I’m on LinkedIn just about every day. As a result, I’m barraged with tips for how to be more efficient and successful — that’s just the nature of the platform’s content. But one of the recommendations I see constantly is to carve out focus time.
By itself, carving out focus time is a fantastic piece of advice. We all need opportunities to do more deep work and think at a more complex level. But I wonder if perhaps the amount of time suggested for deep work — a full 90 minutes — is in conflict with reality, or at the very least, a struggle to achieve.
Circumstances can change, but difficulty getting focus time might not
When my kids were little, I was lucky to get time alone to go to the bathroom and take a shower, let alone have 90 minutes to reflect, be creative, and problem solve. There was always an immediate next task, whether it was tying a shoe, finding a lost toy, or taking out the garbage. Once, all of the evening plans I’d tried to put together got thrown out the window –my daughter, whose habit of putting everything in her mouth was incomparable, had reached up and stolen change off our dining room table, and I had no idea whether she’d swallowed any. Off to urgent care to get a cautionary X-ray we went.
Those days, which admittedly still have wonderful memories despite the chaos, have faded. Now, however, there are other reasons why blocks of time are hard to achieve — our 1-year-old Yorkie is constantly begging to play, I oversee online school for my kids, and writing is interrupted with Zoom meetings. The condo is getting older, so there are new fix-it projects. The list goes on.
Boundaries often are hard-won
Clear boundaries help me get closer to my focus goal. But sometimes, setting and enforcing good, necessary lines can take the strength of a beast. In a conference video I listened to just a week ago, the guest related how one of her clients had resolved to take a lunch at work. The client expressed the goal to her team, went into her office, and closed the door, hoping for solitude. But her coworkers still sought her out, knocking on the door and even looking through the keyhole. She didn’t get quiet until she went a step further and shut off the lights.
Even when you have the best intentions, other people can be a hurdle. That’s not to say they can’t learn or that you eventually can’t get the focus time. It’s rather to point out that elements like a workplace culture where there are no boundaries at all can mean you have to do a lot of work before you can work. And in our always-on, immediate-response world, the flow of interruptions you’ll have to combat isn’t a trickle — it’s a raging river. If you’re not prepared for pushback and the need to repeatedly self-advocate, carving out the minutes necessary for deep work might feel like a fool’s errand.
4 focus time considerations
As I — like my condo — get older, my need to focus isn’t waning. It’s getting only more intense. It’s harder for me to get my flow back after interruptions, and I’m acutely aware that I do not have as much time to meet my goals as I did in the past. Yet, 90 minutes is still elusive, and I have to be realistic about what actually happens in my home even when there are good boundaries within our circumstances.
Although I hope that you are in an environment where you don’t have to turn the lights off to get an hour and a half to yourself, there are some considerations:
❤ Grouping similar tasks — i.e., making calls, checking your email — can give you the perception that a segment of work time is longer than it really is.
❤ Good planning and organization will ensure that you aren’t wasting minutes pulling resources together in the focus time you have. Don’t go into a focus session thinking you’ll just wing it.
❤ Being mindful and realistic about how long tasks truly will take can help you make reasonable requests of others to get the time you need. It can eliminate the frustration that comes from having to end a focus session without having completed your objective.
❤ Interruptions often have patterns, but we’re not always aware of them. For a few focus sessions, make a note of what interrupts you and how often. Analyze your notes afterward to identify the patterns that are present. Then consider what steps you could take to break the patterns you’ve spotted.
Are you able to get the focus time you need? How do you use it when you get it? Leave me a note on LinkedIn.