How to Get More Done in 2 Hours Than Most Do in a Day

We’ve all been told to manage our time better—block your calendar, hustle harder, grind longer. But what if that’s not the secret to real productivity?

In this game-changing episode of Second Thoughts with Dr. Roger Hall, we break down why time management fails, and what actually drives high performance: energy and attention management. Discover the science behind deep focus, how to enter flow state, and why most world-class performers only need two focused hours a day to thrive.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Why time-blocking alone doesn't work without managing your energy.
• How distractions reset your brain’s focus timer—costing you 20+ minutes every time.
• The role of decision fatigue and cognitive fuel in daily productivity.
• Morning vs. Night Owl Strategies—how to build your schedule around peak attention.
• The 2-Hour Rule: Why even geniuses and creatives limit deep work to a small daily window.
• Practical routines inspired by history’s greatest minds—from Emily Dickinson to modern creatives.

This episode is your blueprint to stop spinning your wheels and finally do your best work—without burning out.

Transcript

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If you remember going to school, you were studying for something. You're in the library, you're at the study carols, you get your books. It's final exam time, your focus, focus, focus and you get down to work. And then somebody coughs and you're you're not paying attention. So focus, focus, focus. And then somebody sneezes and you think, oh my gosh, it's final exam time. I'm going to catch a disease. And you know, and then somebody moves their chair and you look back to see what it is. And it's somebody worth looking at. For somebody worth. Looking at it. Is worth. Yeah it is worth looking at. And then finally, at some point 20 minutes later, you're in the zone. In my profession, we call that flow, which we talk about another day. But you're in the zone, you're focused and nothing shakes you out of it. No noise, no sound. You're in it. That's because every time you get distracted, that deep level of concentration takes you back to zero. Oh, wow. It takes you another 20 minutes to get into that deep level of concentration. So if somebody interrupts you and says, hey, this will only take a minute. What they're mean is it'll take them a minute, but it'll take you 20, 21 minutes to get back to your work. I'm doctor Roger Hall. Welcome to Second Thoughts with Roger Hall. Today we're going to talk about why time management never works as a productivity hack. In the business and creative space. We're told a lot that, time management or time blocking is like like the key to getting stuff done. But I mean, you say otherwise, why? Well, the what time blocking does is it does one part of what I'm talking about, what I, what I really focus on is energy and attention management. And what time blocking does is it's it maintains your attention. The big problem for for most people is distraction. And so what what we know about the way attention works is you've got this shallow level of attention. And then over a period of time, like 20 minutes, it goes to this deeper level of attention, and it takes you about 20 minutes to get into that deeper level of attention. So if you remember going to school, you were studying for something. You're in the library, you're at the study carols, and you, you, you get your books. It's final exam time, your focus, focus, focus. And you get down to work and then somebody coughs and you're you're not paying attention. So focus, focus, focus. And then somebody sneezes and you think, oh my gosh, it's final exam time. I'm I'm going to catch a disease. And yeah, you know, and then somebody moves their chair and you look back to see what it is. And it's somebody worth looking at. For somebody worth. Looking at. Is worth. Yeah it is worth looking at. So so. And then finally at some point 20 minutes later you're in the zone and in my profession we call that flow, which we talk about another day. But you're in the zone, you're focused, and nothing shakes you out of it. No noise, no sound. You're in it. Well, that's because every time you get distracted, that deep level of concentration takes you back to zero. Oh, wow. It takes you another 20 minutes to get into that deep level of concentration. So if somebody interrupts you and says, hey, this will only take a minute. What they're mean is it'll take them a minute, but it'll take you 20, 21 minutes to get back to your work. What time blocking does is it recognizes that you're ineffective in those transition times. So time blocking gives you a certain amount of time to work on a project to get into that slow, get deep concentration, get a lot of stuff done, and then come out of that deep flow. So you're saying the priority isn't on how much time you're given, but rather that in and out state. So like getting into the flow is like what gets work done? Well, once you get into flow, yeah, that's when work happens. I mean, if, if you're constantly flitting, like checking your phone, answering phone calls, looking at texts, you're never in a deep level of concentration. So