My thesis for working from home, and why I’ve gone remote before it was cool to do so, is that focus time is hard to come by in the office. When you’re a desk away, the barrier for someone to distract you to ‘pick your brain’ is inexistent. When you’re visible, you’re accessible. And when you’re accessible, people will demand your attention when they feel like it. Today’s office culture is not a great environment for creatives. You can’t do great work when someone taps you on the shoulder every 20 minutes.
Part of why I loved living in Bali was the focus time I would get. The timezone difference ensured that throughout most of my work day people were sleeping, allowing me to concentrate, reach a state of flow, and design. I’ve done some of my best work living there.
No distractions on my Bali house rooftop.
But since returning to Europe in 2023, consecutive hours spent in a state of flow have been few and far between. Work has been scattered. I’m often a headless chicken floating between answering messages, catching up to 10 Slack threads I’ve been tagged in, meetings, alignment catch-ups, planning, and design work. I mean no disrespect to chicken when I say this, but unless what you’re doing all day is laying eggs, that’s a shit state to be in, not conducive to creative work. It’s not a state you want to be in often. If anything, I’ve realised I don’t really want to be in that state any more than I want to stick a needle in my eye.
But something didn’t click. I would wake up one morning and think to myself, ‘Today I’ll do some focused work.’ One hour later I’d be in the middle of that same hurricane of busy-ness—doing this, doing that, and by the end of the day I haven’t really achieved as much as I could have. Distractions scattered my attention. I was getting desperate, because I knew my best work was hiding behind that consistent focus routine. I’m not talking about two hours once a week. I’m talking about two-three hours each day. I knew I had to get back there…
Luckily, it just so happens that I think of life as a collection of experiments. What happens if I go to bed and wake up at the same time each day for a month? What happens if I don’t eat sugar for six months? What happens if I move to Bali? Does anything change? Is it worth the effort? Exploring a habit of deep work seemed like the next best experiment, and it’s what I’ve done for the past few weeks. Below is what I’ve learned.
The hard part about deep work is everyone else
After reading Cal Newport’s book, I was convinced that all I needed was to make myself less available, schedule focus time, and block out distractions. I thought to myself ‘That’s it? I’ll be a pro in no time.’
Only one small detail: it wasn’t that easy.
Saying that deep work is about creating a habit is just like saying that getting a six-pack is about going to the gym. On the face of it, it is, but how about building the habit in the first place? Then you’ve got to take into consideration how you train, how often, what you eat, what you don’t eat, and how you recover. And that’s not even touching on what you need to do to maintain that six-pack after you get it. It’s a bit more complex than just going to the gym.
As soon as I started building the habit, I’ve realised that I put the cart before the horse. Instead, I had to start by setting expectations and by managing the tech work culture and my fear of looking like I was not working. Because think about it, when you do deep, focused work, what are you not doing? You’re not answering messages. You’re not unblocking others. You’re not showing you’re acting fast. You’re not visible. And, unless you’re new to this work thing, being visible matters. It’s called ‘butts in seats.’ Even if you’re watching YouTube all day, as long as you’re visible, you’re doing something.
People are in the office. Surely, they must be working, then?
The second hurdle is keeping others hanging. Someone needs you urgently—an answer, an asset, a confirmation. In the office, they’d just tap you on the shoulder. Remotely, they have to wait. And since everyone is their own centre of the universe, they need that information right now. It’s hard to go into focus mode when there’s always a likelihood that you’re blocking someone.
These are the first two challenges before you can even think of building the habit. Told you it was a bit more complex.
What has worked for me
I’ve started by blocking out my calendar Tuesday-Friday mornings. Want to get on a call with me? Do it in the afternoon. I also change my status on Slack to set expectations: “🧑💻 Focus work until 12, will answer after.” That way no one expects an immediate reply. Once you get over yourself, you also realise that you’re not that important and that the company won’t go under because you’ve answered two hours later.
If someone asks for your time in this block, you can gently push back: “I’m working on this gnarly challenge and I’d appreciate some focus time this morning. Would it be inconvenient if we chat this afternoon instead?” I’ve never gotten pushback against that, so there you go, free advice because you’ve made it this far. Don’t say I never did anything for you.
Let me reiterate this: block out your calendar!. Don’t just expect people to know that you’re focusing. When others see available time in your calendar, they immediately assume that it’s theirs to use however they please. Don’t leave that window open. Block out your calendar to claim that time as yours.
Last note on this: if you’re en engineer on support duty or a PM just before a massive launch, maybe don’t go off the grid for half a day. Be reasonable. You know what they say, with great power over your calendar comes the great responsibility of not pissing everyone else off. Or something like that.
So now you’re visible (people know what you’re doing) and have set expectations about your reply time. We’re getting somewhere. What’s next?
Batch meetings together
You might wonder how am I able to block out the entire morning. Surely I have meetings to attend? I do, but usually they’re scheduled in the afternoon. But here’s the kicker: this hasn’t always been the case.
I’ve worked in places before where meetings were scattered throughout the day, because they are usually arranged by people on manager schedule. But as long as you have creatives in your team, someone will eventually bring up focus time. We all need it, but no one wants to rock the boat, so we get by with crumbs of half an hour here and forty minutes there of ‘focus time.’ Deep down we all know its suboptimal.
I hereby give you permission to be the one who raises the flag. “Hey team, I was thinking, it looks like we don’t get much uninterrupted focus time these days. Would it be such a bad thing if we tried to batch our meetings to leave some space for it?” It’s that simple. As long as you have other creatives around you, they’ll back you up because we all want focus time, whether we say it out loud or not.
