When You Don’t Have Time for Deep Work
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Before we dive in, I want to share a free resource I’ve created to support your productivity this month—a set of March Pomodoro Tracking Sheets that you can color in or digitally check off as you go. I’ll share more details about it in this newsletter, but if you already know you’d like a copy emailed to you, feel free to initiate that now!
We’re nearing the calendar end of Winter here in the Northern Hemisphere—though I imagine the chilly weather and snow and slush will persist for at least another month or two. It’s almost Spring Break for my grad student and professor clients, which means many of my clients are working on big, important research and writing projects with upcoming deadlines. But that doesn’t mean that the other tasks in their lives have disappeared to give them space.
Several of them are experiencing a challenge you might relate to as well: You want time to do deep work, but your schedule and running to-do list just won’t allow it.
Today I want to talk about three experiences folks have when it comes to longer work sessions (deep work, flow, and hyperfocus) and explore ways we might borrow from these approaches to find success during shorter work sessions.
Deep Work
Cal Newport wrote a book called Deep Work, an experience he defines as a distraction-free work session where we can do cognitively challenging work for an extended period of time. According to Newport, “deep” work is hard to replicate and requires intense focus, whereas “shallow” work is for tasks that are easy to knock out quickly, like answering email or organizing our files.
I can achieve deep work when my setup is perfect: my dog is napping, there aren’t any deadlines on the horizon, and I’ve got a complex project to plan out (one of my favorite tasks).
The whole point of today’s newsletter is what to do when you can’t do deep work, but I want to acknowledge that being good at deep work isn’t a marker of individual success. Newport and many other productivity scholars encourage us to delegate shallow work tasks to others so we can focus our attention on deep work, but this isn’t accessible for everyone in the same ways. I invite you to check out my newsletter “The complexity of ‘work smarter, not harder’” to hear about my critique of “best practices” like delegating shallow work to others.
Flow State
When I described deep work, you might have thought about getting into a state of flow—which is when we feel like time stops moving and we’re really in the zone with whatever we’re doing or creating. Deep work and flow are not exactly the same thing, but you could experience flow when you’re doing deep work. According to positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (the leading expert on the topic), flow occurs “when your challenges are higher than average and your skills are higher than average,” resulting in a pleasurable experience where we feel as if “existence temporarily is suspended.” A good example of this challenge + satisfaction equation is practicing a musical instrument.
I tend to experience a state of flow most when I’m writing a newsletter, sketching out a plan for a project, or reading novels. When I’m in a flow state, it’s easy to stay focused and I feel more able to problem-solve when I run into something that requires reflection or brainstorming.
Hyperfocus
Hyperfocus is a third way that folks experience increased focus and productivity. Hyperfocus is “a state of intense and prolonged concentration” often experienced by people with ADHD. Hyperfocus is similar to being in a state of flow because you feel immersed in a task, but hyperfocus may cause you to tune out everything around you to the point where you can’t hear people talking to you. Hyperfocus can be an awesome way to chip away at complex projects, do a lot of research, and keep up motivation for an extended period of time. However, when someone is experiencing hyperfocus, they may be so into what they’re doing that they struggle to take breaks or transition to another task.
I don’t have ADHD and I don’t experience hyperfocus, but there are lots of examples of what hyperfocus looks and feels like online, like in this Reddit thread on r/ADHD.
Get More Out of Shorter Work Sessions
Deep work, flow, and hyperfocus can be helpful when we have extended periods of time to work without distraction. If you’re able to schedule a longer time block, I would encourage you to focus on a complex or creative project during that time. For example, I like to schedule time on Mondays and Tuesdays to work on my writing because I meet with my coaching clients on Wednesday through Friday.
While I give myself permission not to do a ton of work outside of coaching in the latter part of the work week, I still take advantage of short work sessions to chip away at my task list. I’ll share some tools here that might help you find heightened focus and make meaningful progress if you’re also working with shorter productivity sessions. As always, please take what works, hack it to fit your life, and leave the rest.
Make Your Tasks Tiny
Break down your tasks into smaller pieces. If I take my task to “write a newsletter” and break it down into tasks I could chip away at in a short time, my list might include things like: Brainstorm a title, search for websites or articles to read later, read one article and pull a quote or two to cite, type an outline, write topic sentences, etc.
Choose an Actionable Task
Once you have a list of smaller tasks to choose from, you could select a task that aligns with the time you have, your energy, and your ability to focus during that work session. If you’re feeling distracted, you might do a better job of proofreading than brainstorming, and if you have 25 minutes, you might choose to draft just one paragraph. My Goldilocks Approach to Productivity is a great way to choose a right-sized task for a work session.
Try the Pulse and Pause Approach
Lots of folks use the Pulse and Pause Approach to increase focus in short work sessions. This approach means that you work for a predetermined amount of time (pulse) and then break for a predetermined amount of time (pause). You then repeat sets of the work/break system. The Pomodoro Method is a popular version of the Pulse and Pause approach where you alternate between 25 minutes working on a task and a 5-minute break (another popular Pulse and Pause method is 52 minutes of working and then a 17-minute break).
Free March Pomodoro Tracking Sheets
Spring officially begins on March 20th here in the Northern Hemisphere and I’m beyond ready for warmth and flowers. On theme with approaching productivity sessions through intentional, shorter focused sessions, I created fun new Pomodoro tracker sheets for us! There is a tracking sheet for 50 Pomodoros in one month and one for 100 Pomodoros in one month, both in versions you can print and color in and ones you can check off digitally. Plus, if you’re new to my Pomodoro trackers, this resource gives you access to my free workbook with more guidance and details called “100 Pomodoros in One Month.” Feel free to share with your friends and your writing groups!
Click here to get a free copy of the March Pomodoros tracker sheets!
Curiosities
I used to share Curiosities in my newsletters and I miss doing it, so I want to share a few things below that have been intriguing me.
I loved the documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon, which was directed by Jazmin Jones and her co-collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross. Jones and Ross call themselves “DIY detectives” and I was touched by the ways their documentary was informed by their values of care and community. This is a fun interview with them.
Kris has been reading The Priory of the Orange Tree out loud to me at night and it’s a lovely break from screens and a chance to laugh together at how hard it is to pronounce the fantasy names. It reminds me of when we first started dating, when I lived in a 1-bedroom apartment and I would lounge in bed with the cats while Kris would sit on a kitchen chair in my bedroom and we’d gab for hours.
I’ve been going to a local grocery store on the weekends and getting sliced charcuterie meat and fresh stuffed grape leaves. I feel so fancy even though everything together is like 10 bucks. I’ve been getting the same feeling when I order 12-packs of sparkling water from Dram—the Lavender & Lemon Balm is my fave.
In line with today’s newsletter about making meaningful progress in short blocks of time, I want to shout out Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Avery Press reached out and asked me to share the book with my audience if I liked it—and I do like it! I’ll be interviewing Anne-Laure about the book later this year for my podcast Honing In.
Thanks for being here with me! If you have any questions, feel free to email me or to write your question as a comment on the Buttondown web version of this newsletter. To leave a comment on the web version, scroll to the bottom of the email and click “Leave a comment on the web” or if you’re reading this newsletter in the archive, scroll to the bottom of the webpage to find the comment box.
Take good care,
Dr. Kate
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