This blog post has been sitting in my head for about a year. Today I decided to set myself a timer and get it written. A first draft, anyway. Fair warning: about a 15 minute read!
In a previous job, a coworker told me that I seemed to work best in “Cheetah Mode”. I dutifully worked my 40 required hours but also took on additional projects and responsibilities. Many of these were wild spur-of-the-moment ideas that I acted on right away. This made for a very productive and creative time in my work life, but it eventually lead to burnout. I wondered why I couldn’t just tone it down. Contrast this with my teammates who worked a slow and steady pace without ever seemingly getting bored or wanting to zoom ahead.
The answer is what I now call Cheetah Mode, and is what I believe is the best working option for my brain. And maybe yours, too.
What is Cheetah Mode?
Cheetah Mode is a balance of sprints and recovery. It means you spend a lot of time resting so that when it’s time to go, you go full speed.
It means that you have enough fuel in the tank to floor it, to get the job done. You aren’t running on fumes, either physically or creatively.
This is what other people might call hyperfocus, but hyperfocus on its own isn’t enough. Cheetah means short bursts of great effort and achievement with long periods of rest in between. And by rest I don’t mean paralyzing anxiety about how you need to pull off a similar trick in the future. I mean actual recovery time.
I know my coworker isn’t the first person to come up with this idea, and I’m not the first person to write about it. I’ve since heard it described in other ways, like being a lion vs an elephant, or being a hunter instead of a farmer.
Of course, this isn’t the “normal” way of working, especially in salaried roles that expect 40 hours a week no matter what. If you work extra the week prior, too bad, you still owe your employer 40 hours a week this week. We’ll talk about alternatives later in this post.
Why Cheetah Mode?
If you can wrangle your schedule and actually get recovery in between sprints, being able to work in Cheetah Mode has huge advantages.
- More output: a well-rested mind has better function and creativity, and deep work can create outsized outcomes.
- Better ideas and new skills: you might have breakthroughs in ideas and processes. Putting limits on how much time you spend on a given activity can force your brain to come up with new methods of addressing the problem. This might mean systemizing something, delegating or deleting it, or dealing with the actual root cause instead of just putting a time-consuming band-aid on the problem.
- More enjoyable work: deep, intense bouts of work can get you into a flow state, where you are ever-so-slightly above your capacity and thus are stretched by the challenge.
- More downtime means more flexibility to respond to one-off opportunities. Being “a little underemployed” can give you an advantage.
These breakthroughs and higher/greater quality of work are unlikely to come to you via your current brute force approach.
Brute force is a tool many of us have learned, especially in school. As a student, you’re given homework and you either get it done or you don’t. Your main (non-cheating) method of getting it done is to just keep working harder, because you’re young and your main lever is time. One piece of feedback I’ve commonly given new hires and interns is that brute force no longer works in a situation where you are billing out hours, and customers are only willing to pay for so many. Work either needs to get done faster, by someone else, at a smaller scope, or not at all. All-out, short sprints can force these decisions to be made and solutions to be implemented, instead of just compensating with your time and remaining bits of happiness.
And I probably don’t need to convince you about the benefits of recovery in general. Stress from work (and other sources) causes huge amounts of medical issues. It makes us grind our teeth at night, have sore, tight muscles, makes us irritable around our partners, etc. Life is less fun, and honestly, what are we working for? Working should support living, and not the other way around.
But when it really comes down to it, the answer to “why not just work like a normal person?” is “because I can’t”. Some folks just aren’t well-suited to slow, methodical work. They work in all-out sprints, but they live and work in a society that is built around factory-style, regular clock-in-clock-out work.
This is especially true for knowledge workers, whose work demands creative problem solving at the same schedule as someone assembling parts in a factory. Cal Newport’s research has shown that we might not have that many hours of focused, deep work available anyway. For those of us with an artistic or creative problem-solving component to our work, you can’t draw on your source of creativity forever without replenishing it. As the saying goes, you can’t pour from a cup that’s empty. Cheetah Mode gives you time to replenish.
We all know that more hours worked has a diminishing return, yet we all keep trying to do it anyway. We end up in a “the drudgery will continue until morale improves” rut. You can’t work your way out with more hours. Instead you need to switch up your approach.
What Cheetah Mode Requires
Even if this sounds like how your brain works, it can be pretty difficult to pull off.
