Part II: Adopting Strategies from Deep Work
My experimental plan for creating better work, more efficiently.
You may have read Deep Work or stumbled across my summary of it. I found the book incredibly useful and have decided to adopt some of the strategies to help me be more focused, produce better work and increase effectiveness.
Below is a breakdown of what strategies I’ll be experimenting with and the parameters I’m setting up for myself.
Quick definition: I’ll refer to the term “focus block” a lot — this is the block of time I’m assigning for no internet usage. I will use some of this time for a project I want to work deeply on, while other times it’s just to help wean my brain from distractions.
First 3 methods I’m trying:
- Schedule every minute of the day
- Implement focus and distraction blocks, where some focus blocks are used for deep work
- Complete daily and weekly check-ins
In order to get the most out of this experiment, I selected a few specific goals that I will concentrate on over the next month and picked three methods that integrated well with one another. In my first month, I want to have more control over how I spend my time without making things too complicated that I can’t stick to a plan. I will leave time to be distracted, but it will be intentional. I’m also weaving the 4 disciplines for deep work into this experiment.
Experiment Setup: 4 disciplines of deep work
Focus on the wildly important
In addition to being more effective at work, I have two main goals that I’m working towards that would be better accomplished with deep work:
- Publish more writing
- Develop a customer development workshop
Act on the lead measures + keep a compelling scoreboard
The lag measures of success for my goals would be number of articles published and workshop creation. Instead, I’ll focus on the number of deep work hours spent working towards these two goals or being more effective at work. My goal is to have at least 5 hours of focused work time each week.
Create a cadence of accountability
This is where the daily and weekly check-ins come in — I’ll use these to see how I’m progressing. At the end of each day and beginning of each week, I’ll spend some time reviewing and planning a set of pre-determined measures.
Schedule every minute
By scheduling every minute of the day, assigning distraction blocks and focus blocks and making time for daily and weekly check-in’s, I’ve covered each method + discipline that I want to try. The process for this will be to handwrite the schedule for each day in 30 minute blocks. Handwriting is important because I’ve found when I schedule my day on a digital calendar, it’s easier to move time blocks around and not stick to the plan.
Deep Work Routine
One of the methods Newport argues is having a “routine” for deep work and setting up parameters. I will try to maintain consistency for deep work blocks. Nothing complicated — follow just 5 rules, outlined below:
- Decide exactly what I’ll be working on — if it’s writing, try and set a words written goal, if it’s a work project, decide what I want to finish (e.g. complete report draft and to send to team for feedback)
- Use over-the-ear headphones for the deep work block
- Have a full bottle of water / cup of coffee depending on the time of day
- No deep work blocks for more than one hour at a time
- Mute all notifications and close all extraneous browsers (email, messages, Slack, etc.)
JOIN ME! ❤ If you’re feeling like you need to be more focused, I highly encourage you to try some of the methods out — you can even just pick one and take it from there. Please share what you’re trying and how it’s going!
Follow me below to see how the first 10 days go!
