[ Work: hard vs hard-to-do ]

Very early in my career I learned about ‘time-blocking’: setting time to be focussed on one thing.  This is how to tackle hard work: regular blocks of intense focus to achieve one thing.  They happen because I ‘have meetings with myself’, to block off that time.

I’m on Cal Newport’s newsletter list. He’s a computer-science professor and prolific writer and thinker. Recently, he mused about work-life balance, cleverly differentiating between hard work (having grit, focus and determination over a long period of time, outcome focussed) versus hard-to-do work (14hr days, unfocused freneticism, and, ‘performative busyness’).

Hard-to-do work is not sustainable.