Well, hours are not really created, but the reference to Animal Farm was too easy. Instead they are made up chunks of time we instill upon our experiences in the world.
Too often we still think of time spent on something as a slice of our day where we expect a constant level of output during the whole period.
This idea of quantity of time = output, is how the 8 hour workday came to be, which originated in the industrial revolution. Work in factories by blue collar workers and their output was determined by the amount of time spent working. This was a linear relationship between time and output.
Today’s world requires more quality than quantity. We’ve al experienced the 80/20 rule. 80% of the work was done in 20% of the time. Hence, being busy all the time (or worse: acting busy) might improve efficiency, but rarely improves effectiveness. Direction is more important than speed when you’re working towards a goal.
The key is not to spend more time on mental tasks, but ‘better’ time on the right tasks. Better time could be going for a walk, working out, reading a book, having an in depth conversation, writing something down or just doing nothing in particular. The thing with this ‘better’ time is that it feels a bit counterintuitive, but pays off handsomely.