I was sitting in our company’s open-plan office, trying to concentrate on writing the final memo for a project I was finishing up. Around me, chaos reigned.

A coworker across the room was taking his third “quick call” of the morning, speaking at full volume about his weekend plans. Two desks over, colleagues were sharing the latest drama that unfolded in their lives over the weekend (bar fight? broke up with boyfriend? I couldn't quite catch the details). Teams notifications pinged relentlessly. Outlook email alerts flashed. I noticed someone getting up to grab snacks for the fourth time that hour, while another walked by discussing yesterday’s football game results.

And just like that, it was time for lunch, and I had accomplished exactly nothing.

This wasn’t always my reality. During the remote work era of the early 2020s, I had discovered something powerful: the ability to work deeply. With no one physically interrupting me, I established blocks of focused, uninterrupted time where I could tackle complex problems and create meaningful work both within and outside my day job. My output doubled. My creativity flourished. I finally had time to think.

Then we returned to the office, and I watched in horror as my carefully cultivated deep work habit collided with the reality of how most knowledge workers operate: in a perpetual state of shallow busyness and constant interruption.

Deep work — the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks — has become my superpower in a world that’s engineered to fragment your attention. It’s how I’ve doubled my income, secured multiple promotions, afforded my dream apartment, and found a level of fulfillment and purpose that had previously eluded me.

The best part? Deep work is a skill anyone can develop with the right system. In today’s newsletter, I’m breaking down the exact step-by-step process I use to make deep work a consistent part of my life.

Why Most People Fail at Deep Work (And How to Succeed)

Let’s start with a truth that’s rarely acknowledged: willpower is wildly overrated.

Most people approach deep work like a diet — they try to muscle through it with sheer determination. They block an hour on their calendar, sit down to work, and then… check their phone “just once.” Answer “just one email.” Take “just a quick break” that somehow stretches into the afternoon.

Sound familiar?

The problem isn’t a lack of motivation or discipline. It’s that our modern work environments and technologies are specifically designed to fracture our attention. Open offices, instant messaging, social media, and the constant connectivity of smartphones have created a perfect storm that makes sustained concentration nearly impossible.

Research shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain your focus after an interruption. Yet most knowledge workers are interrupted every 11 minutes. That math simply doesn’t work.

Each time you switch contexts — from deep work to email, from writing to Teams messages, from analysis to social media — you incur what psychologists call a “switching cost.” Your brain has to reload the context of the previous task, reorient itself, and rebuild momentum. This tax on your cognitive resources is enormous and largely invisible.

Deep work isn’t just about productivity; it’s about quality of thought. In shallow work mode, you tend to take the path of least resistance — recycling familiar ideas, following established procedures, and generally playing it safe. During deep work, your brain forms new neural connections, explores divergent possibilities, and generates insights that simply aren’t accessible in a distracted state.

This is why deep work has become the ultimate unfair advantage in today’s economy. While everyone else is working in a perpetual state of semi-focus, those who can consistently engage in deep work can:

• Solve problems that others can’t see
• Develop expertise at an accelerated rate
• Create work of exceptional quality
• Complete projects in half the time
• Think thoughts that require extended concentration

The fundamental difference between deep and shallow productivity is simple: shallow work makes you feel busy; deep work makes you effective. One creates the illusion of progress; the other creates actual results.

The 4-Part Deep Work System That Changed My Life

Systems will always outperform willpower. A good system removes the need for constant decision-making, eliminates predictable failure points, and creates an environment where the desired behavior becomes the path of least resistance.

The system I’m about to share is the result of years of experimentation, countless failed attempts, and gradual refinements. It consists of four essential parts that work together to make deep work not just possible, but sustainable.

Step 1: Identify Your High-Impact Deep Work

The most important decision isn’t how to do deep work—it’s what to work deeply on.

Most people make the critical mistake of applying deep focus to low-leverage activities. They’ll spend three focused hours on a task that won’t meaningfully move their life or career forward, then wonder why deep work doesn’t seem to be transformative for them.

Here’s how I identify what deserves my deep work time:

First, I ask myself the focusing question: “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” This forces me to think about leverage rather than just importance.

Second, I pay attention to psychological resistance. The tasks you procrastinate on, feel anxious about, or continually reschedule are often the very ones that deserve your deepest focus. This resistance is a signal, not a warning. It usually indicates that the task:

• Requires complex thinking
• Involves uncertainty
• Forces you to develop new skills
• Might lead to meaningful change

When I feel myself avoiding a particular project, I’ve learned to view it as a compass pointing toward my highest-leverage work.

Finally, I consider whether a task requires my unique skills, knowledge, and perspective. If someone else could do it just as well with minimal training, it’s probably not deep work.

By focusing on high-leverage activities that create asymmetric returns, you ensure that your deep work hours are invested, not merely spent.

Step 2: Design Your Deep Work Environment

Your environment will either sabotage or support your deep work efforts. There is no neutral option.

