How the busiest people get 'deep work' done
How the busiest people get ‘deep work’ done
For busy people, finding time for uninterrupted work may feel utterly unrealistic. But there are methods we can use to optimise what limited ‘deep work’ time we have.
It’s a challenge many of us are facing: we’re busier than ever, but still need pockets of uninterrupted time to do the work that requires our deepest focus. Popular theories suggest our most worthwhile work only happens after ‘Kondo-ing’ our distractions – that jettisoning mind clutter nudges us towards a flow state, an idyllic productivity paradise where creativity thrives.
Accessing that kind of deep work zone can feel nearly impossible. If you’re busy with multiple tasks, finding a solid chunk of time for uninterrupted productivity may be utterly unrealistic. Fortunately, there are methods to optimise the limited ‘deep work’ time we have, plan for interruptions and produce meaningful work despite competing demands for our attention.
Separate tasks
For most busy people, creativity and productivity cannot exist as siloed processes taking place in dedicated, impenetrable windows.
We have this obsession with a lone artist working madly with almost divine inspiration. In your creative practice, separate your thinking and doing time, with most conceptualisation of your art completed early in the morning before your children wake up. Then, spread the execution across small pockets of time throughout the day because you know that attention and focus are precious commodities that you must ration wisely, and it’s much easier to approach work in smaller chunks and pick up the actual implementation process where you left off.
Not all parts of a task require the same sort of focus, or the sequestered state that is so idealised. By determining which bits of a task require your most productive hours, allocate them to times when you are most likely to remain uninterrupted, giving you a greater chance of success.
Warming up
Once you’ve found a precious period of time to allocate to highly-focused work, preparing for that time-slot in advance can help you find your focus more quickly.
Identify the most important task the night before. As you transition from non-work responsibilities the next morning, remind yourself of what you’ll be working on when you sit down. Taking time to warm up and set out with a clear sense of direction pays serious dividends, as opposed to hopping in and scrambling to figure everything out along the way.
Clearing our minds also helps us access deep concentration, so if stray worries or thoughts persist, do a quick ‘brain-dump’ – something as simple as scribbling in a notebook, or even sending an email to yourself about everything on your mind. “We know we can’t hold a lot of things in our mind at once. While you’re focusing on deep work, minimise the number of things in your mind. Don’t connect to everything else.”
Plan for interruptions
Accept that interruptions will happen and thereby reduce their capacity to derail us. “Frustration, anger, stress and anxiety are the usual emotional responses to an interruption, and these negative emotions can easily spill over and make it difficult to focus following an interruption, impeding progress. By accepting [the fact that interruptions may occur] as our paradigm, we mitigate the likelihood for these negative emotions to occur.
Attention residue - an unhelpful division of cognitive resources which occurs when thoughts about a previous task persist and intrude on the next one.
Strange times
Productivity and deep work can look very different depending on the person, profession, position, portion of the task itself.
The trick is to shift our expectations of what our working day might look like, and realise that productivity and creativity aren’t one-size-fits-all processes. Because whether we putter and splutter towards success or flow with ephemeral fluidity, we can all achieve our own version of the state of optimal performance.