Brain Hours – What’s Your Capacity?

How many hours a day can you run? Stand on one leg? Think creatively?

We have no problem imagining limits for physical activity but when it comes to knowledge work most organizations seem to imagine there is an infinite pool to pull from and if they only push harder then they’ll get more work.

But we humans are creatures of limits. Studies have repeatedly shown that the part of our brain that governs logic (and will power) tires quickly and must be refreshed if it is to work well. This explains why, as I walk through the halls of corporate America, I sometimes feel I’m in an episode of The Walking Dead – everyone seems to be a combination of exhausted and manic.

Is this really necessary?

In my experience the answer is a resounding “NO” but like most things worth doing, helping people create sustainable lives AND create massive amounts of value for customers takes vision and, of course, discipline.

Netflix is a company that gets it. They have no vacation policy. Let me repeat that. They. Have. No. Vacation. Policy. They hire good people and judge them based on what they contribute not how many hours they sit in a chair. And their managers are expected to set an example by taking long vacations and returning to work refreshed and ready to create.

Corporate America is missing out. If you’re self employed you are most likely missing out too – even if someone else isn’t we all tend to push ourselves too far and too fast, then beat ourselves up for not getting more done. This is waste pure and simple.

Lean means using less to do more and when it comes to your time, it starts with getting real about what you’ve got. My informal survey (with a fairly large sample size) indicates that the average person has about 6 “brain hours” each day. Meaning they have 6 hours to spend in productive, creative effort. Beyond that returns on effort start to diminish.

This means that any more time spent focusing on the complex creative work most knowledge workers are expected to perform is waste. The company (the customer, the project) would be better off if the person went to the beach, or played with their kids than spent another minute in their chair.

As a manager one of the highest leverage things you can do is get real about your team’s capacity and don’t let them commit one minute over it (in fact they should ideally commit to no more than 80% – try running your computer at 100% capacity if you want a test of how this works).

And you – stop wasting time and go have some fun.

3 Comments to Brain Hours – What’s Your Capacity?

1. 

   I like this, and I wonder how it relates to decision fatigue: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all

   Creativity seems like a mix of making decisions and holding options for future decisions, all in the pursuit of achievement. As I look at some of my days, I’m seeing how a Zero-Inbox mentality helps me avoid making many decisions about unrelated topics throughout the day.

   Thank you! I’m going to go take a break now.
Eric Willeke on November 3rd, 2011
2. 

   Great post, Bob. It makes me think of Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. I think if we judged work based on outcome (without regard to the number of hours worked) our work schedules would look a lot different. I heard somewhere that most professional writers work a schedule of about 5 or 6 (very focused) hours a day. Beyond 5 or 6 hours, they begin to experience diminishing returns. That might be an effective model for other areas of knowledge work, as well.
Brian Shea on November 6th, 2011
3. 

   Great point–I agree we have limits–but only 6-hours a day of creative brain power? No way! Think about it from another perspective. When I get up, I go for a run–and I always go a different route. I’m stretching some part of the brain to remember the last time I took such-and-such a path, and search for a way I can make things different (1 hour). Then when I’m stretching and later commuting to the office, I’m listening to audio books. Not as active, but I am creatively linking / assimilating that information to other experiences (1 hour). Next I’m at a client site. Much of that time goes into relationship building, coaching, planning–all creative activities–but maybe only 4 hours’ worth. So now my total is around 6 hours. Then I’m back on my way home–listening again to an audio book, then I’ll play with the kids (definitely creative), eat dinner, read books with the family, and go to sleep. Much of this evening time is creative–so I’d give that another 2 hours in that 5 hour span. It’s not creative in a way that helps out the business–but it’s still creative–not to mention dream time! So while I’d agree that there are limits to creativity on a given subject matter, I think that if we do various activities, we can continue to be creative all day & night long. Switching from one activity to another helps us go beyond 6 hours per day–as long as that task switching cost doesn’t eat up all our time and we can focus on one thing at a time for sufficient time periods to get creative.
André Dhondt on December 6th, 2011