How a 3-Hour Workday Boosted My Confidence—At Home & Work

This ‘three-or-four-hour rule’ for creative work feels tailor-made for the full days of motherhood

Nine years ago, when my oldest was born, I left behind the stability of a full-time job as a staff writer. In truth, I was bored beyond belief and ready for a new challenge. And boy, did mixing motherhood and freelance writing deliver. 

My baby was four months old when I was offered my first freelance assignment. New to juggling caregiving and working, I knew only to replicate my office experience: I packed up my breast pump and laptop and sought a long stretch of quiet, structured time away from my little one (bless my generous babysitting parents). 

In the time since, I’ve welcomed a second baby and built a part-time, freelance writing business that contributes meaningfully to our family’s income. And while I’ve learned to write amidst sibling squabbles, snack requests, and the jittery theme song to Octonauts, my overall approach to work hasn’t evolved much with motherhood. What I mean is that in order to consider my work time productive, I’ve always insisted on clocking long hours away from my family. 

It’s a lonely practice and I often miss weekends with my husband and girls to throw myself into two full days of work unfettered by mothering. I’m lucky, I know, to even have the opportunity and a good partner to make this set-up possible. But I’ll also say this: saving a week’s worth of work to cram into two days is not without its angst, gritted teeth, and hair-pulling. 

To wit, recently I saved an enormous, writing-intensive project to knock out on a Sunday. While my husband refereed sister-fights downstairs, I made amazing progress writing upstairs—until I didn’t. A few hours in, my brain frazzled and sputtered. I swear, I felt the moment when my creative mind downshifted and died. 

My brain hadn’t been pureed into an indecipherable mush by motherhood. I was simply pushing it beyond its limits. 

I wandered downstairs and puttered through the kitchen, my brain frantically whirring to no avail. Just minutes ago, I had been stringing together cohesive thoughts—and now? I was left Googling synonyms for words no one should need a thesaurus for. 

So it’s little wonder that my heart sighed with relief when I stumbled across Oliver Burkeman’s three-or-four-hour rule for creative work. According to his research-backed philosophy, my brain hadn’t been pureed into an indecipherable mush by motherhood. I was simply pushing it beyond its limits. 

The author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Burkeman has built his career on exploring the roads to fulfillment and happiness, and discovering how we can find meaning in the short time we have on Earth. With his three-or-four-hour rule, he posits that creatively, a human brain is only useful and productive for three or four hours at a time. 

…creatively, a human brain is only useful and productive for three or four hours at a time. 

“Stop assuming that the way to make progress on your most important projects is to work for longer,” Burkeman writes. “You almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day.”

He goes on to cite the working routines of some of history’s most brilliant minds, from Virginia Woolf to Alice Munro to Ingmar Bergman, and many more. Each of their workdays, Burkeman notes, ended after four hours tops. What’s more, the hours were not always consecutive. Take Charles Darwin for instance whose workday, Burkeman notes, consisted of two 90-minute sessions in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. 

“The real lesson–or one of them–is that it pays to use whatever freedom you do have over your schedule not to ‘maximise your time’ or ‘optimise your day’, in some vague way, but specifically to ringfence three or four hours of undisturbed focus (ideally when your energy levels are highest),” Burkeman writes. 

There is immense freedom—from resentment, guilt, and overwhelm—in thoughtfully parceling out work in the hours my youngest is at preschool.

While I can’t claim this practice has cured me entirely of my weekend work binges, it has cracked open a world of possibility where writing and parenting are concerned. There is immense freedom—from resentment, guilt, and overwhelm—in thoughtfully parceling out work in the hours my youngest is at preschool. The relief, too, is worth noting.

When I practice this routine, I feel a meaningful psychological shift: I can seize back a piece of power I yielded to motherhood. Where it is easy to be swept up in the tide of caregiving—all those packed lunches and changed diapers and delicious snuggles—knowing I am consciously choosing to dedicate these small hours to myself and my career matters. I’m not scrounging for scraps of time between the day’s parenting and then feeling like I have short-changed both my work and my children. Instead, I’m actively choosing a small pocket of writing time and trusting the smaller window is best for my creative process.

The best part? When that work time is through, I can clock out mentally, secure in the knowledge that I have done all I could for the day. What awaits then is an afternoon with my little ones, and let’s be honest: there’s no greater reward than that. 

Read More:

How I Block Off Time for Myself That’s Work + Kid-Free

Editor’s note: This piece was published in 2021, but has been updated for timeliness.