The Manual #26 - Focused
Controlling the madness.
This idea of staying focused 8 hours a day at work is absolute madness. It doesn’t make any sense.
A common question I get is how I stay focused and productive. And it’s because I only do it in small bursts.
My average workday looks like this:
Morning spent getting myself ready for the day, going to the gym and replying to any urgent emails.
Afternoon 1-4pm, time actually spent working.
Evenings spent either socialising, playing games, watching movies or just being lazy.
The key part here is being lazy. As a creative I think some of your time has to be spent just being lazy. Not doing anything particularly productive or useful.
That laziness can then lead to strong hours of focus.
Other things that help:
I have pretty much all notifications disabled other than messages from important people in my life
Having time to work alone
Trying to complete one major task each day
Others and myself included may see other people achieve all sorts of great things and build all sorts of cool stuff. But that’s an accumulation of focused hours over days, weeks, months and years.
It’s amazing how staying focused on a project consistently can end up leading to something big. You’ll look back and think, wow that happened quick.
NEW: Distortion Wallpaper Pack
I released a new wallpaper pack earlier this month. 10 wallpapers at 6k resolution that have futuristic distortion effects. Perfect for desktops and mobile. For mobile, simply rotate or crop into the wallpapers to get your desired look.
Living on $100k - How much I spend in a month
Highly requested video. Been impressed by how well it’s been performing and my second channel is now growing 2x as fast as my main channel!
Week in the Life
Tried a new format of video on my main channel. It hasn’t got the views that I was hoping it would but it received a lot of positive comments. Please let me know if you enjoyed it and I’ll make it a series, as I enjoyed making it.
M2 MacBook Air Review
Really liking this new M2 MacBook Air. After I made this review I actually ended up returning this Midnight coloured version and will be picking up a space grey one instead.
Link Lowdown
A collection of links to stuff I think are worth sharing.
Znap Link — Probably one of the best bio link style website builders.
Three Features Make iOS 16 Great — Quick rundown on three of the new features coming in iOS 16.
Felt — A very nice map maker.
Fastest way to make $100k a year — A useful Twitter thread which I mostly agree with.
Atmos — Absolutely sick website giving you cool facts about aviation.
How Pieter Levels makes $2.7m a year — A rare podcast interview from Pieter, something he usually actively avoids doing.
Good stuff Oliur! As a fellow designer I'm with you in thinking that the 8 hour work day is not a good mark for measuring my output. For me, if I get a couple hours of good, focused work done before lunch I feel pretty much set for my creative work for the day and use the rest of the time for other stuff (logistics, coordination, finding inspiration and being 'lazy' to give my brain time to make connections).
Also, great find on the interview with Pieter. Had been hoping to find something like that 🙏