Continuing our theme of architecting the optimal 4-Hour Workday, let’s talk a little more about some wisdom from Alex Pang (and his great book Rest) on HOW the greatest creators can get away with working so little.

Let’s get right to the point with this one.

The greatest creators?

They start their days EARLY—focused on their most important work.

Here’s how Alex puts it in a chapter called “Morning Routines”: “An early start also opens space in your day for rest and allows you to establish a clean division between working and resting time. One should ‘either work all out or rest completely,’ Cambridge mathematician John Littlewood advised. Even for people whose minds naturally gravitate to their work, having clear boundaries between periods of work and rest allows them to get more from each. ‘It is too easy, when rather tired, to fritter a whole day away with the intention of working but never getting properly down to it,’ Littlewood said. ‘This is pure waste, nothing is done, and you have had no rest or relaxation.’ Virtually every prolific author and scientist would agree. A day that starts with work creates rest that can be enjoyed without guilt. When you start early, the rest you take is the rest you’ve earned.”

There ya go.

Start your most important work early. Create your Deep Work Time Blocks or “Large Quantums of Time” or whatever you want to call them, but be Creative BEFORE you’re Reactive. Match your best energy to your most important work—properly allocating your time between Deep Work, Team Work and Monkey Work.

Oh! And remember that your morning STARTS THE NIGHT BEFORE. So, if you feel so inspired, decide that being actualized is more important than being entertained, rock your digital sunset, and get a good night of sleep so you wake up early feeling great and ready to rock.

Then?

Then put in your four hours of supercrushing, call it a day and do whatever you most enjoy doing to recover deeply so you can do it again and accrete just a little more value tomorrow—knowing that you EARNED your rest and that the best way to show up and crush it again is to create nice, beautiful rhythms in your life.

Or…

Ignore all of that and be like everyone else. (Laughing.)

As always, if we want to be exceptional, we need to be exceptions.

Ultimately though, all that matters is this:

What’s YOUR Optimized morning routine look like?

What’re you doing when you’re at your absolute BEST?

And, practically speaking: How can you write some algorithms to make that best your new baseline?

That’s Today’s +1.

High fives and see ya bright and early tomorrow morning, my friend! 🤓

Morning Routines #591

The Keystone for Your 4-Hour Workday

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