Ankur Warikoo says he cut work hours from 70 to 20 and improved his output. Here are his 3 productivity secrets

At a time when hustle culture often celebrates long workweeks and packed schedules, productivity expert and entrepreneur Ankur Warikoo is making a different argument. According to him, working fewer hours does not necessarily mean getting less done. In fact, he says the opposite happened in his own life. Warikoo recently shared how he reduced his workload from 70 hours a week to just 20 while improving the quality of his output, and he credits the transformation to three simple but powerful productivity systems.

Taking to social media, Warikoo revealed that he went from working “70 hours/week to 20 hours” and found that “the quality of my work improved.” He then outlined the three practices that helped him make the shift.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The first change Warikoo made was adopting the Eisenhower Matrix, a well-known productivity framework designed to separate urgent tasks from important ones. He explained that deadline-driven work often pushes people into a constant reactionary mode. While urgent tasks receive immediate attention, strategic work, which is often the most important, tends to get pushed aside.


According to Warikoo, the Eisenhower Matrix helped him overcome that problem by organising tasks into four categories:

- Urgent and important: Do it immediately
- Important but not urgent: Schedule it
- Urgent but not important: Delegate it
- Neither urgent nor important: Delete it

By sorting work into these buckets, he was able to spend more time on meaningful activities rather than constantly reacting to deadlines and interruptions.

Tracking energy instead of time

The second productivity lesson came from an experiment that started when Warikoo was only 14 years old. He shared that while preparing for engineering entrance examinations, he realised he was struggling with time management. To understand where his time was going, he began recording every hour of his day.

What started as a simple exercise eventually became a long-term habit. Warikoo said he tracked his hours for 13 years. The data helped him identify important patterns. He learned when his creative energy peaked, when he was most focused, and when his energy naturally declined.

Instead of simply scheduling work according to available time, he began aligning tasks with his energy levels. Activities requiring creativity, deep thinking, or high concentration were placed during his peak performance hours. He explained that if he knew he had an important evening commitment, such as a live call, he would consciously protect his energy throughout the day. That might mean taking an afternoon nap, avoiding draining tasks, and preserving his focus so he could perform at his best later. For Warikoo, managing energy proved to be far more valuable than managing time alone.

Time blocking reduced the cost of constant switching

The third strategy involved time blocking. Warikoo realised that constantly switching between different types of work was hurting his productivity. Every time he moved from one task to another, it required mental adjustment, making it harder to maintain focus.

To solve this, he began reserving uninterrupted blocks of two to three hours for specific types of work. Instead of jumping between responsibilities throughout the day, he structured his schedule in larger chunks. For example, one part of Monday could be dedicated to a particular project, while another block would be reserved for a different area of work. Some days would be focused entirely on a single priority.

Over time, he expanded this approach even further. Rather than treating each day as a separate unit, he started thinking about productivity at the weekly level. This allowed him to distribute responsibilities across several days instead of trying to complete everything within a 24-hour window. The result was less stress, fewer distractions, and greater focus on the task at hand.

A bonus lesson

Alongside the three core productivity methods, Warikoo also shared a principle that guides much of his work and personal life. Describing himself as a “student of processes,” he said he looks for ways to convert recurring responsibilities into repeatable systems. Whenever he identifies something that needs to be done regularly, he tries to transform it into a recurring calendar task. According to him, this approach reduces decision fatigue and helps build consistency over time.