Say you need to make an important presentation on Friday. You can go about this task in two ways. You can block off 4 hours on Thursday and work on the presentation in one burst, close to the deadline. Or you can block of one hour each from Monday to Thursday and work on the presentation in four sittings.
Here’s a related question – have you ever stepped away from a problem only to return to it with new insight? How does that happen? How does a break help us return to a problem with a fresh perspective?
When we return to a presentation on 4 different days, we are actually 4 different persons. How we feel on a Monday morning is quite different from how we feel on a Wednesday evening. By spreading this task across several days, we are recruiting a team of 4 slightly different people to bring their insights to the presentation, without any communication and coordination overhead.
4 heads are better than 1.
Observations 