Focused work is the best kind of work there is to exist. It’s what allows you to get into a state of “flow,” where outside factors can’t distract you. Not doing any work is better than doing half hearted work. You make much more mistakes doing the latter than the former. It’s just not good.
Whenever I’m writing a blog post, I don’t have TV going on in the background. I don’t have a Youtube video that’s running in the background nor am I listening to music. Why is that? Quietness helps me focus. It helps my ideas flow better and I make better points in my sentences. Noise distracts me.
I leave my phone out in another room so that I don’t have any distractions with texts and/or calls. Or more likely, Twitter notifications (you can follow me: here). That doesn’t mean that I continuously focus on writing my blog post throughout the hours. I have to take breaks. Otherwise, I don’t have the mental capacity to finish.
However, I allocate and set a set amount of time to focus on my work. I work in 25 – 30 minute intervals. It’s what I found gives me the most amount of energy and mental clarity in order to focus. Then I take a 10 minute break afterwards to recharge. Then I go back at it again in 25 – 30 minute intervals.
It boosts my productivity to heights I haven’t seen before and helps me employ focused work. The more frequent breaks we have, the better we manage our stress and emotions. It’s the classic idea of taking a few steps back in order to run forward.
It lets you do deep work without anything outside distractions standing between you and your goals.
What is Focused Work?
Focused work is when you pay attention and concentrate on the work that you need to finish. It isn’t checking social media here and there. It’s not sending a text message when you’re in the middle of finishing work. It’s when you pay attention to the task and hand and focus your energy on completing it.
It is much more efficient than trying to multitask. Multitasking is the enemy. Focus on one thing at a time because the human brain honestly does not have the capacity in order to multitask. When you’re at work, how many times were you in a groove until your coworkers swung by to ask a “quick question”?
Then when you tried to get back to work, you literally couldn’t. At the very least, it took you multiple tries and/or precious time to get back to normal. It happens. I know because I’ve been there so many times. With remote work, just when you’re in a groove, someone or your boss calls you to ask a question.
Then that disrupts your concentration and therefore you can’t reach your goal as quickly as you know you could’ve. The modern workplace disrupts and prevents people from doing focused work. However, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. These days, I ignore phone calls from others when I’m not ready to take them.
Then when it’s convenient to me, that’s when I call them back and answer their question then. However, I answer their questions based on my preference and convenience, not theirs. They’re the ones who came to me, anyway. When others came to you, make them move their schedule to accommodate you, not the other way around.
It makes a subtle but significant difference to your work life. It’s made wonders for mine.
How to Practice Focused Work
One way to practice focused work is to focus on giving that social share button a very good SMACK! Deep work and concentrated work is something that takes time to learn about and to implement. Therefore, we can give your friends the productivity hack that they deserve and we can all move forward together.
It takes me a very long time to create articles like this for you, so if anything, please share the article for me.
So with that said, let’s get into the techniques I use to do focused and deep work!
1) Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro technique, in simple terms, is when you work in intervals, traditionally 25 minutes. Then you take a 5 – 15 minute break before going back at it again. I started using this technique this year when I write blog posts and it’s benefited me tremendously. I used to spend approximately 2 – 3 hours writing a quality blog post.
Now I spend 1 – 2 hours finishing a blog post to quality status. I didn’t get smarter, all I did was allocate my time differently to fit different needs. This is one example of where it pays to work smarter and not harder. I can’t imagine how much more productive I could be if I utilize this to other aspects of my life.
It could be doing chores and other mundane tasks. Not only do I get to practice focused work using this technique, I have lower stress levels. Why is that? I take frequent breaks throughout working. I’m wondering if I should use this to my job as well to help lower my stress levels and get more things done in a shorter timeframe.
Experimentation time, maybe?
2) Disable Notifications
My computer is a Mac. I disable any notifications from it, especially when it comes to texts. One of my favorite things about using my Mac is that I can text from my computer. However, the downside is that I get frequent notifications on my computer which causes me to shift attention and focus to the top right corner.
I disable those notifications so that I don’t get any “ding” sounds on my computer when I’m cranking out a blog post. I also leave my phone in another room so that it doesn’t take my focus and attention from the important thing that I’m doing at the moment. That’s real focused work.
No outside distractions to take my “flow” state away from me. It’s harder to *rebuild* momentum than it is to keep the momentum going in the first place. Phones and computers are wonderful inventions that became a necessity in everyday people’s lives. However, it has a chance of letting it deter your progress if you let it.
Don’t let it.
3) Get in the Right Environment for Focused Work
Where you surround yourself in matters more than who you are as a person. In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that your environment matters more to your success than who you are as a person. Which makes sense. In his book, Malcolm highlighted a jury case that allowed murder in retaliation for insulting someone’s pride.
The jury said “what kind of man are you if you just let someone say those things to you”? These days, the logic doesn’t apply. Your environment matters more in your success much more than you think. It matters when you’re trying to do focused work, as well. Whether you like it or not, quiet and depressing work environment WORKS.
When I need to get work done, I don’t go to the carnival and put myself in an exciting and fun environment. I go to the library or go to a quiet part of my apartment that I can do focused work in. It doesn’t sound appealing but you can’t argue with results. Get into the right environment because it subtly influences you more than you know.
4) Be Strict About It
When you want to do focused work, you can’t half heartedly say “I’m going to do it”. You have to devote, commit, and most importantly, follow through with your promise. Strict isn’t good at giving you happiness but it’s good at giving you results and giving you goals. There are “tiger moms” out there who make their children miserable.
