PDF Summary:Ultraproductive, by Eric Partaker and Christian Poensgen

From high-powered, coffee-driven executives to eager young entrepreneurs launching their careers in the business world, many people find themselves hitting a wall of burnout and physical collapse, all in the name of being more productive. In Ultraproductive, CEO coaches Eric Partaker and Christian Poensgen argue that to maximize your performance and long-term productivity, working yourself to death isn’t the answer. Instead, they say to balance your ability to rest, maintain focus, and deal with stress in healthy ways.

In this guide, we’ll look at the biological factors that underpin the authors’ approach to productivity, and we’ll sketch out the shape of an average day that’s been optimized for top performance. Along the way, we’ll put the authors’ work in conversation with that of other experts on productivity, health, and getting the most out of life.

(continued)...

Much has been written on the subject of achieving and maintaining your focus. (Shortform note: See our Master Guide for more details on the literature that Partaker and Poensgen reference.) The core idea is that we’re at our most productive when we enter a focused mental state called “flow,” first identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s, where we’re completely consumed by the work we’re doing so that time and the outside world seem to fade away. It’s impossible to spend eight hours in flow—the most anyone can reasonably hope for is to achieve it a handful of times per day, for stretches of 70-80 minutes at a time: the perfect duration to fit neatly inside one of your 90-minute ultradian energy cycles.

Therefore, Partaker and Poensgen recommend you set aside one or two 90-minute sessions during your most productive times of the day to enter a flow state and focus on your most important projects. Block these times on your calendar, close your door, shut off your phone, and let people know you’re not to be bothered. This will make uninterrupted flow possible, but the authors point out that getting into flow still isn’t easy—it requires an act of will. As your 90-minute flow session begins, your brain will tempt you with the distractions it’s used to: one last email, a quick snack, or the like. Acknowledge those distractions, choose to ignore them, and you’ll find it easier to slip into flow as your energy level ramps up.

Finding Flow

Flow has been a touchstone of productivity and motivation literature since Csikszentmihalyi’s definitive work on the subject. However, Csikszentmihalyi describes it primarily as a path toward happiness and personal fulfilment, rather than as a productivity tool. While he does touch on its uses in the workplace, he also paints it as a tool for improving relationships, overcoming trauma, and finding meaning in your life. Partaker and Poensgen draw their description of the initial struggle to get into flow from the work of Steven Kotler, founder of the Flow Research Collective. However, in The Rise of Superman, Kotler adds a step: Take a break between the initial struggle and the flow state itself.

When in flow, your brain releases five neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamides, and serotonin) that collectively improve your ability to focus and recognize patterns, lower your sense of fear, and elevate your ability to think creatively. To move past the first struggle phase, Kotler says you need to take a break and step away from the challenge. When you do this, you release the frustration you’ve experienced and make way for the neurochemicals of flow to take effect. Once you’ve relaxed your mind, you can refocus on your task, and doing so will often trigger your jump into flow.

Sharpen Your Interactions

The authors may make it sound like you’d get a lot more done if only it weren’t for other people and their distractions. However, they say that’s not the case: Working with others is only distracting and detrimental if we approach it haphazardly. Just as we suffer from low-quality sleep and low-quality work, we also face a plague of low-quality interactions. However, with a little discipline and mindfulness, you can turn your collaborative work with your colleagues into a boon, not a time-sucking curse.

First, you should target asynchronous communication: emails and other online discussions. While these offer the illusion of convenience, Partaker and Poensgen say they really put you on call 24/7. For email, texts, and chat to be useful, they have to be paired with firm boundaries. What the authors recommend is to set aside one of your time slots to deal with them all at once. Also, remember that not all emails and messages are equal: Sort them into those that require swift action, those that you can wait to review, and those that are on hold because you need more information. Also, sort your messages into those that need a response today and those that can wait. Then, address them in priority order until your allotted time is up.

(Shortform note: In addition to the authors’ focus on timing and prioritizing online communication, how you craft your emails themselves can make them more effective (or not). In Smart Brevity, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz show how to make your messaging concise and direct, saving time and confusion for yourself and those you work with. If you craft clear email subject lines, state your main point up front, provide context, and format your text for easy skimming (using bullet points and bold text to highlight important information, it’ll help you reduce inbox clutter while ensuring that you convey what you need to.)

The next issue to tackle is meetings. The authors write that meetings can be valuable; it’s simply that most of them aren’t. The trick is to identify which meetings are the most productive and look for ways to make them even more so. Start by looking at all your recurring meetings, honestly assess which ones provide value, and find ways to cull the rest. Partaker and Poensgen also recommend limiting meeting attendance to small, effective groups, clearly defining each meeting’s agenda ahead of time, and giving them limited windows of time: less than a half hour if possible, or under 50 minutes for longer ones. To ensure maximum meeting productivity, be sure that each one concludes with an actionable next step to take.

