Courtesy of Vip Sitaraman
- Vip Sitaraman is a consultant and entrepreneur who uses several tools to track his productivity.
- He said the "scary hour" productivity hack helps him complete his most daunting task each day.
- He's able to block out Slack, emails, meetings, and analysis paralysis to focus and get work done.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vip Sitaraman, a 25-year-old digital consultant and business owner from Phoenix, Arizona, about his experience with the productivity hack "scary hour." It's been edited for length and clarity.
As an entrepreneur and consultant, I'm an obsessive believer in productivity-optimization. Unless I hold myself accountable about how I use my time, high-level goals can easily slip by for months without progress.
I consult a range of clients from high-growth startups to Fortune 500 companies, and for nearly five years I've time-tracked every minute I've worked. I've also used various tools and strategies to monitor and improve my productivity. My best productivity hack is popularly referred to as the "scary hour" — one hour where you tackle the most daunting but impactful task on your plate.
A 'scary hour' is essential for me
This strategy helps me get the most out of my peak productive-time and keep up with my most important goals. The idea is to schedule an hour every day focused on a single priority-task chosen the night before. I've found it most effective to schedule my scary hour in the mornings rather than nights, despite being a self-proclaimed night owl.
I kick off my scary hour within 90 minutes of starting work — that's usually around 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Before adapting this approach, I felt my highly productive sweet spots were within an hour of starting work and around four hours after ending my workday — after 9 p.m. However, the night-blocks were usually only useful for mindless tedium rather than truly groundbreaking, brain-wracking work.
It's always best to start your scary hour with a clear, pre-defined objective
Choosing the scary-hour task usually takes me less than five minutes because I use the popular OKR methodology for monthly and quarterly goal planning. I always choose a task that directly impacts my most important key result for the month. But defining your top priority can be tricky, which is why I prefer to call it "scary hour" rather than "golden hour" as some people do.
It's usually easier to identify the most intimidating task on your plate than trying to prioritize them all. I've observed that the most intimidating task is also generally the most important one. Alternatively, I've found that an ICE Matrix is helpful in narrowing down two or three important tasks to the most critical one.
The scary hour should be time-blocked every day
To get the most out of it, carve out 100% of focus for the singular task. No meetings, no email, and no admin work should conflict with it. I've found that most unproductivity comes from one of two sources: communication overload (such as Slack, email, and meetings) or analysis paralysis (overthinking a problem). By blocking both of these out, I'm able to preserve focus for deep work.
An important adage I apply to the scary hour is "never skip twice." Unexpected surprises or emergencies may inevitably derail your scary-hour plans on a particular day, but it's important to never let the habit slip for more than one subsequent day.
I pair other productivity tools and tricks with the scary hour
In addition to OKRs and ICE Matrices, I use Toggl Track to track my time, along with a custom CRM tool built on Google Sheets. The CRM tool links with the Toggl API to track projects and hourly rates. This helps improve my scary-hour decision making by identifying time-sucks and low ROI activities.
Another helpful tool I found recently is LeechBlock NG. It's a free robust browser extension to block websites, and it easily creates rule sets — like hourly time limits for a specific set of websites — to govern your browsing. One of my "block sets" in LeechBlock ensures that I can't browse email, social media, my investment portfolio, or other distractions during scary hour. RescueTime is another free browser extension that can help identify and block distracting websites.
Staying honest with your scary hour requires keeping track of it. I use a Notion Habit Tracker to log what I completed during scary hour each day, which helps me stay accountable to my scary hour tasks. For those who don't use Notion, a simple spreadsheet can serve the same purpose.
Three quick steps to get started with a scary hour
- Choose and schedule a one-hour time block every day in your calendar for scary hour.
- Set a daily reminder to choose your scary-hour task the night before.
- Block all distractions — such as email and meetings — from this hour.