Find your deep work crutch
Do you remember when you were first learning to walk? Of course you don’t, you were a baby. But it usually goes like this: you tried, stumbled, fell, and hurt yourself a few times. That was until you’ve discovered that your parents’ furniture serves another purpose other than hiding all the coins, keys, toys, and whatever else you liked to chew on. It also serves as a crutch. You can hang on to it while stepping. It helps you learn how to balance. Once you discover that, you’ll walk by yourself in no time.
Learning to balance is not much different than creating a habit of deep work. When you want to walk, gravity is pulling you back. When you want to focus, distractions are pulling you back. So you need a crutch to help you. For me, that’s Opal. It allows me to set schedules and block apps on my computer and phone. That includes email, socials, and news sites. But it doesn’t matter what tool you use; you don’t even need to use one. What matters is that you find a crutch that helps you balance while you learn how to walk. In other words, building a habit of deep work is easier if you put systems in place to keep distractions away.
Opal.so has been a massive help to me.
Another one of my systems is having everything I need when a deep work session starts. I got my water and eye drops. My phone is out of sight and notifications are off. I bought an old iPhone to preview designs on. There’s nothing on it to distract me. Your system will look different than mine, because it’s got to be organised around what distracts you. But you get the point. Get rid of what doesn’t serve you.
Having a system in place is no different than not having shit food at home when you want to lose weight. Why keep chocolate in the cupboard when your sole goal is to not eat chocolate? Why would you sabotage yourself? Chocolate and checking your email are not that different when it comes to our wiring. One is pushing you to intake calories to stay alive, the other is pushing you to be visible to maintain a good reputation within the tribe. Only now it’s 13,000 years later and you won’t die if your tribe realises you don’t respond instantly on Slack.
Once the habit is built, I reckon you’ll need crutches less and less. Just as you don’t need to lean on furniture to keep your balance anymore, work at this habit for long enough and it will become second nature.
The first half an hour is your enemy
The big challenge is not starting your deep work practice; it’s keeping it. I’ve noticed that I need to get over the first 30 minutes for deep work to be effective. I call this ‘the hump.’ In the beginning I’m distracted. I’ve got ants in my pants—the bad kind. I feel unsettled. I’m not seeing the benefits yet. The work is poor. My state of mind is not great.
(As I wrote this paragraph I’m realising that this is what people refer to when they say it takes roughly 20 minutes for someone to fall back into a state of flow after being distracted. Who knew that writing can help connect dots and crystallise thoughts? You should try it sometimes.)
Once you get past the hump, something is changing. You’re now more focused and less distracted. The work in front of you is all you see. Ideas start flowing. Your output gets better. You notice details you weren’t seeing twenty minutes ago. Now we’re talking; this is the state of flow that makes time warp and enhances your creativity.
What I’ve discovered is that unless you’re willing to sit through the discomfort of the first half an hour, you won’t get to the promised land of deep work. Accepting the distractions and the subpar work that’s going to be happening in the first half an hour is part of the process.
Sitting through the first half an hour is key.
In Brazilian jiu jitsu it’s a known fact that most people quit at white and blue belt—that’s when everyone else is beating you up and you see little to no benefits from training. If people get past their blue belt, they will likely make it to black. Scheduling time for deep work and blocking out distractions is your white belt. Getting past ‘the hump’ is your blue belt. Don’t quit. Once you get past, you’ll start reaping the rewards.
Check yourself
Cal Newport talks about how even the best individuals at focusing can only sustain up to 4 hours of deep work per day before their mental capacity is depleted. That’s important to remember. If you’d go to the gym and train like your favourite athlete you’ll likely get injured or, at best, throw up all over the floor and embarrass yourself when the receptionist you’ve got a crush on asks you to clean it up. No bueno.
Don’t overdo it. Start with one hour, maybe 90 minutes, 1-2 days per week, and build up from there. This also gives you time to set expectations with people around you.
If I start at 09.30, by 11.30 I’m usually fried. But in the beginning, that used to happen around 11.00. In six weeks I’ve added half an hour more. Start small, build up.
Deep work is a muscle
What became apparent to me is that the ability to focus is a skill like any other. It’s no different than learning a language, learning to lift weights, or learning how to drive. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The better you get at it, the less cognitive capacity you need to consume to perform it. When you get real good, it happens on autopilot. So trust the process, do your reps, and the deep work muscle will grow.
Why does this matter?
The benefits of deep, uninterrupted, focused work are well-known, but like with anything else in life, you don’t internalise learnings until you experience them yourself. That’s why we rarely learn from other people’s mistakes and why we need to make our own.
After a few weeks of deep work, I’ve rediscovered the main benefit: my work got better. That’s the goal. The reason you need a deep work practice is that your work will improve. As a creative person, your value doesn’t show when you sit in meetings. Sure, we all need to align and discuss, but the real value you bring as a creative person is, well… your creativity. It’s the well-thought-out designs you present or the clean code you write. It’s the creative work you do when you have uninterrupted time to think and explore. Take that away and you can now easily be replaced by a project manager two months out of school.
When you get to focus, work gets better. When work gets better, people notice. Once they notice, they’ll want to know what’s going on. And once it becomes clear that your superpower is harnessed by deep work, most people will get out of your way and let you do more of it.
This will take some time. First, you’ve got to manage the people, then build the habit, then do the work, then wait for everyone to catch up. But once that happens, you’ve discovered the promised land. You’re now at the peak when it comes to the value you add. This is why you became a creative in the first place. You can thank me later. Or, actually, thank me now by sharing this with someone else who also needs to practice deep work some more.