First, you need schedule flexibility of some degree. This doesn’t have to be all or nothing (we’ll get to that in a bit) but usually requires more flexibility than the default work arrangement.
Second, you need actual rest. Running one sprint after another is not Cheetah Mode, that’s running a marathon until you burn out or die (as the original marathoner did). Rest needs to be done right, and also needs to be protected.
Third, you need to be a bit ballsy. Working in short bursts of energy is not going to go over well with many employers, so you might be striking it out on your own. In either case, deviating from the norm takes courage.
#1 Finding Schedule Flexibility (AKA the “Must Be Nice” Objection)
When I explain my Cheetah Mode idea to people, sometimes I hear “wow, I wish I could work like that” followed by a defeated “but I can’t” or a bitter “must be nice that you can.”
Yes, it’s difficult to pull this off with a normal 9-5 employer who expects you to be butt-in-seat for 8 hours a day. Your boss might make some one-off exceptions for medical appointments and the like, but in general, it’s an exception, not a rule. You probably have a calendar full of too many meetings, too. Non-ideal to say the least.
But that doesn’t leave you completely without options.
- You can quit. I know, I know: not everyone can do this. But there are other job options out there, including self-employment. This is the path I took. I left my job and worked as a freelancer. The joke about self-employed people is that they work even more as a freelancer than they did for other people. This can be true, especially when you’re starting off. But it’s more likely that you’ll have some feast-famine cycles and that might actually fit your Cheetah Mode personality well, whereas it would terrify most other people who love stability.
- Get another job: you don’t have to just become a freelancer, either. You could search for another job that gives you more flexibility. Especially ones that are commissions-based, where sprints (ex: sales) can be rewarded with rest (slower/lighter periods).
- Take a sabbatical: this obviously takes some financial planning in advance but you may be able to work out a deal with your employer to take off unpaid time if they don’t offer a sabbatical themselves. You can also make your own sabbatical in between jobs.
- Reduce hours at your current job: you could do a Tim Ferris-style experiment where you try to condense work, and then convince your boss to give you more remote flexibility (as described in his book 4HWW). There have been recent stories where people negotiated a 4-day work week with a pay cut, on the contingency that if their productivity remained the same for (let’s say) 6 months, their previous pay would be reinstated and the 4-day work week schedule would continue.
- Switch up your schedule: even within your job, you probably have options. You can ask for meetings to be moved (meetings are not where Cheetah Mode work happens 90% of the time). You could try to find a different desk or room to work in, where you’re less likely to be interrupted or micromanaged.
Of course, the last option is not without potential issues. There’s multiple studies that show that people only get 2-3 “real” hours of work done a day, spread out over the entire day. You can use time boxing to get that real work done in only 2-3 hours, instead of taking all day. The difference is that one option is fun and gets you that Cheetah Mode dopamine hit, while building your focus skills. The other one is drudgery.
But, your boss will probably notice if you do 2 hours of real work in 2 hours, and slack off for the other 6. You could try to hide that you’re slacking off, or fill that time with non-Cheetah Mode activities like meetings, discussions with coworkers, etc. In my opinion, it’s no more ethical to work 2 hours of “real” work and slack off for 6 than it is to drag 2 hours of work out 4x longer than needed. You’re diluting your potential, and you’re misleading your employer. I have that Puritanical work ethic, so I would tell my managers I was done with my tasks, and get more (cue: burnout).
If you feel that hiding “slack off” time is unethical (and I agree–it is unethical), then you need to instead find a way to have control your schedule.
I did this by switching to self-employment, but as mentioned earlier, you have other options. Being self-employed lets me set an hourly rate based on deep, focused work and outcomes. I don’t work 8 hours a day, because my billable hours are only when I’m working in Cheetah Mode. My hourly rate reflects this. People aren’t paying for fluff the way they might be with a salaried employee.
This is why I put “quit your job” at the top of the list. If you start embracing how your brain works and build your focus skill, then the extra time you spend sitting around feels like a waste. You’ll start getting restless. You might start a side project and burn yourself out. Or if you ask for more work at your job out of a sense of fairness/ethics, you might burnout and lose your Cheetah Mode edge that way, too.
All of that to say: if this sounds like the way your brain works, you might need to consider a fundamental shift in how you work instead of just trying to cope with something that doesn’t suit you well.
