Summary of Two Awesome Hours Book by Josh Davis

Whether we love or hate our jobs, the amount of work, most of us have to do each day has reached unsustainable levels. We start a typical workday anxious about how we will get it all done, who we might let down, and which important tasks we will sacrifice — again — so we can keep our heads above water.

As we grab our first cups of coffee, we check our email inboxes on our handheld devices, scanning to see who has added a new task to our to-do list. The stress builds as we read email after email, each containing a request that we know can’t be dealt with quickly. We mark these emails as unread and save them for... “later.” We mentally add them to the piles of work left undone the night before (when we left our offices much too late). More emails to answer, more phone calls to return, more paperwork to fill out. And everything needs our immediate attention.

In fact, too many things need our attention before we can even get to the tasks that really matter — and too many things matter. We frequently work all day long — at the office and then at home, taking care of our families, cleaning up, paying bills — sometimes only stopping to sleep. There simply isn’t enough time, but so much always needs to be done.

Other time – management experts advise us to get to what matters most first, because there may not be enough time for those tasks later. Yes, it’s valuable to separate the truly important from the urgent though less important. But there’s something frustrating about this advice. When all’s said and done, there are still a lot of things we have to do that are not the most important on the list. Some things matter because they affect our relationships, some because not doing them will — in the long run — get us fired, some because we agreed to a deadline and we can’t flake just because something else important is on that list.

Even if these tasks are not what matters most, we may still go home feeling anxious when we don’t complete them. Sure, some problems go away if we ignore them. We can get better at letting things go. But with many of our tasks, we will not be absolved of responsibility for them. Eventually, they need to get done.

If a lack of efficiency were truly the problem, most of us, including my accomplished clients, would have solved our problems by now. Choosing the right system or app to help us manage our time or prioritize our tasks would relieve the pressure of the daily grind. But quantity and capacity are not the only factors that matter, and despite working as efficiently as possible, we are still not satisfied. Many of us feel stifled rather than accomplished at the end of a typical day.

While helping high-level executives and professionals become more effective, I’ve learned that regardless of how high up the ladder we are, we typically respond to being overwhelmed by work in two ways. One is to force ourselves to stay on task without breaks in order to make the most efficient use of our days.

The other is to work more hours — and to ask anyone who works for us to do so too — to make the most efficient use of our weeks. Underlying both of these solutions is the belief that to manage our workload, we should stop “wasting” time — we should be “efficient.” This belief follows from a fundamental misunderstanding of how our brains work.

Staying on task without a break and working longer hours are wonderful solutions for a computer or a machine. Computers and machines don’t get tired, so the quality of work is identical every time they are used. Using them more frequently will only lead to greater productivity and efficiency. But, of course, we’re not computers or machines. We are biological creatures. Continually demanding one kind of work — and a consistent level of effectiveness — from our brains is like continually demanding the same speed from a runner under any circumstances — whether sprinting or competing in a marathon, or whether running with no sleep after fasting for a day, jogging after recovering from a hangover, or exercising after being fed and rested.

There are consequences of being biological creatures on how we think. A number of people in the scientific community call these consequences “embodied cognition.” Embodied cognition includes the many ways that having a body influences thought. The brain serves as part of the control mechanism for the rest of the body. Cognition — any kind of thinking can not be properly understood without referring to the body it serves.

The key to achieving fantastic levels of effectiveness is to work with our biology. We may all be capable of impressive feats of comprehension, motivation, emotional control, problem-solving, creativity, and decision-making when our biological systems are functioning optimally. But we can be terrible at those very same things when our biological systems are suboptimal. The amount of exercise and sleep we get and the food we eat can greatly influence these mental functions in the short term — even within hours. The mental functions we engage in just prior to tackling a task can also have a powerful effect on whether we accomplish that task.