible.
The time management problems we face today are of our own making. Rather than allowing technology to work for us, we’ve allowed technology to work against us. Productive people only get quality work done by restricting their access. They make it hard to be contacted. They limit the channels in which they can be reached — by not being on all instant messaging services — and make sure they have time each day for deep-focused work.
Charles Darwin and Winston Churchill had a considerable impact on the world and produced enormous amounts of work, and yet, the total number of hours they worked each day was a lot less than you are likely to be working. They did not have access to super-fast computers, smartphones or Google, which gave them instant access to information. It was a slow, laborious process when they needed to research something.
The difference between them and you is they restricted their access and built working environments that encouraged deep, focused work. Would your productivity be improved if you adopted just a few of these ideas?
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