Career strategist and leadership expert Ginny Clarke is challenging the traditional 8-hour workday, advocating for a focus on “deep work”.
Deep Work is a concept popularized by computer science professor Cal Newport in his 2016 book Deep Work.
In a recent Instagram post, Clarke (@ginny_clarke) explained that deep work involves “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration” that push cognitive abilities to their peak.
This method stands in stark contrast to the constant switching between emails, meetings, and tasks that often dominates the modern workday.
According to Clarke, the key isn’t working fewer hours, but maximizing the hours that matter most. She recommends scheduling cognitively demanding work during peak mental energy periods — often mornings for many people — while batching similar tasks together and protecting focus time from interruptions. Less demanding or routine work can be reserved for natural dips in energy.
“The alternative to wasting 8 hours trying to be productive,” Clarke wrote, “is 4–6 hours of something completely different” — intense, uninterrupted focus that produces higher-quality results in less time.
Research suggests that four to six hours of sustained deep work may deliver greater value than a full day of fragmented attention.
For professionals aiming to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality, Clarke says the answer is clear: protect your focus, work deeply, and let go of the myth that more hours automatically mean more output.
