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Stop People Stealing Your Focus Time!

Stop People Stealing Your Focus Time!

What is Focus Time, Why We Need Focus Time, The Caveats

First things first. Don’t expect to ever fully fix this issue. Your focus time will and should be on many occasions interrupted. Unfortunately no matter how important you think the task is, chances are something incredibly urgent can come up. Or someone, who you have a strong relationship with may need a favour or someone may require your help who’s in a sticky situation.

Yes you could say no and carry on, but if you care about them, you probably wouldn’t want to do this.

That’s ok.

Let’s also not forget that life is unpredictable and spontaneous events occur. Some of these like the above require your urgent attention, but some are just fun to engage in. Spontaneity is fun and makes you fun for the people who you surround yourself with.

Having said this, focus time is essential to getting the things that are important in our professional and personal lives done. There are certainly many distractions that can get in the way, that really don’t need to — and shouldn’t take precedence.

Pseudo productivity is something that can often cause this. Generally this consists of replying to slack/teams messages and emails straight away, having spur of the moment meetings, investigating issues and problems for teams that have reached out to you for help when it’s probably not in your job remit. You get the gist.

These things, whilst somewhat productive, aren’t really doing anything to help us achieve the biggest goals, and tasks that we will be judged on by the people that matter. They make us feel busy and appear busy to others, yet they deliver so little. Chances are if you left all those things above, those tasks would simply vanish. The ones that always come back to you are where you should be spending your time.

So understanding this is also important, when we consider focus time. No matter how much focus time we set aside for ourselves — if we don’t truly use it to focus on the things that matter then there is no point in it at all.

There are definitely things we can do to set aside focus time for ourselves and to protect this time as best as we can. In this blog post I will share the tips that work for me and what I have found when researching this topic — hopefully you find this useful information that can be applied to your own schedules where applicable.

1.Plan your focus time when you are least likely to be distracted.

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This first one is crucial. You need to look at your weekly calendar and routine to find the periods when you historically have the fewest meetings, Slack notifications pinging, rogue emails flying in, or general disruptions.

For many people, the early morning hours work best before the onslaught of the workday fully begins. You wake up, grab a coffee, and can capitalize on that precious free time to attack your crucial priorities undisturbed. The ding of new emails hasn’t started yet and meeting requests are still locked away in tomorrow’s schedule.

For others, late evenings are the calmest and most distraction-free time window. After 6pm or so, Slacks go quiet, meetings end for the day, and you can hunker down in email bankruptcy to concentrate solely on your high-leverage tasks.

Or perhaps your unique workday affords you a pretty interrupt-free midday period where you can squeeze in a laser-focused session.

The key is analyzing your specific calendar and communication patterns to pinpoint those golden hours when you’ll truly be uninterrupted. You may need to experiment a bit to find your personal sweet spot, but it’s well worth the effort to maximize this precious commodity of distraction-free time.

2. Use Do Not Disturb, Busy status, and block your calendar.

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Ok, so you’ve picked your prime focus window(s). Now it’s time to batten down the hatches and put some firm boundaries in place to eliminate those annoying pings and pop-ups that can so easily shatter your concentration.

First, put that communication and collaboration tool like Slack, Teams, email, etc. in straight-up Do Not Disturb mode during your planned focus blocks. Silence those desktop and mobile notifications completely.

Next, set your status in these apps to Busy or Out of Office. Give your colleagues and team a bright red flashing warning light that you are heads-down on critical work right now.

But don’t stop there – the most crucial step is physically blocking off that time as “Focused Work” on your calendar so no meetings can be booked then. Mark it as busy and repeating if it’s a regular recurring slot. That big obnoxious blocked-off section should be a blazing visual cue to steer clear.

You can always check those communication channels later during a transition period between focus sessions. But for now, you’ve eliminated all those insidious little interruption gremlins trying to steal away your focus.

3. Learn ways to politely yet firmly say no – and always keep your priorities top of mind.

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Despite all your prep work, sometimes people will still try to pull you into impromptu meetings, tap you for a “quick favor”, or add fresh tasks to your already overstuffed plate. Don’t fold!

When these disruptions rear their annoying head, you need to politely yet firmly say “No, I have to focus on X priority during this time.” Having your true priorities and goals top of mind makes it much easier to just decline anything that could jeopardize those objectives.

Phrases like “I won’t be able to join/help with that, as I’m heads-down on getting the Q3 sales analytics finished up” or “Not right now, I need to concentrate on getting V2 of the product roadmap drafted” send a clear message while still being diplomatic.

Keep some variation of those priority-referencing phrases in your back pocket for when the inevitable disruption attempts come calling. It’s not rude to protect time for your legitimate top goals – just reiterate the critical tasks requiring your undivided attention right now, and politely stand your ground.

4. A little focus time more often is much better than big chunks.

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While some may try to gloriously set aside half-day or day-long stretches to plow through massive initiatives, multiple shorter bursts of 60-90 minutes tend to be more sustainable and effective for most of us mere mortals.

Breaking your biggest priorities down into smaller, more digestible chunks makes them feel less daunting. And our brains can only effectively concentrate for so long before fatigue and declining productivity set in anyway.

Ideation, strategic thinking, and creative tasks especially benefit from these shorter, separated sessions rather than marathon slogs. Give your subconscious time to chew on ideas and inspirations by working in smaller intervals spread throughout your day or week.

