In November 2022 I ran a 100 hour workweek.
The core components that made this experiment possible:
I strongly, strongly recommend you arrive at ikigai or some equivalent conception of identity-work alignment before attempting anything like this. Especially the "What you love" side of things. Only do it if it'll bring you joy!
The Japanese concept of Ikigai represents the sweet spot where four elements converge: what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Before embarking on a 100-hour workweek, ensuring your work aligns with your Ikigai is crucial—otherwise, the intensity will quickly become unsustainable and potentially harmful.
I streamed my main monitor's workflow to myself in a private youtube live channel using StreamYard (which I found to be superior to Melon, which gave me serious audio feedback issues). Streaming allowed me to keep track of my distraction rate and quickly skim through to find moments of weak attention or lost productivity. The knowledge that I was constantly able to watch myself across time kept my attention on my goal and away from common distractions (Hacker News, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Random Messages). I ran out of StreamYard video storage after 50 hours of streaming but can still save to Youtube at no cost.
This formed the core of my performance reports and are how I checked that each day was above or below 14h and 15m (The average which needs to be hit to hit 100h for the week.) This is done in my Mac's Calendar app, which rather than being a place to schedule events was entirely used to track what actually happened within each 15m period each day. Scheduled events are deleted upon occurring and replaced with my actual time allocation. I would add events to the calendar continuously as they occurred, or at the end of the day at performance report time if I missed anything.
I use the following template for the report sent daily to my accountability crew:
[Day of Week] Omniscience 100hr Workweek Performance Report
The 'Hours worked' section includes pictures of my time tracking and a sum of the hours worked up to a total of hours worked between midnight and midnight for that day.
The 'Tasks accomplished' section is a full list of all tasks worked on or completed during the day.
The 'Streaming Links' section would be links to streams of work if nothing sensitive was done on my monitor during that day's sessions.
The 'Goals Set vs. Goals Accomplished' compared my goals for that day & the week to that point to what I had actually completed.
I had a group of people I trusted and respected receive my performance reports each night. This created a lot of psychological motivation to not let them down. I asked each of them if they would be open to holding me accountable and then put them in a single messages chat for the week.
Only direct action towards working goals counts. Things that definitely don't count include eating, showering, using the bathroom, transportation time, and general socializing. Things that definitely count include work related writing, coding, meeting co-workers, reading & math. Gray areas like listening to a work related youtube video or podcast are up to judgment calls.
I sent a message like the below to all of the friends I chat with regularly:
Hey! Just wanted to let you know that I'm running an experiment with a 100 hour workweek this week and so I won't be as available as I usually am for the next 7 days.
I work from home and so set up 3 different workspaces around the house. Halfway through the first 100 hour workweek I got exhausted of my in-room workspace, and so sacrifices 1.5 of my 3 free hours for the day to set up a new outdoor workspace. Workspace switching was key to overall happiness and physical comfort.
In advance of each workweek I set out a large body of ambitious goals central to our most important & high leverage opportunities. A critical part of the planning process is risk management - for every day I list likely distractions (social events, calls that overrun, expectations that are in conflict) and do my best to mitigate them in advance my making and communicating a clear decision.
My biggest problem with both workweeks is that I did not workout or worked out only once during each weak, leading my body to feel terrible. Sluggishness, slight upper back issues from stooping too much, and overall lower energy. I did not drink nearly enough water to deal with dehydration from ~150-250mg of caffeine / day.
DM me on twitter (@jvnixon) if you're interested in joining a group of us (@colekillian_, @Aleborda21, @KrishRShah, @allisondman, @Mtclai, @_aliaabbas, @_sholtodouglas and @chloewchia) for our next 100hr workweek!
Huge props to Lada Nuzhna for also completing a full 100 hour workweek, and thanks to Caitlyn Croft for the inspiration to post this.