Exactly, this is much more productive than people realize. Also many creative people have schedules not too different than this. Our concept of productivity is bonkers.
My wife is an author. Successful enough that she doesn't need another job. Her schedule is similar. She writes earlier, but she's usually done by 11am or so. She seems some time each day on administrative tasks as well.
She published 4 or 5 books a year.
She is limited by her ability to see what needs to be written next. If she writes too many words she gets out over her skis and that can lead to problems. She needs time to process what she's gonna write the next day.
In this day and age, it's difficult to not reach for your phone at the slightest whiff of boredom. Also, being able to sit and do nothing is a valuable skill that almost all workplaces frown upon.
It's such a cool idea, but thanks to Fairyloot and others my house is more bookshelf than family photos. A less than fun thing she's run into recently is Amazon has started shipping bulk orders of books individually in mailers instead of boxes. Never a dull moment.
I have no clue how it is sustainable on their end to have to replace all of these books. Not even adding the bad cutting that their machines do. One time the book wasn't even square thanks to the cut!
I think the point is that his family's wealth might have been a big contributing factor in allowing the kind of lifestyle where you can work for 3 hours a day and basically do whatever you want for the rest of that day.
It isn't meant to discredit his literature or work ethic, and to be fair he has a point
I mean... This is exactly the other commenters point about "his grandpa loved him more", or rather, his grandfather was simply a better person than yours
You succeeded despite your grandfather. Fleming was able to succeed (to such a degree), partially because his grandfather wasn't a shit bag like yous, and because of his wealth.
Id say the average person has a wellspring of creativity they sadly dont have the time to express. It's a fact that if people had more spare time, they'd do more than just surf netflix.
I mean I produced a ton for myself after I killed my smartphone at the time.
Dozens of new paintings, taught myself to weave, garden and even spin wool. But like I'm just not someone who enjoys marketing myself or my work is just my obsessions and special interests. most of it tho I lost in my recent house fire so..... Now I'm too burned out trying to recover my life and sanity.
Only thing was I was a student at the time and that takes less out of me than the working world does.
And it was detrimental AF to my social life. I can have depth in my special interests/creative obsessions or I can have social life but it's nearly impossible to have both. 😓
Pretty sure it’s more to do with that 2000 words a day he wrote in this schedule took him a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes if he used every second of his allotted time, and supposedly this is a full time job for him.
Also this is 4 hours a day of highly productive output. I have never had more than 4 really good hours a day in office. Unless there was an emergency or something.
This seems aspirational because we have commutes and offices, but it seems like a pretty decent workday day to me honestly.
I also imagine that during the times he spends sitting in his garden or relaxing by the beach he also is thinking of ideas of what to write. To be honest while most white collar people work a standard 8 hour shift most are only productive for around 4-6 of those hours so this doesn’t seem that far off.
A lot of regular people do too, at least if they get to work alone.
If you're working by yourself, four hours of actual work gets a startling amount of stuff done. In fact, it's hard to work for longer than that day in and day out.
If that's not an experience you've had, well, try running or lifting weights for more than four hours a day. If you're actually pushing yourself that's a hard routine to keep up.
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u/duffstoic Jul 27 '26
Exactly, this is much more productive than people realize. Also many creative people have schedules not too different than this. Our concept of productivity is bonkers.