How I Manage to Work 20 Hours a Day

My secret to working 20 hours a day for months on end is due to a combination of workaholism and metabolism, which combine together to allow me to do this, so I would not recommend anyone else to try it as not every person's body can handle the things I put usually mine through. My workaholic tendency allows me to continue to work long hours alone, the metabolism makes sure that I don't require much food or water for long periods of time, while passion towards work allows me to do this without any unhealthy stress. Even if the time spent working does not reach exactly 20 hours, it is still around 16 to 18 hours per day, double the normal working hours for most people.

Here are the things I do to make sure I can function at full efficiency for long periods of time.

1. Do anything you have planned for the normal work day, the daily 9-to-5 that everyone else adheres to, because your customers, business partners, and pretty much everyone over 18 years of age is busy working at that time as well. So as expected, all your scheduled activities such as meetings, networking, visits to exhibition events, managing your team, cold-calling, customer service, sales, will happen during this time. My usual work timings are 10 AM to 6 PM because I like to wake up a little late and take proper time with my breakfast when I can. Depending on the circumstances however work can start as early as 7 AM and go on till 7-8 PM, and on such days I usually don't eat all three meals; I skip the second meal altogether, and/or eat half my usual meal quantity.
2. After 6 PM, when no more calls or social interactions are expected, and everyone else in your team has gone home, take a break to eat the second meal if you have the time to and don't have any other immediate work. Because I don't eat a heavy lunch around 1-2 PM when most people do, I don't spend the second half of the 9-to-5 feeling drowsy, losing momentum, or needing a pick-me-up. After this short break, it's time to decide what you are going to be doing next:

a) If your body is tired and you can't handle any further running around, pick something you can do while sitting in a chair that only requires mental focus and attention: market research, coding, replying to important emails, presentations/business plans/taxes, reading books related to your field, online courses that interest you.

b) If your mind is exhausted and you can't focus anymore, do the things your body can handle which do not require much logical thinking: cosplay prop making, 3D printer (or any machine that needs) fixing or cleaning, sanding, sketching, sculpting, painting.

c) If both your body and mind are tired choose the thing you can do while sitting in a chair that you don't have to think about: look up networking events on social media, reach out to people on LinkedIn, read latest news related to your field, post internship/job opportunities of your company online. This will continue till both body and mind are tired and you are actually sleepy.

d) If both mind and body are NOT tired because its been a relatively easy work day so far, first do the work that requires you to move around, and then once exhausted, decide what to do next.

All your planned work up to this point is done, but you still don't feel the need to sleep? Watch videos of things you are excited and passionate about. The last thing you focus on is what you will probably end up dreaming or thinking about in your sleep, so I usually choose this time to either focus on a problem that needs solving (in coding algorithms or in general operations) or watch my favorite scenes of Ironman or think of ideas, and maybe even draw rough sketches of them, though the mental picture usually just stays in my head till I refine it and am ready to put the idea on paper. As a last resort if even all of that is not what you're in the mood for, catch up on your light reading, watch TV shows/movies, listen to songs, dance, whatever else keeps your spirits high and allows you to properly de-stress.

Daily Schedule

During this extreme workaholism phase I jump out of bed as soon as my alarm goes off. I have never been a huge coffee or tea drinker, both of which I drink extremely rarely (cold coffee for the taste a few times in summers, hot coffee once or twice in winters, tea with toast on the rare occasion that I am sick and can't eat much else), and as such, I have no dependence on anything to become wide awake immediately after getting out of bed. Apart from the occasional soft-drink or fruit juice, I mostly only drink water. have never even tried energy drinks or alcohol. Till the age of 29, I drank a glass of milk everyday in the morning, out of childhood habit, but gave it up and realized I did not feel the need for it anymore either.

There comes a phase after months and months of doing all this work when my body decides it has had enough, and it is then that I take a break of about a month. During this "break" I work only the minimal amount that is required of me in a day while my body is recuperating. I don't set an alarm during this time, as I usually wake up in eight to twelve hours depending on how much sleep is required. For the remainder of the day my mind is busy acquiring more information from new sources, so I am usually planning things that need to get done in the coming future, imagining new robots, ideating, setting new goals, reading books, writing, drawing/sketching, and binge watching the shows I've missed.