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Even though a lot of smart people agree that we can only get a few hours of real concentration a day, not many of them link to scientific papers that support this claim. I would agree that the claim "feels right". But in absence of a real experiment, how valuable is this insight really? Maybe useful to keep the idea in the back of one's head, but seems far from a definitive answer.

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I imagine that any feasible scientific experiment would measure only a crude approximation to reality. How can you randomize someone to a job and a way of working? Most people are not capable of concentrating for four hours a day, or have jobs that don't permit it.

At best you might recruit some undergraduates -- nearly all psychology subjects are college students -- and have them do some artificial task one way or another for a couple weeks. I find anecdotes from successful musicians, scientists, and authors more persuasive than data from an contrived scientific study.

Those are good points and I agree with everything you said. And even though anecdotes are informative, they may not be enough to make big important claims about how people should manage their mental energy.

http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...

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