I’ve found that creating dedicated physical and digital environments for deep work drastically reduces the activation energy required to enter a flow state. Here’s how I structure mine:

Physical Environment:

• A dedicated deep work space that my brain associates exclusively with focused effort. For me, this is a specific corner of my apartment with a clean desk facing a blank wall. Nothing on the desk except what’s needed for the current project.
• Noise-canceling headphones playing brown noise (which I find less distracting than music with lyrics or even classical music). Brown noise emphasizes lower frequencies than white noise and feels less harsh to many people.
• A notepad beside me for capturing intrusive thoughts or new ideas without breaking focus on the main task. This serves as a “thought parking lot” that allows me to acknowledge distractions without following them.
• A large water bottle, espresso, or matcha that I've prepared in advance so I don’t need to interrupt flow for basic needs.

Digital Environment:

• Focus modes automatically enabled on all devices (these filter out any notifications that aren't mission critical).
• Website blockers automatically activated during deep work sessions.
• An organized computer filing system and web browser free of noise and distractions.

The key insight about environment design is that it’s a form of “pre-commitment” — you’re making decisions in advance that your future self will thank you for. By eliminating obvious distractions before they occur, you reduce the cognitive load of constantly having to resist temptation.

Step 3: Time Your Deep Work for Maximum Impact

When you work deeply matters almost as much as how you work deeply.

Through extensive self-experimentation, I’ve discovered that I have about 6 hours of truly deep focus available each day. Trying to consistently extend beyond this usually isn't sustainable long term and results in diminishing returns and mental fatigue.

The key is to match your deep work to your natural energy cycles:

I schedule my most important deep work for my peak cognitive hours — which for me is between 7:00 AM and 12:00 PM. Research shows that for most people, analytical reasoning, problem-solving, and creative thinking are strongest in the hours shortly after waking.

This isn’t just about being a “morning person.” It’s about working with your brain’s natural rhythms. Even if you’re not naturally an early riser, your first few hours of wakefulness (whenever they occur) typically offer your clearest thinking.

What makes these morning hours so valuable is that your prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for complex thinking — hasn’t yet been depleted by decision fatigue and the cognitive residue of task-switching.

I protect these golden hours religiously:

• Minimize meetings before 12:00 PM
• Email and communication checks don’t happen until after my deep work block
• My phone stays in another room or in my bag until my deep work session is complete

For those who can’t control their morning schedules due to work requirements, find your next-best energy window. Some people have a secondary peak in the late afternoon or early evening. The key is consistency — training your brain to expect focused work during specific times.

I’ve also found that 90-minute deep work blocks with 15-30 minute breaks in between work better than trying to maintain focus for hours uninterrupted. This aligns with research on ultradian rhythms — the natural cycles of energy and restoration that occur throughout our day.

Remember: timing your deep work isn’t about squeezing more hours into your day. It’s about strategically placing your most important cognitive work during your hours of peak mental performance.

Step 4: Track, Measure, and Eliminate Technology Interruptions

What gets measured gets improved. The simple act of tracking my deep work hours has been one of the most eye-opening practices I’ve implemented.

In my journal, I keep a running tally of deep work hours, but with an important distinction: I only count hours where I was genuinely focused on meaningful work. Sitting at my desk looking busy doesn’t count. Checking email while occasionally working on a project doesn’t count.

This creates accountability to myself and reveals patterns I wouldn’t otherwise notice.

I now track deep work hours against specific projects or life areas. This makes vague goals concrete and shows me exactly where my cognitive resources are going.

But the single biggest threat to deep work is, without question, the device in your pocket. Our phones are sophisticated distraction machines designed by teams of engineers to capture and hold our attention.

I’ve implemented a strict technology protocol that has dramatically increased my deep work capacity:

• Phone stays outside my bedroom (I use a separate alarm clock)
• First 6 hours of the day is phone-free
• Phone goes into my bag drawer during deep work sessions
• Notifications permanently disabled for all but essential communications
• Social media apps removed from my phone

These may sound like extreme measures, but they’ve been transformative. By eliminating the constant stream of interruptions from my device, my ability to focus deeply has improved dramatically.

Deep work isn’t just a productivity technique; it’s a philosophy of value creation. In a world increasingly dominated by shallow outputs and distractions, the ability to consistently produce work of depth and quality has become the ultimate career and life advantage.

The system I’ve shared today isn’t about working more hours. It’s about making your hours count. It’s about creating the conditions where your best thinking can emerge. It’s about reclaiming your attention in a world designed to fragment it.

Start with just one element of this system. Perhaps begin by tracking your current deep work hours for a week, or experiment with a distraction-free morning routine. Small changes, consistently applied, lead to profound shifts in how you work and live.

Your ability to do deep work might be the single most important factor in changing your life’s trajectory. It certainly has been for mine.

Do something today that your future self would thank you for.

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