the quality of your work is really substandard. And so to, to, to be really good at what you do, you really have to get a deep level of concentration. So like if you have a billable rate and you're charging people your billable rate, do you have a like a distracted rate? Like I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to this. So half off because I was, you know, I was texting with my with, you know, with my kids or you don't do that. You you charge the full rate whether you're concentrating or not. And so you owe it to the people who hire you, and you owe it to yourself in order to do your best work, to have that space of concentrated time. That's what time blocking does is it helps to focus attention. Okay. So so to become effective, it really means eliminating all of your distractions. And we live in such a distractible environment, especially with our phones. Yeah. That that we're constantly we've got this thing in the back of our heads all the time telling us, check your phone, check your phone. Yeah. If if you're preoccupied with a worry like, you know, you've got a sick kid or, or you're expecting an important phone call, you're never really paying attention. 100% attention to your work. You never get into flow because there's always this, you know, I wonder, have what? Why do they call me yet? Or if you're planning to do something next and you're anticipating the next thing, you're not 100% on your game, right? I say so time blocking is a way of describing how you're you're constricting your attention. And I say. The second piece is energy management. And energy management is when in your day do you have the most cognitive capacity. And I've talked about this before in in other venues, but we have a limited amount of decisions that we can make every day. It's called your daily decisional load. And so at the end of that you're out. You've got no more decisions. You can make. Your your brain is fried, which is why when you get home from work, you look at your loved one. You go, what do you want for dinner? How do we want? And then you turn on the television, you go, let's watch TV. And then there's 10,000 decisions about what you can watch. And so you keep watching the same thing you've always watched, because you don't want to spend 45 minutes looking for something that will be more entertaining. Too many decisions. So you run out of this decision or capacity, and that's because your brain is a biologic organ. I mean, it runs on fuel, it runs on glucose, oxygen, and depending on your diet, ketones. And so all of that makes your brain run effectively. Well, there's certain times in the day when your brain has more decisions. Well, you're usually earlier in the day because at the end of the day you've already decided out. Some people, they get their second wind in the middle of the night, and they feel like, oh, I can work once everybody goes to bed. Well, that's an attention issue you've got. Everybody's asleep, so you've got no distractions, but you don't have as much energy because you've already used up all your energy. Right? There's a book that I recommend. It was out of print for a while. It's called Daily Rituals, and it's written by a guy who's a journalist and it came from his blog. So he's got a deadline for a story at this newspaper he works with, and it's due in two hours. He's done zero research, and he doesn't know how he's going to approach the story. And he finds himself across the newsroom, taking apart the courage to make sure that he can get a cup of coffee. So he's spending time disassembling a coffee machine instead of doing his work. And he goes, I wonder if other people procrastinate like this? And so he said, I'm going to study the great thinkers, the great philosophers, the creators, all of the people who have done great things. I'm going to look at their journals. And this was his his little side project. And so what he did was he, he he, he looked at great mathematicians, artists, poets, writers, philosophers, world leaders, and he looked at their daily journals. And this was, you know, Newton, Charles Darwin up to the current era. And he put it in a book called Daily Rituals. Here are my conclusions from his book. It's really, I think, an interesting read. Yeah. My conclusion from his book is that number one, mathematics is largely dependent on caffeine, caffeine, nicotine. And in Fetterman, for most of the breakthroughs in math. Oh my gosh, stimulants were stimulants. They were they produced on stimulants. I'm not recommending that. I'm just observing it. I'm just saying this is how it it is. The other thing I found is that these world class performers had daily rituals that could get them into that flow state. And do you know how much time they spent each day in that flow state? Two hours a day. A day what exactly two hours. So they've got correspondence like they currently we have email, but it used to be they'd get letters and they'd have to answer letters and write out their letter answers. So they'd have time and correspondence. They'd have time that they'd have to pay bills when they'd have to take care of their families. Right. But each day they had two hours of productive work. My conclusion is, if you can get two hours