“That Sounds Risky”
There’s obvious risk involved with each of these, especially if you quit your job without a financial plan (don’t do that). You might not get new work as a freelancer. You might take a sabbatical and the economy takes a nosedive. You might launch your project and it flops. You might have to go back to your old job. And so on.
Of course, try to plan for contingencies. But don’t let risk by itself be the only reason you stay. If you are in a job that is not doing great things for your mental health, creativity, etc and you are headed towards burnout, then consider the risk there, too. People are capable of working long hours on things they care about, and where they see progress happening. If you stay in your current job, try to make it something you care about, and make sure that you are getting proper rest outside of work.
Easier said than done, I know.
#2 Taking Actual Breaks (AKA the “That Sounds Unsustainable” Objection)
To most people, sprinting sounds unhealthy and undesirable. This is especially true when you’re sprinting for an employer instead of working on building something for yourself.
Sprinting can be unhealthy but it doesn’t have to be. Olympic sprinters do not run a marathon worth of sprints, they run one sprint.
Endless sprinting is unhealthy, if you don’t actually rest. Or if your “rest” belongs in scare quotes because it isn’t really rest at all. Instead, you’re mindlessly scrolling, or moving the goal posts on yourself (just a little bit more work…) or numbing yourself with whatever vices. TikTok, binging Netflix, embroiling yourself in weird internet drama, gaming, etc.
Instead, go outside, do sports, make art, read “non productive” books, enjoy your hobbies. Make time for fun and play! Drive to the beach or to that new coffee shop that you heard about. Hang out with your dog. Be silly, try new things, etc. All the corny stuff, yes, but also: this is the life you are trying to fund with your job. Actually live it.
Getting done with your work and then signing up for more work is not rest/recovery, either. If you complete your todo list (hooray!) and your first thought is to do just one more thing to “get ahead”… congrats. You are bad at resting. Rest and recovery does not mean letting your excess time be chewed up by people with poor planning capabilities, or who are jealous of your situation.
You need to treat your rest time as sacred and necessary, because it is. If you want to protect your ability to sprint, you need to let yourself recover. To do otherwise is like having a racecar and not doing maintenance on it between races.
What does this mean in practical terms? Timebox your work to a small amount, like 3-6 hours a day. Designate rest and recovery times (and make actual fun plans!) and don’t let your work spill into these times. For some people, this means no evening or weekend work.
By work I mean tasks with an expectation of productivity. This could be a big project for your employer, freelance work, whatever. You are free to do whatever you want outside of sprinting time, but you should be careful not to let it turn into work. For example, if you are a software developer by day, let’s say you have two, 3-hour deep focus blocks during the day. You can code at night for fun as a rest activity if you really want, provided it remains for fun and you don’t let an expectation of productivity creep in. Otherwise you’re back to square one.
#3: Deviating From the Norm (AKA the “That Sounds Lazy” Objection)
“Wow, someone who only wants to work a few hours a day? I work 40-50-60-70 hour weeks, uphill both ways, people these days just don’t want to work anymore. Blah blah blah…”
Listen, I love to lean into the Puritanical work ethic as much as the next person. But as they used to say in my engineering school classes:
Don’t tell me how long you’ve worked. Show me what you’ve gotten done.
Obviously, things that are actual must-dos need to get done whether or not you feel like it. That means things like feeding your kids. Getting the report to your boss doesn’t count unless someone will die if it doesn’t happen.
But for everything else: Working grueling 70 hour weeks with the same output of someone working a focused 20 hour week is not a flex. Doubly so if your work is uninspired, if you make unnecessary mistakes due to overwork, and are a generally unhappy person to be around.
But let’s say you are working a huge amount of hours per week. What’s going on here? A few options:
- Your brain isn’t well-suited to Cheetah Mode, and that’s fine. In this case, you are a workhorse that is given typically well-defined tasks and you complete them. Or you’re good enough at figuring things out that you can crush through tasks anyway. The tasks don’t require a whole lot of intellectual breakthroughs, just consistent effort and knowledge. You like consistency, so this works well for you. You’re happy with inputs giving you proportional, linear outputs. You aren’t working in Cheetah Mode, you’re more in Elephant Mode. You probably don’t need to keep reading this blog post.
- You are working in Cheetah Mode, but only because your timeline for sprints and recovery is much longer than average. Rather than working 5 hours a day and taking the rest of the day off, you work 5 months solid and take the next month off. If this is you, you probably don’t need to read this post as you’ve found a work/life situation that allows you to achieve this.