Not only are these 1-hour micro focus blocks simply more mentally realistic, they’re also easier to protect on your calendar. Setting aside that 7am-8am or 3pm-4pm slot is far less likely to raise a ruckus or scheduling rebellion compared to barricading yourself away for an entire morning or afternoon.

5. Set a weekly focus time target and analyze your interruptions.

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We’ve all been there – you start the week with amazing focus time intentions only to get derailed by Tuesday. Suddenly another week is lost and your priorities made zero headway.

That’s why it’s so critical to get intentional about tracking and analyzing your focus periods to ensure you’re not just wildly swinging in the wind. Just like dieters count calories or budgeters categorize expenses, focus time requires measurement and adjustment.

Decide a reasonable number of focus hours to shoot for each week based on your role, responsibilities and specific goals – perhaps 6 hours, 10 hours, etc. Use an app like RescueTime, or just a simple journal, to log your planned focus sessions as well as any interruptions and their causes. Were they true emergencies? Self-inflicted distractions?

Then at the end of the week, look at the data. If you missed your target breadth of focus hours that week, why? Were there too many impromptu meetings? A steady flow of Slackers robbing you? Poor personal resistance against social media siren calls?

With the interruption patterns clearly identified, you can adjust accordingly for the next week. Maybe you need to tweak your focus time windows. Or get tougher about politely saying no. Perhaps you need to toggle a website blocker, or just get better about snoozing notifications. The possibilities for pivot are endless.

The bottom line is, you have to analyze and optimize these periods of quality concentration just like any other precious resource. Try setting a focus time budget…then track, measure, and course-correct accordingly.

6. Blend time blocking with strategic sequencing.

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You’ve picked your windows, blocked your calendar, said no to distractions…and someone still interrupted your laser-focused flow. Argh, the frustration!

Despite our best-laid plans, unplanned disruptions inevitably come up throughout our days. An urgent request from the boss. A firefight on a critical project. Sometimes the interruption is truly worthy, no matter how hard we try to protect our focus.

One solution I like to employ is blending two powerful strategies: time blocking and prioritized sequencing.

Time blocking is about proactively mapping out chunks of time on your calendar, specifically dedicating them to certain tasks or projects. Maybe you block 9am-11am for deep work on your biggest priorities. Or reserve 2pm-4pm a few times a week for strategic thinking and planning.

This provides a solid foundation and commitment to ensuring your most important work gets the diligent focus time it requires. Be flexible in shifting these blocks around as needed, but fundamentally strive to protect and follow through on the blocks once scheduled.

Then layer prioritized sequencing on top. Keep a prioritized checklist of your major initiatives, intense mental tasks, client projects, etc. Within those pre-blocked focus windows, work through each item sequentially. As inevitable disruptions pop up throughout the day, you can temporarily pivot to handling the disruption, then immediately transition back to the next sequential item once resolved.

By blending these two approaches – time blocking the dedicated stretches coupled with free-flowing sequencing within those stretches – you achieve the best of both worlds. You get prolonged periods of uninterrupted deep work time thanks to your calendar blocks. Yet you also build in the flexibility to seamlessly integrate those unplanned firefights and shifting priorities as they arise.

No one can perfectly predict how their day will unfurl, so resist the temptation to overcommit and micromanage your schedule down to the minute. Instead, time block those robust chunks for your biggest rocks, then sequence through your prioritized list of tasks within that protected time. Adjust seamlessly as disruptions occur, then promptly return to your sequence.

With this balanced combination of time blocking and sequencing, you’ll finally get that crucial deep work done amidst all the chaos and unpredictability. Master the blend of dedication and flexibility – and watch your ability to make headway on your biggest goals and priorities soar.

SUMMARY

Prioritizing and protecting consistent quality focus time is immensely challenging yet absolutely essential for completing your highest-leverage tasks and ultimately achieving your biggest goals and ambitions.

But with these strategies for carefully picking your windows, physically blocking those times off, pushback against disruptions, breaking it into shorter sprints, and ongoing measurement, you’ll be amazed at how much more headway you can make on your most important priorities.

No more will entire weeks careen by without progress. No more will you find yourself derailed and distracted at every turn. With focused intention and strategic protection, you can finally start chipping away at that looming backlog of projects, initiatives, and ambitions that have been perpetually shunted aside.

Is it easy? Of course not. Staying focused and fending off distractions is an ongoing battle in our hyper-connected world. But employing these techniques will help insulate your most precious brain cycles and ensure you have ample stretches of unbroken deep work time.

From picking the perfect time windows and putting up virtual “Do Not Disturb” signs, to saying no to disruptions and meticulously tracking your performance, you’re arming yourself with a tactical defense system for your focus. Build the habit and you’ll be amazed at how much more you can achieve.

So stop letting shallow busyness and endless interruptions rule your days. Start protecting pockets of sacred focus time instead. Your biggest goals and career ambitions depend on it. With the right strategies in place, you can finally get that deep work done.

About The Author

alex@powerofplanning

Hi! I am a data analyst based in the UK, working primarily on CRM business functions. I started the Power of Planning blog as a way of improving my organisational skills, to help me prioritise my goals, and to become more efficient in my Job and my personal life :)

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