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Ilya · 07-23-2007, 04:18 PM

My opinion is that you can work all waking hours, but the activities should vary.
Doing just mental activities for 14 hours will get you tired and less productive soon. If you are interested in what you are doing, then you won't be burned out, but your productivity will suffer anyways.

The reason for that is the fact that any processes in our body need chemical reactions to get going. Both mental and physical activities deplete the body resources and lead to loss of productivity. Fortunately, or better to say naturally, mental activities and physical activities deplete the different an limited sets or chemicals and at the same time allow the others to restore. So doing physical work allows to restore the resources needed for mental work and vice versa.

I knew of this effect during my first PD seminars, when I noticed that I was much more productive throughout the day than during my usual work. I questioned the coaches and they told me that training activities were scheduled in a certain order that allowed this effect. Since then I use it for my daily work with great success.

This goes against the PD motto - "everything is possible" in a sense that it should be possible to pull out months of 14 hour workdays. But I think that that any such attempt, although good for character-building will be a waste of time from productivity point of view.

07-23-2007, 04:18 PM	#21 (permalink)
Ilya Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Moscow, Russia Posts: 452	My opinion is that you can work all waking hours, but the activities should vary. Doing just mental activities for 14 hours will get you tired and less productive soon. If you are interested in what you are doing, then you won't be burned out, but your productivity will suffer anyways. The reason for that is the fact that any processes in our body need chemical reactions to get going. Both mental and physical activities deplete the body resources and lead to loss of productivity. Fortunately, or better to say naturally, mental activities and physical activities deplete the different an limited sets or chemicals and at the same time allow the others to restore. So doing physical work allows to restore the resources needed for mental work and vice versa. I knew of this effect during my first PD seminars, when I noticed that I was much more productive throughout the day than during my usual work. I questioned the coaches and they told me that training activities were scheduled in a certain order that allowed this effect. Since then I use it for my daily work with great success. This goes against the PD motto - "everything is possible" in a sense that it should be possible to pull out months of 14 hour workdays. But I think that that any such attempt, although good for character-building will be a waste of time from productivity point of view. __________________ Ilya.