(Shortform note: While the authors focus on cutting meetings out of your schedule, management consultant Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage) insists that there are certain types of meetings your leadership team must have to maintain organizational health. These include daily meetings (5-10 minutes) to share relevant administrative information, 45-90 minute weekly meetings to discuss progress toward short-term goals, monthly strategic meetings to discuss critical, complex issues, and quarterly off-site meetings to discuss the organization’s health and standing. Though some of these run longer than Partaker and Poensgen recommend, Lencioni concurs that for meetings to be effective, they have to have a clear, narrow focus.)

Stress Your System

The final productivity pillar Partaker and Poensgen discuss is stress, but they don’t talk about how to avoid it. Instead, they insist that some kinds of stress are useful and necessary—without it, you can’t learn and grow. Nevertheless, we spend most of our lives trying to dull the stress we feel, often in self-destructive ways, whether through comfort food, alcohol, avoiding exercise, or doomscrolling on our phones. Instead, we need to rethink our relationship to stress, learn to lean into it when it's helpful, and then back away and recharge in healthy ways.

But first, a clarification: The authors differentiate between acute and chronic stress; one is useful, the other is not. An acute stressor is something that’s temporary, needs to be dealt with quickly, and is done. Biologically, acute stress is indistinguishable from being excited about something you enjoy. Your body and your senses go on high alert while your thinking and problem-solving skills quicken. Then, once the stress-inducing incident has passed, you return to normal—or maybe better. Like a taxing workout for your body, dealing with and resolving acute stress fires you up and even helps heal your whole system.

How Can Stress Be a Good Thing?

As Partaker and Poensgen make clear, stress isn’t always the enemy. The difference between helpful acute stress and harmful chronic stress depends on several factors, including duration, intensity, how you perceive the situation, your available support system, and how much recovery time you have between stressful events.

“Good stress” (also known as eustress) pushes you beyond your comfort zone without overwhelming your system. Athletes rely on this type of stress to achieve peak performance, and students often find that moderate pressure improves their concentration and motivation during exams. Stressful experiences often reveal hidden strengths and capabilities you didn’t know you had, and these revelations contribute to personal growth and self-awareness.

Even in the worst situations, post-traumatic growth demonstrates how extreme stress can lead to positive transformation. People often report stronger relationships, deeper spiritual connections, and clearer life priorities after surviving difficult experiences. They develop an appreciation for simple pleasures and gain confidence in their ability to overcome obstacles. Of course, as Partaker and Poensgen suggest, for this to happen, the stressful event must be dealt with and resolved so that the result isn’t chronic, debilitating stress.

What Partaker and Poensgen recommend is twofold: that you change your attitude toward stress in general, and to individual stress-inducing circumstances in particular. In the first case, you should learn to view your body’s stress response in a positive light. In much the same way that someone who regularly works out at the gym equates the physical discomfort they experience with growth, so too what you feel while dealing with stress means your body and mind are adapting and growing. Likewise, it follows that whatever individual problem sets off acute stress—such as an unexpected challenge at work that requires you to adapt and change quickly—you can see it as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat to your well-being.

(Shortform note: Partaker and Poensgen draw many of these ideas from Kelly McGonigal’s The Upside of Stress, but McGonigal acknowledges that not all stressors are good—some represent actual danger and harm. As such, McGonigal recommends developing a mindset that views stress in a realistic, balanced way, not with blind optimism. You can recognize the positives and negatives of stress; don’t try to force a silver lining onto a negative situation in a way that’s insincere or delusional. There might not be an upside to extreme traumas or even trivial, daily activities, and that’s OK. If there’s no obvious upside at the moment, McGonigal suggests trying to think about how you might benefit from the situation in the future.)

Train Yourself for Stress

Unfortunately, in the modern world, we easily conflate acute and chronic stress—the latter persists, never really goes away, and leaves our systems in a heightened state of worry that we’re not physically equipped to maintain. That’s due in no small part to the constant noise of notifications and interruptions our daily lives throw at us—our bodies react as if there’s not just one lion in the grass to evade, but a hundred. Whereas acute stress is actually beneficial, chronic stress leads to anxiety, burnout, and a host of physical ailments that come from staying in panic mode all the time. When Partaker and Poensgen say that stress is good for you, it’s acute stress they’re talking about, not its evil chronic cousin.

