# Ep. 231 — Fight Burnout With Work Cycles ![rw-book-cover](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstorage.buzzsprout.com%2Fvariants%2F8nfciwljt3xraj5ihjktub9d08eu%2F5cfec01b44f3e29fae1fb88ade93fc4aecd05b192fbfbc2c2f1daa412b7c1921.jpg&w=100&h=100) ## Metadata - Author: [[Deep Questions with Cal Newport]] - Full Title: Ep. 231 — Fight Burnout With Work Cycles - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/b061cf2d-885a-4125-a4e5-77f9c5415cd0 ## Highlights - The Benefits of Work Cycles and Cool Down Periods Summary: Implementing work cycles of 6-8 weeks followed by a 2-week cool down period can lead to more effective and sustainable productivity. The fixed cadence of work cycles provides an internal sense of urgency, prevents projects from becoming unmanageable, and allows for regular assessment and prioritization. Breaking big projects into smaller ones that can be completed within the cycle timeframe is encouraged. The cool down period is essential for addressing bugs, smaller issues, and planning for the next cycle. The cycle strategy aligns with the natural rhythm of work, alternating between periods of intense work and relaxation. This approach is more sustainable and prevents burnout compared to continuously saying yes and hoping not to burn out. Implementing work cycles can be done at the team or company level, with the focus on having a regular rhythm of on-off periods. Concerns about wasted productivity during the cool down period are debunked, as the quality and quantity of work achieved during intense periods compensate for the break. Implementing work cycles and cool down periods can be done individually without attracting attention by planning sparser weekly schedules during the cool down periods. Transcript: Speaker 1 What I have loaded up here is the chapter nine of the Basecamp employee handbook. So Basecamp is a software development, product development tech company. It's co-found that you may know it's co-founder and CEO Jason Freed. Him and I did an event together when I launched my last book, A World Without Email. So we've crossed paths a few times. They're very innovative in thinking about work. So Jason, the co-founder has co-authored multiple books about rethinking knowledge work, including rework and one that's called work doesn't have to be this way. So it's a company in which the principals do a lot of thinking about how can we make work better even if it requires a radical changes. So their handbook is actually itself a fascinating business advisory because you're exposed to all of these experiments they're trying. Well, in chapter nine of this handbook and it's what I have loaded on the screen now, they talk about cycles. Now I'm going to read from the handbook right now. We work in six to eight week cycles at Basecamp. There are typically six cycles to a year, two or eight week cycles during summer hours and the rest are six week cycles. This fixed cadence serves to give us an internal sense of urgency, work as a scope hammer to keep projects from ballooning and provide a regular interval to decide what we're working On. The idea is not that everything we ever decide to work on has to take six to eight weeks or can be completed in that time, but rather that we think about how we can break big projects into Smaller ones that can be done in that amount of time and that we bundle smaller things into a presentable scope of work that can be discussed. All right, now I'm going to skip forward a little bit. This is what I like about the cycle strategy. This next section called cool down. In between each cycle, we spend two weeks cooling down. That's the time to deal with bugs or smaller issues that come up right up what we worked on and figure out what we should tackle next. It's sometimes tempting to simply extend the cycles into the cool down period to fit in more work, but the goal is to resist this temptation. I think this is a brilliant strategy. It matches the natural rhythm of work for which human beings are better suited. This idea of work intensely for a while, then cool down for a couple of weeks. Let's just, everyone's chill. Let's just hammer out some final bugs and have some brain stormy type meetings about what comes next. We wake up, we come to work a little late, we're not staying late, the inbox is reasonable, and then once that two weeks is over, let's get after it again. Now we speed back up and we're working urgently on something we're all in. Do we cool down again? That general pattern on off, on off is very effective. It is a much more sustainable way of having a profession where you have to create value using only what's happening in between your ears from your brain. It's a much sustainable way to create value with your brain than what most people do, which is keep saying yes till you're so stressed that you feel like you have covered to say no and hope You don't burn out too soon. So I really like this cycle idea. There's a couple of different ways that you could actually implement this. If you're running a team or running a company, you could do what base camp did. This is how we actually operate. You could make this your culture. I don't care what lengths you do other than the cool downs need to be non-trivial longer than a day, but you could say this is how we do it. It's one month on, one month off. It's semester on, then we take a month that's a little more relaxed. It's three months, three weeks. However, you want to do it, but having a regular rhythm of on off on off is something that you should consider. I think the managers out there are saying, wait a second, think about all of the wasted productivity during the cool down period. We're going to be getting that much less work done. My response to this is the same response base camp would have, which is nonsense. The amount of high quality work you get done during the intense period of the cycles is going to add up to much more quality results. If you balance those with cool downs, then if you instead just try to push through all out all year round, because what happens if you just try to push all out all year round, that energy Flags. The amount of effort you're doing six months into the year is a lot worse than it was earlier. A lot worse than it would be if you actually had regular cool down periods. You're going to get more done. It's going to be higher quality. People aren't going to burn out. What if you don't have control of a team? What if you don't run your own company? Do this stealthily on your own internally without telling other people, I have cycles and during this bit of the cycle, I'm all on this week or this two weeks. I'm pulling back. You can do this without having to make any declarations without having to get anything signed off on by a boss without really attracting that much attention. It's just a matter of making your weekly plans sparse during the cool down periods. Just don't put much stuff into those weekly plans. ([Time 0:15:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/82850b42-905a-4e3b-a9cf-e2dfef49aa72))