In exchange for misery, those children usually have better academic success than their peers. Yes, some of those achievements are for naught if the children aren’t happy and don’t enjoy the work. However, you can’t argue against results. And on top of it, if you are happily strict with yourself, then that unhappiness is gone.
Why is that? It was your own choice to begin with. When you choose to want to be strict with yourself, then you took the unhappiness out of the equation. If you want results, then there’s nothing wrong with being strict with working. You’ll be surprised at how much more results you can generate if you just put your mind into it.
5) Physically Separate from Your Phone
It’s not enough to mentally separate from your phone. You have to physically separate your phone away from you when working. The easier we make something accessible, the more we are likely to use it. It doesn’t matter if we put our mind to separate from your phone if it is physically available to you at arm’s length.
That’s when you can do focused work. It’s similar to work from home culture that is pervasive today. Yes, we are supposed to mentally clock out from work between 5 – 7pm. However, is that really the case when our work laptop is right in front of us? I don’t think so.
The physical separation isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity if you want to increase your productivity and do deep work. It’s unbelievable just how much this trick works. If we have a bottle of water in front of us, that makes it more likely that we will drink it than if we don’t see it just right in front of us. Make it harder for distractions to reach you.
6) Take Care of Your Physiology First
You NEED to take care of your physiology before you even think about doing focused work. You can’t concentrate on the task at hand if you’re thirsty. Or if you’re hungry. Or if you haven’t gone to the restroom yet. Whatever your physiological needs are, they need to be taken care of first before you do any kind of work.
For me, my physiological needs are my probiotics. I have digestive health problems and I need to take in probiotics every day otherwise I get moody more often than I would like. Then I need to feel refreshed by brushing my teeth, going to the restroom, and making sure that I’m not overly hungry.
Once I take care of that, then there’s no needs for me to meet before I get to tackle the rest of my work. This is the number one need you need to take care of before you move up the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid. You can’t even think about moving forward if your basic needs aren’t met. No exceptions.
7) Plan Before You Start
If you think you’re going to figure out what to do and add to the to-do list as time goes, you’re wrong. Whenever I want to do focused work, I write a detailed “to-do” list the night before. It’s one of my good habits that I love do employ. For example, from 9:00 – 10:00am, I write “get up, shower, and brush teeth”.
Then from 10:00am – 11:00am I write to clean my floors and clean up. It only takes me 20 minutes or so but I overestimate to keep it conservative and avoid getting disappointed. If you want to do deep work, plan ahead before you start. That way, you can truly only focus on the task that you set out to do.
Instead of focusing on the next thing that you have to accomplish. The less decisions you make during your intense work time, the better it is. It takes a lot of brain power to make just one decision. That’s valuable brain power you can use towards something that’s more productive. It makes a huge difference.
8) Don’t Talk about Doing Focused Work, Just Do It
There’s a Ted Talk that says that the more you talk about doing your goals, the less likely it is that you’re actually going to achieve it. That’s absolutely true. When’s the last time that you told someone your goals and you already felt like you achieved it? It gives you the dopamine just by talking about it.
More dopamine if they actually seem impressed with your goal. By talking about doing something, the less likely it is you’re actually going to do it and practice focused work. It’s the same reason why the people who *threaten* to do something are less likely to *actually* do something to you.
When you don’t talk about others what you’re going to do and actually internalize your actions, you’re more likely to follow through. The follow through is what people miss about getting to the final destination. You can prepare for the race all you want but if you don’t enter the race in the first place, it doesn’t matter at all.
Actually go out and practice focused and deep work. You can think about it and it’s even wiser to not talk about it. Just do it.
9) Other People WILL Distract Your Line of Thinking
Because by definition, people have emotions. And because emotions exist, just the mere presence of others will make you make choices that you wouldn’t have otherwise. When you study or do work with other people in your presence, the other people’s presence will always be in the back of your mind.
You can’t control it either. Our brain is programmed to feel or think something when there are other people in our presence. Don’t let it and try to work alone. Team work is great but only after people already put in the time to put in prep work beforehand. Otherwise, other people have the potential to take away valuable brain power.
It’s not their fault, either. It’s no one’s fault. Therefore, take steps to do things that are in your best interest. Focused work can’t work if there is other things that are clouding your mental clarity. It’s one of the factors that can boost your productivity levels up. Fully play when it’s time to play and fully work when it’s time to work.
Focused Work is the Best Work Ever
Deep and focused work is the best thing ever. It’s like you don’t just have 24 hours to play with. You have more time to play with during the day because you got more work done while putting in less time. Think about how great that sounds and how great it is that it actually applies to the real world.
Imagine if you can accomplish in one year what you can accomplish in two years. Elon Musk says working 80 hours a week will make you accomplish in one year what you can accomplish in two. That’s not right. We lose efficiency over time. When we work 80 hours, we’ll probably accomplish in one year what we would’ve accomplished in 1.5 years.
There’s a happy medium between 40 and 80 hours per week that’ll cause you to have 2 years worth of productivity. What exactly is the number of hours will be different for everyone. However, the important point is that there IS a number out there that allows you to have the level of productivity.
Focused work allows you to have that kind of productivity. Why do you think Ford modernized the two day weekend? Because he finally figured out that humans don’t have the capacity to work 24/7. They need to have breaks otherwise they will lose efficiency. Taking one step back to move two steps forward exists in the real world.
It all starts with knowing the right steps in order to boost your productivity. Not just by increasing the input but by increasing the efficiency of input/output ratio. Doing deep work improves that efficiency metric and leave you time to do other things you would rather do with your valuable time.