(Shortform note: Chronic stress has negative cognitive impacts beyond the physical damage and anxiety it produces. In Brain Rules, biologist John Medina writes that it can be particularly harmful to memory and your ability to solve problems. Chronic stress sends excessive amounts of cortisol to the brain’s hippocampus, which can disconnect neural networks, cause memory loss, and prevent new cells from being created—thus hurting your ability to form new memories. This, in turn, impairs learning, spatial awareness, problem-solving, and abstract reasoning.)

Whether the result is acute or chronic, stressful events themselves are inevitable. Therefore, the authors recommend treating your stress resilience as a muscle that must be exercised. By deliberately exposing yourself to small doses of stress, you can strengthen your ability to deal with uncontrolled stressors. To do this, they suggest several options you can explore: intense physical exercise, periodic cold showers, occasional heat exposure (as in a sauna), and certain kinds of breathwork, such as that espoused by Dutch athlete Wim Hof.

(Shortform note: Wim Hof, whom the authors hold up as an example, is chiefly known for the extreme physical challenges he undertakes, as well as his advocacy for cold exposure and breathing exercises to fortify the body and mind. Researchers agree that cold exposure can improve your circulation—cold water immersion decreases your skin’s temperature, so your body sends more blood to the skin to warm itself up. Hof’s breathwork is similar to the tummo technique practiced by some Tibetan Buddhists that involves taking several deep breaths before holding it for a prolonged period. However, tummo breathing also involves a religious component that isn’t present in Hof’s or Partaker and Poensgen’s advice.)

Put It All Together

While describing the three pillars of productivity—healthy rest, meaningful focus, and stress as a tool for growth—Partaker and Poensgen describe how to design an optimal day, week, and year around them. In this last section, let’s take a look at what an optimized blueprint for your work might look like.

Make a Plan

First, they suggest that every day and week should start with a plan. It shouldn’t be complicated. Rather, at the start of every day (and every week), you should decide on the top three meaningful goals you’re going to work toward. These goals might be work-related, such as designing a new project you’re going to pitch or developing a new list of clients for you to contact. Alternatively, they might be personal, such as working on your health or spending time with your family. What they aren’t is trivial—you shouldn’t include rote, time-consuming busywork among your three priorities. That sort of work, if it needs to be done at all, will fit its way into the cracks around the time you set aside for what’s important.

(Shortform note: Your daily and weekly goals will be guided by whatever longer-term goals you’ve set. But how do you know if your bigger goals are worthwhile? Since Partaker and Poensgen write from a career-based perspective, let’s look at entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi’s process for setting goals from his book Never Eat Alone. First, he says to list your passions: the things you truly care about. If you struggle to identify those, take some time to think about who you are and what you like to do. Next, you should objectively assess your strengths and talents. Lastly, determine where your passions and talents overlap and set a long-term goal related to that intersection point. That, he says, will set you up for both success and happiness.)

Block out your day in 90-minute increments, with ample breaks in between. This starts with establishing exactly when you’re going to focus on your most important work; that time deserves your utmost protection. Whether that happens in the morning, afternoon, or evening is up to you, but Partaker and Poensgen say you should determine your chronotype (the time of day when your energy and ability to focus peaks) and schedule your deep work periods around that. Some people function best early in the morning, others in the evening, and some at mid-day—figure out which you are, and use that to guide you.

(Shortform note: It’s true that different people’s energy levels wax and wane at different times of the day. The mechanism behind this, your internal clock, is managed by a group of neurons in the hypothalamus that coordinates your body’s internal processes. These functions govern your appetite, digestion, and body-temperature, as well as sleeping and waking. Some psychologists do argue that these internal clocks can be divided into “types,” as Partaker and Poensgen do. However, this is disputed by some biologists who argue that these differences are more of a spectrum, and that chronotypes aren’t so easily categorized.)

Stress and Release

Ideally, the time you spend in deep focus will stress you (in that whatever you’re working on should be challenging). This isn’t bad; it just means that your goals should require you to stretch and grow your skills. Even if your focused work isn’t stressful, then at some point, something is guaranteed to happen elsewhere that will be. Therefore, stick to your break schedule and make sure they’re actual breaks so your system will have time to disengage after dealing with any acute stressors you encountered. This way, you won’t stay in alert mode—cap every stressful period at 90 minutes, and healthy stress won’t become chronic stress.

(Shortform note: One reason we’re sometimes reluctant to take a break is that we fear losing the momentum we’ve built up on our work in progress. In The Motivation Myth, Jeff Haden suggests this is exactly the best time: If you stop work in the middle of a task, you’ll know exactly where to pick up when you start going again. This is a recommendation often given to writers—that you should stop in the middle of a chapter, or even a sentence—to make it easier to get back into the flow. The idea may have originated with Ernest Hemingway, who always quit work at a point when he knew what had to happen next in his stories. The idea has gained wider popularity as a tool to help reduce procrastination.)