a day of flow, time of productive work, you can be a world class performer. That's a good point. While the standards aren't like crazy high, it's not crazy. Okay, there are people. Toulouse-Lautrec is a great example. And if you don't know Toulouse-Lautrec, he was a French Impressionist painter and he tended to paint, he used to paint in brothels. So he painted a lot of prostitutes. Oh, wow. And he would, he would essentially work in these bursts of energy, right? He would he would paint all night. And, then he would, you know, drink absinthe and smoke opium and whatever. Gosh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then he died in his 30s. Okay. Okay. So so he he burned really hot. Yeah. And collapsed. If you look at people who have long careers, it's they figured out, how do I get that two hours as a daily ritual? Because you're going to have to you're going to have to answer currently. You're going to have to answer email. You're going to have to pay bills. You're going to have to keep up on the news. You're going to have to work out because they did they, they you could see in these daily rituals that, you know, they working out then was different than it is now. Yeah. And they would go for a walk in the garden. Yeah. So I mean it was different but it was the same. And all it takes is two hours a day. And if you look at great performer, they understand where their energy, where their best energy is. My one of my favorite stories is Emily Dickens, the author. In her era, being a woman writer was not good. Okay, so she lived in an era where women were not supposed to be doing these productive things. What women did was they sat in the parlor and they did needlepoint. Needlepoint? What's that. Point? You'd you'd you so like designs? Oh, I see, just, Okay. Okay. So it was this artistic thing with thread. Okay. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so their job was to sit around there and do needlepoint. So she would be there with her sisters and her mom, and they'd have this little, little kid to do needlepoint, and they'd be doing it while they were entertaining guests. So people would come over as part of the social fabric of their life and interact with them and do needlepoint. As soon as they left, she put the needlepoint away in under, under where she did the needlepoint was her writing. Hers. And her mom knew this. So they continue on their needlepoint. Yeah. Can you writing so depending on the pressures of your life and the pressures then or different in society now, you come up with an adaptation that works for you and Emily Dickens figured it out and wow. As a result, we have her books. That's a great example. So, that's that's encouraging. Number one, I just want to say, that you need to focus on getting two hours. What would you recommend as an average person? What have you seen as the best time to grind out those two hours? What's a system or a daily ritual that you would recommend to somebody, let's say a creative or an office job? You know, somebody that could really utilize these two hours? Well, this depends on the the demands of your family and the schedules of your family. If you're a night owl, recognize that you're work. If you're working when everybody's already gone to bed, what you're doing is you're reducing distraction. So you're you're maximizing your attention but your energy is lower. Okay. And so what some people do is they augment their energy with caffeine in nicotine. Right. Yeah. Okay. So so recognize you're you're tweaking with your body chemistry to overcome the, the limits of your brain by artificially enhancing it. You know, I just took a drink of coffee. I mean, coffee's not bad. I mean, you know. But you wouldn't recommend doing that at, like, midnight or anything like that, but. Not for me. Oh, okay. Okay. That's. That doesn't work for me. Actually, this is decaf. I mean, I'm limited. I limit myself to one cup of caffeinated coffee a day. But you have to figure out what your chemistry is like. I definitely wouldn't recommend amphetamine. I mean, that's. Yeah. No, no, no, no. It works. It's not good for you, but it works. A little side note. In World War Two, and even up to today, our soldiers are given amphetamine to keep awake. In the midst of battle. And it was so widely abused in World War two, especially among the Germans, that they were just sending people out on, on methamphetamine to the frontlines. And it it works. Okay. It makes for effective soldiers. It's just not good for people. No way. So. So be aware that just because it works doesn't make it a good idea. Yeah. Okay. So going back to the core concept, what are some of the stigmas or things that people are saying? I back up one more thing. If you're going to stay up late at night, recognize you're trading attention for energy, when is your energy most likely going to be there? You're going to have more decisions earlier in the day. And so some people get up just a little bit early. I, I knew of a guy. He was the youngest guy to make partner in his law firm, and people couldn't understand how he did it. Well, he got up at 430. He got to work by 530, and he had already by the time people started coming in and bothering him in his office. Yeah.

