How to be more productive, despite a demanding job

I Wasted Years “Not Having Time”

I had a demanding job, a long commute, and zero energy left at the end of the day. For most of my twenties, that was my excuse for never learning piano, never building a website, never doing any of the things on my ‘someday’ list.

The list never got shorter. Every few months I’d look at it, feel a pang of guilt, and tell myself I’d start when things calmed down. When work wasn’t so busy. When I had more energy. When the timing was right.

The timing was never right.

I’d come home from work exhausted, eat dinner, watch TV or scroll my phone, and go to bed. Weekends disappeared into errands, chores, and “recovery” from the week. Years passed. The list stayed the same.

As I mentioned in my introduction, my life has been full of failures: academic failures, side hustle failures, job search failures. But this felt like a different kind of failure. Not a dramatic crash, just a slow leak. I was letting time slip away without building anything meaningful outside of work.

Then I tried something embarrassingly simple, and it changed everything.

The One-Hour Experiment

The idea wasn’t original. I’d heard versions of it before, like “wake up earlier,” “use your mornings,” “time blocking.” It all sounded like productivity advice written by people who didn’t have real jobs or real exhaustion.

But I was frustrated enough to try.

The experiment: Add one hour to my day, dedicated to a single skill, before anything else.

Not “find” an hour. Not “squeeze in” an hour. Add one hour by waking up earlier and treating that time as non-negotiable.

I picked piano. I’d always wanted to learn, and I picked up a digital Roland piano during the last Black Friday Amazon sale. I committed to one hour every weekday morning before work.

The first week was brutal. I’m naturally more alert in the evenings, so dragging myself out of bed at 5:30 AM felt like punishment. The piano practice itself was frustrating because I was terrible, and progress was slow.

But I kept going. And somewhere around week three, something shifted.

What Actually Happened

Month 1: I could play simple melodies with one hand. Not impressive, but more than I could do before. The early mornings stopped feeling like torture and started feeling like routine.

Month 3: I was working through beginner tutorials on various apps, playing simple songs with both hands. I started looking forward to the morning practice — it was my time before the day’s demands took over.

Month 6: I could play recognizable songs. Not well, but recognizably. Friends were surprised when I mentioned I’d been learning piano. “When do you have time for that amongst your full-time and consulting jobs?” they asked.

Month 12: I had logged roughly 250 hours of practice. I was solidly intermediate — not performing at concert halls, but able to sit down and play something that sounded like actual music.

Here’s the math that made it work:

1 hour per day × 5 days per week = 5 hours per week
5 hours per week × 50 weeks per year = 250 hours per year

Two hundred fifty hours. From one hour a day that I previously spent sleeping or scrolling.

Why One Hour Works

I’ve tried other approaches. “I’ll practice when I have time” means never practicing. “I’ll do 15 minutes here and there” means constant context-switching and no real progress. “I’ll dedicate my whole Saturday” means one productive day followed by burnout and guilt.

One hour hits a sweet spot:

It’s long enough to make real progress. You can actually get into a flow state, work through something challenging, and feel like you accomplished something.
It’s short enough to be sustainable. You’re not reorganizing your entire life. You’re just waking up a bit earlier or staying up a bit later.
It’s specific enough to protect. “I’ll practice more” is vague. “6:00-7:00 AM is piano time” is a commitment you can actually keep.

It compounds dramatically. The difference between 0 hours per week and 5 hours per week seems small. But over a year, it’s the difference between “I’ve always wanted to learn piano” and “I can confidently play piano.”

The Dust on the Showerhead

A few weeks into my experiment, I was taking a shower and noticed my showerhead was angled wrong. I reached up to adjust it and felt something unexpected: dust. The top of the showerhead — despite being in a shower, surrounded by water and steam daily — was coated in dust.

It had been there the whole time. I just never looked.

That’s what available time is like. It’s sitting there, accumulating dust, while we insist we don’t have any. The hour I “found” for piano wasn’t hidden in some secret compartment. It was right there in my morning, being spent on extra sleep I didn’t need or phone scrolling that added nothing to my life.

Most people have more “dust” than they realize:

The 45 minutes of morning social media
The hour of TV that “helps you unwind” but actually just delays bedtime
The lunch breaks spent mindlessly browsing instead of doing something intentional
The weekend hours lost to activities you don’t even enjoy

I’m not saying all leisure is waste. Rest matters. But there’s a difference between intentional rest and time that just… disappears.

How to Find Your Hour

If you want to try this, here’s how I’d approach it:

Step 1: Pick One Thing

Not three things. Not “self-improvement generally.” One specific skill or project.