The same advice for stopping work on schedule goes for the end of the workday, and the end of the day in general. Partaker and Poensgen strongly advise you to make a practice of drawing your workday to a close and separating work life from home life. This includes one last look at your email, write down any last thoughts you may have had, make a rough mental sketch of what you’ll do tomorrow, then tell yourself that the workday is done. As discussed in the earlier section on sleep, you can build a similar practice around slowing down your mind before going to bed.

(Shortform note: Having a shut-down ritual for the end of the workday is especially important as more people have shifted to remote work from home. In Remote, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson argue that when home is your workplace, having an end-of-day routine is as important a boundary as having a designated work area and schedule—otherwise, work will inevitably bleed into the rest of your life. These rituals don’t have to be elaborate—they can include walking the dog, exercising, or cooking dinner. What’s key is that you do them regularly and that they demarcate a clear boundary between time at work and time away.)

Rejuvenation Time

Beyond the end of the workday itself, the authors highlight the importance of weekends and vacation time as part of your mental maintenance and recovery. Resist the temptation to see time off as more time you could spend working. That’s the road to exhaustion and burnout, not boosted productivity. It’s possible, also, that your scheduled time off might be filled with other nonwork obligations. Even so, research shows that you need to carve out time for yourself, even if it’s just a single day or evening. What’s important to restoring your energy is that you can relax, have control over your time, and perhaps that you work on something meaningful to you alone, such as pursuing a new hobby or mastering a skill not related to work.

(Shortform note: If you feel the urge the authors describe—to work on your time off—the issue may be that you place too much importance on productivity in general. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey argues that modern society indoctrinates people into believing that work is our primary reason for existing, that how much we can produce or accomplish is the sole measure of our worth, and that rest is a luxury most of us can’t afford. To counter these beliefs, Hersey asserts that our worth as human beings is inherent, and not contingent on productivity or career success, and that rest is a fundamental human need that everyone has a right to, no matter where we see ourselves in our careers or in a company hierarchy.)

Additionally, Partaker and Poensgen write that you shouldn’t make the mistake of trying to take all your time off at once. As tempting as a month in the Maldives may sound, research shows that the amount of benefit you get from a vacation maxes out at one week; after that, there’s no measurable benefit. Plus, if you use up all your time off at once, you’ll have to wait another exhausting year to make use of it again. While the 90-minute cycle may govern your workday, there are longer cycles of energy and recovery to pay attention to as well. What the authors suggest is to take a week-long vacation every three months; that way, you’ll enjoy the maximum benefit several times a year and find yourself primed for the rest of it.

(Shortform note: Though the authors argue against consolidating all your time off in one long break per year, there’s a growing trend of people who choose the extreme opposite: adults who take extended, unpaid career breaks later in life. While these don’t often result in boosted productivity at your current job—since you normally have to quit it—they provide other benefits, such as a chance to learn new skills, explore the world, spend more time with loved ones, and gain a fresh outlook on life in general. To maximize productivity in your current role, you may want to follow Partaker and Poensgen’s advice. If you need a break that’s more radical, you might try a sabbatical in Europe or a year backpacking in South America.)

Change in Small Doses

Optimizing your life for a level of productivity you can sustain indefinitely involves making a lot of changes, as Partaker and Poensgen freely attest. That’s why their last bit of advice is to take it slow: Don’t try to change everything at once. Gearing up for the lifelong journey ahead of you is a slow process, and you’re most likely to achieve it if you do so incrementally. Therefore, they recommend taking one of their pieces of advice to start with, and try it out until it becomes a habit. Then, you can make another change, and another, until hopefully you’ll find yourself more energized, resilient, and focused on your mission, whatever you choose that to be.

Where to Begin

The advice to “start small” is so common it’s practically become a law of nature, but one question remains: Where to start small? In Reset, organizational change expert Dan Heath offers three possible answers:

• Find your limiting factor, the one thing that’s most constraining your ability to achieve your goals. The constraint might be physical (like a company’s lack of equipment, or your personal health), logistical (like how much time you have available, or the processes you need to slog through at work), or human (like a skills gap). Crucially, it also affects how well many other things work.

• Find what’s already working. You’re liable to overlook these high points because you’re focused on what’s not working, but your successes contain valuable lessons about what’s possible with your current resources and constraints. Study your best performances and look for patterns—conditions, behaviors, or mindsets that lead to better outcomes—and make small changes that lean into those patterns.

• Figure out what you actually want. The biggest barrier to progress is sometimes just confusion about what you’re trying to achieve. You might be pursuing goals that sound reasonable but don’t actually serve your ultimate purpose. Therefore, the most effective place to start making changes would be in areas that serve what your true underlying goals in life are.