My 10-6-4 Tools Experiment Journey
Heard about this 10-6-4 productivity method last Tuesday while scrolling through social media. Basically means 10 deep work hours daily – 6 on core stuff and 4 on side projects. Sounded wild but figured I’d try tools to make it stick.
Started Wednesday morning bright-eyed with paper notebooks. Grabbed three different colored ones – blue for 10-hour planning, red for 6-hour priority, yellow for 4-hour tasks. Total disaster by lunchtime. Was flipping notebooks like a short-order cook during Zoom calls, spilled coffee on the red one, and lost the yellow pad under pizza boxes.
The Digital Tool Shuffle
Thursday went full digital mode. First tried using calendar blocking on my phone. Blocked chunks screaming “DEEP WORK – DO NOT DISTURB”. Worked until my mom video-called mid-block. Then notifications bombed everything – texts popping up during coding sessions like digital gnats.
Friday installed that fancy task manager everyone raves about. Made pretty labels for the 10-6-4 buckets. Felt slick till I spent 45 minutes color-coding tasks instead of doing them. Then the syncing messed up – watched my “ship mobile app” task vanish into cloud heaven while brushing teeth.
What Actually Stuck
By Saturday I was frustrated enough to go Frankenstein mode. Here’s the ugly combo that survived:
- Kitchen timer for the 10-hour hustle: That old-school wind-up one. Clicks loud enough to hear through noise-canceling headphones. 90-minute sprints then mandatory stretch breaks. Brutal but honest.
- Giant wall calendar for the 6-hour priorities: The paper kind with neon markers. Slapped it beside my monitor. When something sucks, at least I get to violently cross it out with red marker.
- Voice notes app for the 4-hour creative stuff: When random ideas hit during dog walks, just mumble into my phone. No formatting hell, no syncing drama.
Took till this Monday to stop fighting tools and start working. Realized fancy features just meant more ways to procrastinate. Now if you’ll excuse me – that loud ticking means my 90-minute block for client proposals started 3 minutes ago…
