Reading time: About 3 minutes
It sounds counterintuitive, but working less as a writer will actually help make you more productive…
Here’s a confession that’s going to sound lazy: By noon, I’m often done with the serious work of the day.
Why: I do most of my best writing before 10 a.m.
I’m not bragging. I’m explaining something that took me years to accept — that working longer isn’t the same as producing more. In fact, it’s often the opposite.
And this isn’t just my own experience. A growing pile of research shows that when we work less, we tend to produce more. Better. Faster. With less misery thrown in.
The myth of the eight-hour workday
Most of us treat the workday like a marathon. Head down, grind it out, collapse at 5 p.m., repeat. But our brains weren’t built for that.
A Stanford study by economist John Pencavel found that productivity drops off sharply after about 50 hours a week. Push past 55, and the extra hours contribute essentially nothing. You’re not producing more work. You’re just keeping your chair warm — and, frankly, your chair doesn’t need the help.
Let that sink in…
The person who quits at 5 p.m. and the person who slogs until 7 p.m. can produce exactly the same amount of work. The difference? One of them is resentful and exhausted. The other is reading a novel, walking the dog or having dinner with people they love.
What actually happens when we overwork
When researchers study knowledge workers, they find the same pattern. The highest performers work in highly focused stretches, then rest. The lowest performers sit at their desks longer but produce less.
The reason has to do with how our brains handle complex thinking. We have a limited pool of attention and cognitive energy. When the pool runs dry — and it runs dry faster than most of us admit — we don’t actually solve problems. We move symbols around on screens and answer emails we didn’t really need to answer. (You know. The ones where you hit “reply” and then stare at the screen for six minutes. And then write, “thanks.”)
Breaks aren’t a reward for work. They’re part of the work.
The experiments that prove it
You don’t have to take my word on this. The research is piling up.
In 2019, Microsoft Japan ran a four-day workweek experiment for a month. Productivity went up 40%. Not down. Up.
Iceland tested shorter workweeks from 2015 to 2019 with more than 2,500 workers. Productivity stayed steady or improved. Workers reported being dramatically happier and less stressed.
A U.K. trial in 2022 had 61 companies shorten their workweeks to four days. At the end, 92% of the companies kept the shorter schedule. They weren’t doing it out of kindness. They were doing it because it worked better than five-day weeks.
Why rest is a productivity tool
Here’s what changes when you work less:
- You stop padding your day with unnecessary meetings.
- You prioritize better because you have to.
- You actually rest, which is when your brain consolidates what you’ve learned.
- You return to hard problems with a fresh perspective.
Many creative breakthroughs happen during rest, not during work. The solution arrives in the shower. The sentence you couldn’t figure out yesterday shows up on the morning walk. Your brain keeps working on problems in the background, but only if you actually give it background time.
What this looks like for writers
I tell my writing clients to aim for 15 to 30 minutes of focused writing a day. (And if they’re new to writing, or struggling with writer’s block, I have them start with just five minutes.) Most of them think that’s absurdly low. They’d rather “write all day” and produce three pages of mediocre prose that they’ll eventually scrap.
I’d rather they write less and produce one page that takes their project forward.
The math favours the shorter approach. One good page a day gives you a 365-page book in a year. Grinding for eight hours and producing mush gives you burnout and a drawer full of abandoned drafts that you’ll rename “FINAL v2 ACTUALLY FINAL” before quietly retiring.
How to start working less
If this idea appeals to you but makes you twitchy, start small. Block your calendar for a 15-minute focus session, followed by a real break. End your workday at a set time, even if you haven’t finished everything. (You’ll never finish everything. Nobody does.)
Take a proper lunch away from your desk, not a sandwich over your keyboard. And stop treating busyness as a virtue. It isn’t. It’s just motion. You’re like a hamster on a wheel, except the hamster is getting more exercise.
Try it for a week
Work fewer hours. Protect your rest. See what happens.
My bet is that you’ll produce more than you have in months. And you’ll feel like a human being while you’re doing it. Being a tired, resentful person who hasn’t taken a lunch break in six weeks is not a writing strategy. It’s a cautionary tale.
Something I’m loving right now…
The post you’ve just read also arrives in inboxes every Tuesday — and subscribers get something extra. Each week, I include a brief, subscriber-only bonus: a short paragraph featuring a practical tip about a tool, book, video, app or resource I’ve tested and loved. This bonus is never published on my website — only in the email. No fluff. No sales pitch. Just one smart recommendation to make your writing life easier. Subscribe to my newsletter to get next Tuesday’s love note.
*
My video podcast last week described how to find a story arc for your memoir. You can watch the video or read the transcript, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
*
Have you ever tried working less to get better results? We can all learn from each other, so please, share your thoughts with my readers and me in the comments section, below. And congratulations to Nancy Larson, the winner of this month’s book prize, for a comment on my April 21/26 blog post about four mistakes that will stall a dissertation. (Please send me your email address, Nancy.) If you comment on today’s post (or any others) by May 31/26, I’ll put you in a draw for a digital copy of my first book, 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. To enter, please scroll down to the comments, directly underneath the related posts links, below. You don’t have to join Disqus to post! Read my tutorial to learn how to post as a guest. (It’s easy!)