By 9: 17:22

00, he'd already gotten 2.5 hours of work done. Oh, okay. So he was ahead of it. So he was ahead of it. So what he did was he rearranged his day and he would always leave at 430. People were like, you can't you can't have a successful law practice and leave at 430. And he goes, well, I got kids. I'm going to go home and play with them. Yeah. Do you see what happened? Yeah. Okay. So he front loaded all of his concentrated work before anybody was there. And he was the youngest person ever made partner in his law firm because of it. Yeah I see. So you make those choices and you have to determine which way to go. But earlier in the day, you're going to have more brain. You're gonna have more decisions. Okay. Yeah. So going back to the original, statement, what are some stigmas that people have that I guess you could either say is useful or unused for when it comes to time management or attention or getting work done, ultimately, ultimately, that's all what we want to do is get work done. I think, I think one of the stupid things people say is, you know, when I'm inspired, I'm going to get down to work. Yeah. Okay. No. Once you get down to work, the first few minutes are always hard. It's always a grind. Yeah. But then it gets easier once you get in that state of flow. The second one that bothers me is when people talk about, you know, I'm just. I'm going to be grinding. I'm grinding, I'm grinding. I'm, you know, and they believe they can sustain this busy, this busyness for 40 hours a week or, you know, I'm grinding 80 hours a week. No, you're not. I mean, you're pretending to be busy 40 or 80 hours a week, or you're you're being busy, but you're not being effective. And if you want to have a long career, it really is about bursts of productivity two hours a day, followed by management, followed by recovery, recreation, exercise. That's that's the normal balance of effective, productive people. Okay. So in a in a normal I guess you'd say 9 to 5. What what windows of time would you say that those effective two hours would be in. And the what other times like give us like give us a template for the day that some people can follow and then tweak as they go through. Because if they don't have anything at all and they're like, oh my gosh, two hours, that's it, then they're going to want to figure out where to start. I would start first thing in the day that spend some time before you get to work in quiet reflection, okay. You know, if it's if it's five minutes a day, if it's 20 minutes a day, if it's a half an hour a day, spend a little time in quiet reflection each day. Your brain needs that, time to. To repair itself. There's a there's a chemical. I mean, I'll get to the chemical in a minute. When your mind is wandering, it's called the default mode network. And your brain is actually repairing itself when your mind is wandering, when you're not doing anything, when you're kind of staring out the window. Your brain needs that for recovery. Meditation, contemplation, quiet reflection, whatever you want to call it. All of that stuff is a little like that, but it's it's it's focused. And all of that is good for your brain as well. So you need a little mind wandering, a little focused concentration before you start your day. And then I wouldn't touch if you want to be super effective, I wouldn't touch email first thing in the morning. Why? Because when you're doing email, you're using your decisions. How many of those do we have a day? Is there like a number or is it just. It depends on the person like them. The more you do make decisions, the more capacity you'll have. Okay, so it's like. At some point it's just like a muscle, you know, your brain is good at that. But and our brains are getting better because the amount of data we're consuming every day has made all of us have to make more decisions. Right. But there's a limit. You're the cells. Just stop firing because they run out of fuel. Wow. So? So you can tweak it up by having a donut that's sugar. Okay. That'll tweak you up. You can have caffeine that'll tweak you up. But they're all short term solutions to a long term problem. Don't use up your decisions early in the morning. And early in the day after you've had a protein rich breakfast. The, the big problem many of us have in the way we eat is we have, we have a carbohydrate rich breakfast that gives you the sugar high right. That gives you energy. Then what happens? You have an insulin advance and you crash. Okay. So so make sure it's a protein rich breakfast. Like this morning I had eggs. Because I, I do everything I can in my power to put the odds in my favor so that my brain is at peak capacity. The second problem we have is then we go to a lunch place and get a sandwich on a big submarine bun. Right, a big hoagie. Yeah. Okay. A little bit of meat in this tiny little bit of of lettuce and maybe some, you know, sad tomato. Yeah, yeah. And it's mostly bread. What happens? We get a little lift and then boom, we crash two in the afternoon, we're stuck in wind. Get a protein rich