- You are working in Cheetah Mode consistently while working 70 hour weeks without stopping because you’re an absolute unicorn. You have built your focus and flow state to the point that it can easily support 12 hour days. I find this pretty unlikely. If you are reading a blog post in the middle of your work day, this probably isn’t you.
- Burnout in denial: you think you’re working in Cheetah Mode when in fact you have burned yourself out to the point that you’re working in Elephant Mode. In fact, your lack of recovery is such that each additional input you put in gives you logarithmic outputs: slowly tapering off as you hit your limit. You might post on the internet about grindset or whatever, but you are in fact living in a “the drudgery will continue until morale improves” mindset. Your creative ideas just aren’t quite what they used to be, and you think the answer is to just keep pushing harder. Dear reader, this post is for you.
To me, the goal of productivity does not mean squeezing every last ounce of available time out of a single day. It means getting the things that you need to get done well, and in a way that does not unnecessarily bleed over into other areas of life.
Resting is not waste, especially if it supercharges the times when you are working.
And if you think about it, we value outcomes more than hours worked in many cases. We only project the idea of laziness onto people when the work is subpar, or when we’re upset that we can’t have the same results with the same limited input. We almost always judge products and services based on the end result, and the marketing around it. If you can get better results in less time through Cheetah Mode, then it’s a competitive advantage for you. Figure out how to build it into your career and life.
But yes, there is a risk of social rejection when you deviate from the norm in any area of life. People might judge you, they might be jealous of you. In either case, at least a few people will let their emotional immaturity turn into weird comments about how “it must be nice”, how you could work more, how you always seem to be traveling, etc.
These people, of course, could use all the time they spend commenting to work more themselves. But I digress.
It takes some ballsiness and some self-assuredness to step away from a “sure thing”, as if there can be such a thing in life. Leaving steady work will probably feel terrifying. Lack of social support or understanding from your friends, family, etc probably won’t be fun either.
But it’s be up to you to weigh the pros and cons and act accordingly. If you don’t want to take a big jump just yet, check out the examples next. At some point it comes down to you and how you want to spend your time.
Cheetah Mode Examples
As with most things I write, this is getting to be a long blog post. Let’s wrap up with a few examples of what Cheetah Mode could look like in long-, medium-, and short-term timelines.
Cheetah Mode doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. You don’t have to start big. In fact, I’d probably recommend against it. Look for small ways to build it into your life (in the next section) and then build up your confidence and focus to take bigger and bigger leaps.
Long term: sprint/rest cycles measured in months or years
- Scott Young getting the entire MIT CS program done in one year while still having evenings and weekends free. Getting MIT done in a single year
- Steve Pavlina getting a CS degree done (in-person) in three semesters.
- Jen Dziura’s Get Bullish blog post about working more in her earlier years to have a much lower workload after having kids. She also says to quick “fucking around” by which she means avoiding anything “that is not extremely productive or extremely pleasurable.”
- FIRE (financial independence, retire early). This is like financial Cheetah Mode. Hard sprint to save money, then a long time to rest and enjoy it. It may not afford you Cheetah Mode in your actual work life, though.
Medium Term: sprint/rest cycles measured in days, weeks, or months
- Switching to freelancing so that you can work on your own schedule (whatever that may be). This could be half-days, or it could be working 6 months and taking 6 months off.
- Limiting your daily work to 3-6 hours a day and no more, no matter what.
- Negotiating a four-day work week.
- Medical or first responder jobs where you work multiple long shifts everyday for a week, then take a week off.
- David Vassallo’s Small Bets approach where you build a portfolio of “bets” (projects, services, etc), which requires schedule flexibility to act quickly upon opportunities.
Short Term: sprint/rest cycles measured in minutes, hours, or days
- Cleaning up as much of the kitchen as possible for the 30-60 seconds that your food is reheating, then enjoying the food vs doing cleanup throughout the day,
- Use occasional appointments to shorten your work day to force yourself to get things done.
- Timebox decisions to the options available. If you are indecisive about something (shopping for curtains etc), drive yourself to 1-2 stores with options and pick from the options there. No more opening up a hundred Amazon tabs and getting deep into the weeds of comparing products and reading reviews for purchases that don’t matter that much. Same with deciding on a dinner option, or anything else you don’t inherently enjoy.
Think about how you can plan in real rest, and real challenges. In any case: have some fun with it!