How to pursue every interest without burning out

As I’m writing this letter, I’ve just started my Master of Publishing and Communications. This program is basically a year-long bootcamp (plus an internship) for serious editors, and I can’t wait to implement all of the skills to make A Mug of Insights better.

But as I was planning my week last Saturday, I realised that my life is now packed to the brim with my wide array of interests. During a normal week, I:

·      Practice karate 3+ times (5+ hours)

·      Write two newsletters (Saturday and Monday)

·      Produce a YouTube video (usually airs on Fridays)

·      Edit my book with Bloomsbury Academic

·      Plan workshops for the end of the month

And to add an extra full-time course load on top of that sounds certified insane.

However, there’s a habit that I’ve kept in the arsenal for years that’s finally being put to the test. In fact, this habit is key to pursuing multiple interests without burning out, and to understand this, let’s take a trip back to Harvard in the late 1800s.

The Roosevelt Paradox

There’s a chapter in Cal Newport’s book Deep Work that details the work habits of Theodore Roosevelt when he was at Harvard during 1876-1877.

The biographer Edmund Morris noted that, unlike a strait-laced and bookish freshman who stank of damp tweed after the rain, Roosevelt was, by comparison, hopelessly scattered and energetic. He routinely pursued boxing, wrestling, bodybuilding, and, in addition to all the macho arts, he really cared about poetry and birds. 

But even with this “amazing array of interests”, Roosevelt’s grades didn’t suffer. Sure, he wasn’t the best in his class, yet he still managed to earn “honours grades in five out of his seven courses”. What was his secret?

The secret was his intensity of focus. Roosevelt would allocate time blocks for wrestling classes, poetry readings and birdwatching before the week had started, and used the remaining hours to study with “blistering intensity”. Paradoxically, this intensity has allowed him to compress his study time to a few hours a day, while freeing up the rest of his schedule to explore his wide array of interests. Or, in Morris’s words:

“His concentration was so intense, and his reading so rapid, that he could afford more time off [from schoolwork] than most.”

The broken formula of time allocation

When I was sitting in a 9 am class for my master program, the instructor said that we were expected to “devote 10 hours a week” to a copyediting class.

This metric confused me. Like we’ve covered in this letter, time is the poorest measure of productivity. In fact, we have an amazing ability to take up all the time we’re given, even if 90% is spent on doing BS. Conversely, a deliberate time restriction, especially in Roosevelt's case, is a powerful tool to cut down our work hours.

And this is the habit that I’ve kept since I was in high school. Like many people with scattered interests, I wasn’t the one to pursue one interest at a time. What thrilled me was spotting the connections between cinematography, writing, literature and fitness. So, to account for all of these interests at the same time, I restricted these pursuits to time blocks and approached them with blistering focus.

I remembered that I only studied for 3 hours per night (from 5 pm to 8 pm), but those sessions were carried out in a silent study pod with nothing but a blank plaster wall and a bare wooden desk. Paradoxically, I was able to finish everything in those hours while leaving the entire evening to go to gym classes, read novels and pursue a passion project (making YouTube videos) that eventually turned into my full-time job.

So, this week, I want us to rethink how we approach multiple interests. Instead of treating it as a scattered affair of broken potentials, try to allocate a concentrated block of absolute focus to master a skill, practice an art or finish an assignment. And if you want specific protocols for how to do this, stick around for our Monday Deep Dives (Double Shot Tier), where we’ll give you specific protocols for implementing these focused learning blocks.

(2) Reflections

1: Identify a time inflation activity during the week. For most people, this is their full-time job or their coursework. In reality, most of these activities can be condensed into a few hours of focused blocks, freeing up the rest of your schedule to do whatever you want to do. Find this activity, and

2: Experiment with time blocks. For most of my university commitments, I reserve them for a time block between 3 pm and 5 pm. This allows me to get all the pre-reading & assignment preps out of the way, freeing up my evening for writing and creating videos. If you have a commitment that is inflating your schedule, make a time-sensitive appointment with yourself and stop when the timer runs out. In most cases, a bit of added time pressure will help you click into a focused state.