The 90-90-30-30: Obeying Your Ultradian Rhythms

People say if you want to be successful, you need to implement atomic habits—small, easily repeatable actions that add up to big changes in the long run. Some have said that you can only do “real work” from an office building surrounded by others. Others still have opined that the grind is very real and is the only true measure of success for leaders and entrepreneurs alike.

In sum, there is no shortage of opinion, and it’s spread across a diverse and colorful rainbow of modern thought leadership (and available at a book store near you). Quite often, you can find a thesis and its antithesis right next to one another on the crowded shelves of Barnes & Noble, and it makes you wonder: is any of this true, or are we all just attempting to outthink one another in some bizarro power and market-share grab?

Ultimately, the answer is, simply, yes. “Truth” is for sale, as is untruth, misinformation, obfuscation, manipulation, and any other -ation that moves units. And that’s why you read all of it with a grain of salt and a discerning mind to create an informed opinion of your own—one containing equal parts subjective experience and objective truth.

“Truth” is for sale, as is untruth, misinformation, obfuscation, manipulation, and any other -ation that moves units.

I happened across a little gem of a book the other day. It was clustered among the business leadership section of Half Price Books, somewhat out of place considering it was a professional development book and I would have missed it completely had it not been for my wandering eye that day. The book, titled Manage Your Day-to-Day, betrayed a tantalizing subtitle on the cover which read Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind.

Published by Adobe Behance’s 99u and featuring insights from creative minds like Stefan Sagmeister, Cal Newport, and Behance founder Scott Belsky, this book is much more than just a guide for creating an efficient daily routine (in fact, I feel the title is a bit misleading and underwhelming having read it in full). Sure, it contains insights around common professional concerns, such as how to manage your time better and why you should read and write emails infrequently during the day, but what delighted me was the overarching theme: these insights directly influence and enable the creation of ideas. As a designer and multidisciplinary artist, I felt like this book was written just for me (but, perhaps it was written for you, too).

By the time I finished the last page of this book, I already had a running list of really valuable thoughts and process improvements that I couldn’t wait to implement. Obviously, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all in professional life, no matter how delectable the recipes in all those leadership gurus’ corporate-success cook books may seem, so let me outline how I’ve translated some of the insights from 99u’s book into my own creative routine.

Create blocks of productive time.

As a marketing designer, I must operate in convergent and divergent modes of thinking interchangeably. As I detailed in a previous post, these two very different modes of thought can be taxing on the creative professional, which necessitates the creation of reserved blocks of creative and noncreative time. These predefined blocks help facilitate the desired mode of productive thought—whether it be divergent or convergent in nature.

Further, research shows that our bodies obey what are known as ultradian rhythms: ninety-minute periods of focus at the end of which we cease to operate at our highest ability. Taking this into account, I’ve begun structuring the first half of my day into two ninety-minute blocks that I use to do my best work (or, operate in a divergent mode of thought) with 15-minute breaks on either end. This means I try to eliminate phone, email, and text conversations during these blocks so that I can prolong a divergent state of mind. 

Research shows that our bodies obey what are known as ultradian rhythms: ninety-minute periods of focus at the end of which we cease to operate at our highest ability.

Placing these highly productive blocks at the beginning of the day also ensures that I’m working at my physical peak (considering I’ve had at least one cup of coffee and slept more than a handful of hours the night before, of course) and also aligns more naturally with our body’s intermittent cycles of activity and rest.

The second part of the day I’ve dedicated to less creative tasks and convergent modes of operation. This portion of the day consists of two thirty-minute blocks with 10-minute breaks at either end. I use these blocks of time to work on social media campaigns for clients, balance the books, read and write emails, and similar administrative tasks. In a perfect world, I’d also move all scheduled and recurring client meetings to this half of the day (where there’s a will, there’s a way).

This 4-block process I’ve dubbed “The 90-90-30-30” and stems from my long-standing belief that most people are only productive for 4 hours out of their 8-hour work day.

Slim down your daily to-do list.

I rely on a few different processes for keeping myself to task, one of which is a custom-designed weekly task calendar that I fill out at the end of the day every Sunday for the week ahead. The mistake I made with my initial design was that I allowed too much unstructured space. Naturally, I started filling up the space with all of my pressing tasks as well as other tasks I thought up for myself.

In other words, I was creating more work for myself. That’s self-sabotage.

With the implementation of the 90-90-30-30, I redesigned my weekly task schedule so that I only have room for 4 project tasks. There is some subjective reasoning behind this as well: I’ve found throughout my career that I complete an average of 3-4 separate project tasks on a good day. Over the course of a week, this equates to 12-16 completed tasks.

And, of those 12-16 completed tasks, I pick the top 5 most important at the beginning of each work week and list them out at the end of the week so I can clearly see where my priorities lie that week. If I can check off those top 5 plus a handful of other tasks, I call it a good week.

Fridays aren’t for work.

I stopped working Fridays at the beginning of the year because I’ve never really been very productive on Fridays. Instead of beating a dead horse (me being the horse, in case you missed it), I just put that horse out to pasture on Fridays. Because a happy horse is a happy life. Also, I’m not much of a horse person in general.

“I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.” (Me, to my phone)

I’m like a lot of you, I’m sure. I wake up in the morning and, because I’m addicted to technology and firing on about 3 brain cells, I grab the phone off the bedside charging stand. Before I even have a chance to make a conscious choice, I’ve already ruined my day by checking my email, Linkedin, and text messages, and I’ve invariably come across at least a couple of depressing articles or brain-rot content during my early-morning internet escapades.

To hell with that. The phone now lives downstairs on the charging station by the back door—the farthest point away from where I sleep and awaken. I've also repurposed and now wear an old Apple Watch to bed that barely does anything anymore aside from sync with my phone as a music controller and tickle my wrist in the morning when my phone alarms go off downstairs.

Whatever you do, don't just continue what you're already doing. You don't have to completely overhaul your entire professional modus operandi, but if I've learned anything, it's that there's always some molecule of life that could be improved in some fashion. Make an atomic habit or two out of improving your daily routine and processes, and I'm sure you'll be satisfied with the results you start to see over time.

Whatever you do, don't just continue what you're already doing. You don't have to completely overhaul your entire professional modus operandi, but if I've learned anything, it's that there's always some molecule of life that could be improved in some fashion.

For anyone interested, I’m including a link to download my weekly task calendar. For the design-savvy, you can easily use this as a starting point and redesign to fit your unique daily routine. I fill mine out digitally every week using an iPad and an Apple Pencil and sync across all my devices via iCloud, but you can print it as well. 

I’d also recommend the Minee Bluetooth Timer to help you stay on track—whether it be the 90-90-30-30 block schedule or even your typical Pomodoro schedule. For more functionality drilling down on your tasks and tracking your thoughts and progress, nothing works better than Notion. I use Notion for my business and for collaboration with every client via a custom Notion teamspace. 

Lastly, check out SmartTasks if you need a colorful way to visualize your tasks or task blocks. I use SmartTasks in a split view with my calendar on my 7” task monitor just in front of my keyboard for quick visual reference regarding what project block I’m working on at that moment in time.

Here’s a link to 99u’s fantastic Manage Your Day-to-Day (Volume 1). I highly recommend it for the designer, artist, or creative professional seeking new ways to carpe diem.