The skill should be:

Something you’ve genuinely wanted to do (not something you feel you “should” do)
Learnable through practice (not dependent on other people or resources you don’t have)
Measurable in some way (so you can see progress over time)

Good examples: an instrument, a language, coding, writing, drawing, a fitness goal, building something specific.

Bad examples: “be more productive,” “get healthier,” “learn more”—these are too vague to practice.

Step 2: Choose Your Time Slot

You have three realistic options:

Before work: Wake up an hour earlier, practice before your day starts. This is what I do. The advantage is that nothing can interrupt it. There are no meetings running late, no emergencies pop up, no energy depletion from the workday. The disadvantage is that it requires a disciplined sleep schedule.

After work: Extend your day by one hour after you get home, before you do anything else. The advantage is no early wake-up. The disadvantage is that you’re competing with fatigue and the pull of relaxation.

Lunch break: Use your midday break for practice instead of scrolling or socializing. The advantage is it doesn’t change your sleep schedule. The disadvantage is it only works if you have a real break and a space to practice.

There’s no universally “best” option. Pick the one that fits your life and your energy patterns.

Step 3: Make It Stupidly Easy to Start

The biggest threat to your hour isn’t lack of time, it’s friction.

If you want to practice piano at 6 AM, the keyboard should be set up and ready. If you want to code, your laptop should be open to your project. If you want to exercise, your clothes should be laid out the night before.

Every obstacle you remove makes it more likely you’ll actually start. Every decision you have to make in the moment is an opportunity to quit.

Step 4: Protect It Ruthlessly

Your hour is not flexible time that gets pushed when something “more important” comes up. It’s an appointment with yourself that you keep like you’d keep a meeting with your boss.

This means:

Not checking email or messages during your hour
Not “just quickly” doing something else first
Not skipping because you’re tired (tired is the default; you practice anyway)
Not negotiating with yourself about whether today “counts”

Will you miss days? Yes. Life happens. But missing should be the exception, not something you decide each morning based on how you feel.

Step 5: Track It (Simply)

You don’t need an elaborate system. A simple calendar where you mark an X on days you completed your hour is enough. The visual streak becomes motivating and you don’t want to break the chain.

I use a productivity app called TickTick. Each day has a box to tick off when I finish practicing. That’s it.

What 250 Hours Can Get You

One hour a day, five days a week, for a year adds up to roughly 250 hours. That’s enough to:

Move from complete beginner to intermediate in an instrument
Go from zero coding knowledge to building functional projects and potentially applying for junior roles
Reach conversational level (A2-B1) in a new language
Write a complete first draft of a book
Build a personal website with a portfolio that transforms your job search
Complete a certification program in your field
Develop a side hustle that generates real income

You won’t become a world-class expert in 250 hours. But you’ll become competent, and competence in a new area opens doors that didn’t exist before.

The gap between “I’ve always wanted to do X” and “I can do X” is smaller than it feels. It’s about 250 hours, one at a time.

What If You Don’t Have an Hour?

Start with what you have.

Fifteen minutes a day is 65 hours a year. That’s enough to:

Completely overhaul your resume and LinkedIn profile
Read 15-20 books
Build a basic personal website
Establish a consistent meditation or exercise habit
Learn the fundamentals of a new software tool

Thirty minutes a day is 130 hours a year, halfway to completing everything on the list above.

The specific duration matters less than the consistency. Fifteen minutes every day beats two hours once a week. The habit is the hard part; the hours accumulate automatically once the habit is in place.

The Real Obstacle

I’ll be honest about what actually makes this hard. It’s not finding the time. It’s facing the discomfort of being bad at something.

When I started piano, I was terrible. My fingers wouldn’t do what I wanted. Simple songs felt impossible. Progress was invisible for weeks. Every practice session was a confrontation with my own incompetence.

This is why most people don’t stick with new skills. Not because they’re too busy, because being a beginner is uncomfortable, and it’s easier to retreat to activities where you already feel competent.

The only way through is through. You have to be willing to be bad for a while, trusting that the hours will compound even when you can’t see it happening.

Looking back at my failures in school and career planning, I realize I often quit things too early. I interpreted “this is hard and I’m not good at it” as “this isn’t for me” instead of “this is the part where you push through.”

The one-hour practice changed that. It gave me a container small enough to tolerate the discomfort and long enough to actually see results.

A Year From Now

A year from now, you’ll be a year older regardless of what you do.

The question is whether you’ll also be someone who can play an instrument, speak a new language, code, write, build things—or whether you’ll still be looking at the same list of “someday” goals, wondering where the time went.

The time is there. It’s sitting on top of your showerhead, covered in dust, waiting for you to notice it.

One hour. One skill. Start tomorrow.

Next: How to learn a new skill, despite wanting to quit

Previously: How to land job interviews despite failed applications