We live in a time of near-infinite distractions. Whether it is our phones that provide us with relevant and irrelevant notifications, the news that is continuously adding new elements of stress, and begging us to be aware of whatever is always happening at all places, or the markets. Being exposed to cryptocurrencies hasn't made this easier, I've noticed...
Unfortunately, this is not compatible with producing high-quality work which requires uninterrupted periods of deep concentration on problems that are hard to solve. That is not to say that one must delete all social media accounts, portfolio tracking apps, and avoid all news (although there’s a growing case in favor of doing so). Instead, what one may need as a bare minimum is to set aside fixed time slots throughout the day and/or week for uninterrupted work on problems/tasks that require it. This could be writing a Hive article that aims at analyzing the current state of the blockchain and then proposing well-founded solutions that may provide improvements. Or it could be working on the most important tasks that you have in your current job.
The importance of deep work
In any case, you would want to set aside the time necessary, whether that’s 45 minutes or 4 hours, to attack the problem at hand with the best that you’ve got. This may include putting away your phone on airplane mode for a while, finding or preparing a clean and ideal work environment, ensuring that possible “escape behaviors” such as opening a random web-browser tab or email notification is turned off, and otherwise setting yourself up for focused work on a defined problem.
Sounds great in theory, but do you do it?
My own difficulties incorporating and prioritizing it
I have to say that I’ve struggled to maintain a good habit of doing this. I tend to blame that my workplace may require me to join meetings at different times each week or each day and that I thus need to be available. Thus, resulting in the time available for deep work gets pushed to the end when I’m already a bit tired and restless. However, this is mostly just an excuse. I know I could block out certain time slots in my calendar for deep work long into the future and explain to my boss, project partners, and close colleagues that this is the time that I want to always must work on the work that I’ve got with the highest importance and reliance on thinking deeply.
I could decide to always block the early mornings and have afternoons available. Or to be available in the morning and set aside time in the afternoon or evening for deep work. I guess I still don’t know myself quite well enough to know for sure when I am at my best for deep work.
Taking a moment to reflect on that question now whilst writing the article, I think it sometimes depends on the perceived urgency of a task whether I feel strongly about doing something very early in the morning. Historically, I’ve been at my sharpest in the evenings. Thus, I’ve usually reserved it for learning hard new things, or for doing the most demanding tasks. The problem I’ve had with that, however, is then finding it difficult to wind down and get good quality sleep. Especially if I enter a flow state and end up working way longer than intended. Starting early could eliminate this issue. Perhaps if I got even better at demanding I specify a task that must be done in the morning the day before, even if it’s not really time critical or urgent, I can still find the needed mental clarity and determination to get it done at a time when my brain is usually not in that mood (although it always is when emotionally I know it is important).
The ideal strategy I would like to deploy
This brings me to the meat of the article, how I think we (or in this case I) can ensure that we do get decent sessions of deep work built into our days, even in a corporate environment. Of course, this may be different based on people’s professions, an author or research scientist may have a whole year where they can organize their schedule as they like. Others may have to work within constraints.
- Let close colleagues know what time I prefer to be available for meetings and what times I prefer focusing on deep work. After all, one’s boss, colleagues and partners are usually best of if you’re doing the highest quality of work possible. Thus, most will be quite happy to know how they can help you provide more to the team and/or project you’re involved with. Of course, this has to be within reason.
- Set up guidelines within teams for how to communicate.
Allowing email to be a low priority internal communications method so that employees can work through it in batches rather than needing to always check and read emails in case there’s something urgent. Instead, let everyone know that there is one high priority channel (A direct message on Teams, or an SMS/call on the phone). Thus allowing one to keep notifications there on in case there is something very urgent. - Categorize tasks based on them being deep or shallow.
For instance, if I have two tasks where one is to write a few non-urgent emails and the other is to come up with a new solution to a difficult problem, I know that they require different levels of concentration and commitment. One deserves to be worked on during my scheduled “deep work session”, while the other can be done in batches for my “shallow work session”, or in whatever leftover time I have that’s not dedicated to anything.
I’ve found it useful when having a list to categorize tasks into either category. Maybe a black for deep work and green for shallow. If I then also rate tasks based on their importance and urgency (which you can easily do on a 2D graph with urgency on one axis and importance on the other), then you can quickly plan your day or week by putting the most urgent and/or important tasks into your first available deep work sessions if categorized as a task requiring deep work. Similarly, you’ll have other urgent tasks that do not require deep work to be done first in the shallow sessions.
Will be giving it a go!
Since it is Sunday, and I have a new week ahead of me, I am thus going to list all my current tasks accordingly and plan the week as described. Maybe I’ll have to write a summary of how it went at the end!
How about you? Are you conscious of the difference between tasks and work that requires deep work vs shallow work? And do you take action to organize your day and week to ensure you get some deep work sessions in? Let me know in the comments :).