Jim Collins’s Secret Formula for Highly Productive Creative Work

How the author of Good to Great allocates his time for work that matters most

Jim Collins, former Stanford professor, rock climber, and the author of the business classic, Good to Great — is also a polymath and data nerd. For years he’s tracked his daily productivity, sleep, and mood. I recently heard a fantastic interview of Collins on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, and I though it important to share what I learned.

I’ll cover the sleep and mood topics in future stories, but here I’ll discuss Jim Collins’s revolutionary way to look at the power of cumulative effort.

Collins believes we should spend at least 50% of our working time on creative projects. ‘Creative’ is a loose definition and depends on your work.

What creative work is not, are the administrative tasks, such as answering email, making sales calls, marketing your work, shuffling paper, and playing on social media.

Creative work is deep work — flow-state work — longer periods of thoughtful creation, aimed towards adding to your current goals.

Whether it’s writing, math problems, product development, coding, sketching, photography, or idea-mapping, creative work is the doing side of equation. Without the doing, we’ve got no cumulative effort.

How much creative work is enough?

Collins has collected his personal data for decades. He keeps a spreadsheet with all his working time. At one point he kept a triple stopwatch in his pocket so he could track creative, administrative (other stuff, he calls it), and teaching time. The idea is to dedicate fifty percent of his time to creative work, thirty percent to teaching, and twenty percent to ‘other stuff.’

Eventually, Collins recognized the only metric that mattered was the right amount of creative time. If that fell into place everything else worked itself out. He eventually ditched the triple stopwatch.

So, how much creative time is enough? Collins says this equates to 1,000 hours every 365 day interval, no matter where you slice it. Approximately three hours a day — every day.

He makes sure he works sick, or he makes up the creative time with extra hours the next day. Combined with his daily grading system, he makes sure his life is simplified so he can get this daily creative quota completed no matter what.

He opens his spreadsheet and can divide his work time in any 365 day block, averaging 1,000 hours in any slice.

This has profound implications for any creator

I’ve been writing about the importance of daily work for awhile, but Collins’s metrics have put this concept into vivid perspective. Not only does the daily 3-hour, creative minimum lead to a large body of work, but it also contributes to our mental health.

Mental health?

Yep. Collins also tracks the quality of his days (future story in itself) and he found his best days weren’t necessarily his easiest days. The best days were the days he was able to bend his mind for long periods of time, doing the hard work he loved best.

Your daily creating may preserve your mental health too.

Now, I’m no psychologist (although I play one in my bathroom mirror), but I can tell you from anecdotal experience this is 100% true. When I’m neurons-deep in a current writing project, or craft-work, not only does time not exist, but I feel great when I climb from my mental cave.

Daily creating gives you the compounding benefit of vast-productivity, while you give your brain the mental exercise it needs to prevent you from becoming little more than a walking, scrolling eggplant.

How to cram your 1,000 hours this year

Make a promise to yourself. Do the creative work first. Start the clock in the morning. Not before bed. You’ve got to his three hours total by the time your head hits the pillow. Three continuous hours is best, but any way you can squeeze it will work.

This is an experiment for me too.

I’d say most days I spend more than three hours working creatively, but I’ve never tracked it to prove it. Maybe it’s time to start. Think of how much you could accomplish if you promised yourself three hours minimum of creation time every. single. day.

Do the important work first.

Our brains are at their best shortly after waking. This is your cerebral moment. Don’t spend all that productive capital on your email correspondence, or Instagram posts. Do the work. No matter what. Then you can say you’re the type of person who practices their craft every day.

It’s like the post office.

Rain, sleet, or snow (although that’s never been their slogan). We do the creative work, because this is more than just a job for us. A job is what we do. Our work is who we are.

Now is a good time to start

Sure, Jim Collins is a productivity and data-collection animal. This is his life’s work. We don’t have to be as dedicated to data collection to benefit from what he’s discovered.

Maybe you only need two hours a day — or four.

The number isn’t as important as the process. Start with thirty minutes — a real, honest promise to yourself that you’re the type of person who does the creative work daily, no matter what.

Sure, life gets in the way, but most days it won’t.

Life is not an obstacle. Life is the only thing. It’s up to us to prioritize how we want to live it. How do you want your body of work to speak for you at the end of your life? What kind of a life do you want to live?

As creators, we’re the innovators. If not us, who?

If we don’t spend our time creating as we should, someone will do that work for us. We’ll miss the proverbial train. Our warehouse will be empty and our mental health will suffer.

We’ve all got a creative purpose. I hope you’ve discovered yours.

When we work to serve our creative purpose, the hard work feels good. It doesn’t matter if we’ve spent hours trying to solve a problem, still unsolved. The work continues. There’s no end-game, but a daily theme instead. We want to do the work as long as we can. We want to benefit as many people as we can.

If you enjoyed this story you may also enjoy part two and three of my Jim Collins series. Here’s are links to the next stories: