Monk Mode
Shutting out the world for months to finish one large piece of work
Not a protected morning but a withdrawal held for months. Same small room, same early start, same hard stop, five days a week. An autoresponder tells everyone the reply will be late. The claim behind it is that a book, a dissertation or a rebuild is a different kind of task from ordinary work, and needs a different kind of week rather than a few extra hours inside a normal one. Because the block sits early, the hardest thinking finishes by lunch and the rest of the day stays free. Defined projects with an end date suit it better than an open ended job.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Greg McKeownDoes it
Author · Essentialism
Wrote Essentialism by shutting the world out: 5am to 1pm, five days a week, for around nine months, with an autoresponder warning people the reply would be late. Not one negative reaction came back, he says, and he calls an extreme routine a reasonable answer to an extreme era.
Source: gregmckeown.com: The Magic of Being in Monk Mode“It means shutting out the world for a time. It is a relatively extreme approach to take, but we decided I would write from 5AM to 1PM every day. I did that for five days a week for about 9 months.”
gregmckeown.com: The Magic of Being in Monk Mode (opens in a new tab) · 18 Sep 2014
Aimed at the same thing
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Environment design
Change the room instead of relying on willpower
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Time blocking
Give every hour of the workday a job before the day starts
On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deep work blocks
Long, scheduled, distraction-free sessions on one cognitively hard task
On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 1 recommends it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deliberate wandering
Unplanned, inefficient exploration kept on purpose as the counterweight to efficiency
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Digital declutter
A 30-day break from optional tech, then reintroduce deliberately
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Hard thinking before lunch
Book the mentally demanding work for the morning and stop making big calls late in the day
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it
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