lunch. Protein burns more slowly, more evenly, more efficiently. Then do carbohydrates. Okay. So that's why they keep going to Starbucks mid-afternoon for that mid-afternoon hit, because they're trying to chemically counteract the heavy carbs that they got at breakfast or at lunch. Okay, so that's a little energy tweak. You can do. Get a good night's sleep, because if your brain hasn't had a time to rest and repair itself every night, you're not going to be ready for the next day. You okay? If people have already kind of, I guess I don't know if they're bad habits, but they get on the habits of like, caffeine. I I'm, I'm, I do that all the time. Midday I try to get myself some caffeine so I can keep going and get that second wind up. How should somebody go cold turkey or wean themself off of it? Or just like I said, with. Turkey you make if you go cold turkey on caffeine, you make everybody around you miserable because you'll go through headaches, withdrawals. Yeah. No no no no no okay okay. I mean cut, cut down a little bit. So if you get whatever the large size is at Starbucks, I don't know what pretend Italian name they use. Yeah. That then switch to medium and switch to a small, or if you're an espresso person or you get a double shot, go to single shots, or you can just get a regular drip coffee and then eventually at some point work yourself to a half and half caf, non half, non caf mix. But but you got to wean yourself over the course of you know weeks or months okay. To get off of that. And again all of that. And a little bit of caffeine is not a problem okay. It's really not. Okay. But again all of that is to get those two hours in the day, two hours focus times. Right. And you have to figure out with your family needs with your work schedule, when are those best two hours? When are you cranking on work? Yeah. And then that's where you do the time blocking. You figure out, okay, I'm best between 10 and 12 in the morning. Great. Then you start blocking that time out every day so nobody gets that best time. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I mean, I think that's really useful for myself. Taking the time. And I think that would be really useful for other people who are listening because I don't know, I don't know if it's the culture or whatever, but two hours does not seem like enough. But it's what the greatest people have done. So. But but it works okay to look at periods where they've got bursts of productivity, right? But typically largely effective people just get after it for a certain amount of time each day. There's there's a story in there about an author. And every morning he, he lived in an apartment building in New York. And every morning he'd put on his suit for his wife and his kids, and he'd go out with everybody in the building and get on the elevator. They'd all get off on the first floor. He'd get off in the basement. And in the basement, they had a storage closet for everybody in the building. Everybody had a storage area. Okay. He'd go to the storage closet, open it up. That's where he had his writing desk. Oh, okay. Away from. Everybody. So he had a daily ritual. He would go down like everyone else was going to work, and then he would go down to the basement storage area and. Right. Oh, wow. Okay. So rhythm, rhythm in that sense too. Absolutely. Rhythm. And especially for creatives a book I strongly recommend is by, Steven Pressfield. He's a writer of historical fiction, and his historical fiction is quite good, but he's probably most famous for his book called The War of Art, not Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but the War of Art. And he talks about how creatives can capture that and set up rituals so that they can get that time in and he's got a ritual. He puts on his lucky sweatshirt, he gets his cup of coffee, he sits in front of his computer, and he's got a certain amount of time. He makes himself sit in front of his computer every day. He says sometimes I get nothing. Sometimes I get a sentence, but sometimes. Excuse me? Sometimes I get a lot of writing done. And those are the good days. And you can't know when you're going to have one of those good days. So you have to set it up so that you're doing that every day. So when that good day comes, you're capturing it. Gotcha. Okay. Well, a little bit of grace on that census. Nice. Yeah. And everybody has this idea that it it's this incredible long amount of work and that you're remarkably, remarkably productive every day. But if you set up the rhythm and you set up the time blocking so that you know when your highest energy, lowest attention drain time is, and do that on a regular basis, you'll be world class. I think that's great, Roger. Thank you. I've learned a lot from this and and I think everybody else will too. Awesome, awesome. Thank you. This is second thoughts with Roger Hall. We've been talking about energy and attention management, why that works and why straight time management won't work. If you like this content, please like, subscribe and share with your friends.