How executives sleep 4-5 hours a day and successfully run huge companies

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker shares recommendations on how to be super productive while spending a minimum of time on rest.

People identify themselves as either owls or larks. But when you manage to sleep only 4 hours a day, these two categories don't really matter to you. Every night eventually turns into morning, and every morning turns into night. And all this time you are working.

To cope with such a regime, the head and co-founder of Viewabill Robbie Friedman (Robbie Friedman) suggests taking into account the individual rhythms of the brain. Here's how to do it.

Scatter tasks into categories

Robbie uses this category system.

• Work with mail and calls.
• Administrative work: review of financial indicators and forecasts, drafting and negotiating contracts.
• Tasks requiring teamwork: meetings, brainstorming, team building events, strategy sessions.
• Individual creative tasks: creating blog posts, finding and developing new ideas and concepts, making plans for the future.
• Just what you feel like doing after all this work. This point is no less important than the previous ones. Include anything in it: watching TV shows, TED talks, or just relaxing in peace and quiet.

Once you have assigned a category to each problem, you have two questions to understand:

• how much time to spend on each category;
• when your brain is best at each type of task.

Organize your own schedule

Some people can only exercise in the morning and not at any other time. The same is the case with other activities.

According to Robbie Friedman, every day he wakes up between 8:00 and 8:30 in the morning and, like many others, cannot swing until 11:00. In order not to waste this time in vain, he performs tasks that do not require intensive work of the brain: parses mail and makes phone calls. On the contrary, in the afternoon, he experiences a surge in productivity. It is then that Robbie gets involved in creative tasks. So he made up his daily routine.

8: 30-11: 00 - work with mail and calls. At this time, Robbie wakes up and immediately sits down at the computer to cope with low-priority, but urgent tasks. These are several hours of work at a hectic pace and, as he says, the worst part of his day. But this gap allows you to put things in order in affairs and make sure that on this day nothing prevents his company from moving forward.

11: 30-14: 30 - teamwork. By this time, Viewabill employees have already drunk coffee and are doing their job with might and main. Robbie is doing the same. He comes to the office, holds meetings, strategy sessions, and the like. After he has successfully dealt with the correspondence (and you can already turn off the phone), nothing prevents him from devoting all his attention to these tasks.

14: 30-17: 00 - administrative work. These are "quiet hours" during which everyone else continues to work on what was discussed in the previous time frame. Robbie uses them to work with contracts and other not very pleasant, but important tasks in which every detail is important. At this time, his brain is still working well enough to concentrate on these matters, but not well enough to come up with new mind-blowing ideas. Therefore, it is well suited for administrative work.

17: 00–20: 00 - time for light creativity or again work with mail and calls. Having dealt with the nastiest work, Robbie usually enjoys creativity for several hours. He writes on a blog or writes a detailed answer on Quora (where this advice was taken from), allows his mind to wander freely and grope in space for new ideas.

If necessary, Robbie donates this time to work with mail and calls, if there is too much of it.

20: 00-23: 00 - time for what you want

23:00 - ??? - creative search. When the whole world is asleep, Robbie has a second wind. In his opinion, it is then that the most disruptive business ideas come to his mind.

Most people can't wait until it's time to sleep. I can't wait for new ideas to rush over to me.

Robbie Friedman

At this time, you can also reply to messages without fear of getting a quick, rash response.

As a result, you will go to bed feeling pleased with yourself, looking forward to sharing your thoughts with colleagues the next day. Perhaps this will give you the energy you need, making up for the time you take away from sleep.

Weekends. These days, Robbie stays away from the mail and devotes all his time to creative pursuits, activities that just bring him pleasure, and sleep.

I rest, sleep a lot, allow myself whatever I want … In general, I pretend to be a normal person.

Robbie Friedman

conclusions

You don't have to lead a multimillion-dollar company to use this method. Classify the tasks you have to complete each day and perform them according to your individual activity rhythm. You may fall into an afternoon coma in the afternoon. It’s not hard to guess that this time should not be used for serious tasks.

Robbie also gives a few caveats to those who want to use his method. It organizes its work in such a way that it replies to some messages rather slowly, and to some it does not answer at all. Robbie also doesn't pay much attention to sports, using the time between meetings for walks. If this daily routine does not suit you, feel free to adapt it to your needs and activities that you consider important.