"To be effective, every knowledge worker ... needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at your disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.” – Peter Drucker

Once again we are opening with a quote from the legendary business thinker Peter Drucker. What amazes me is that Drucker was saying all this stuff a long time ago. 

The need for deep work was apparent to Drucker in his studies of the best in business but it was also apparent to Jesus.

If you look at how Jesus walked, he often retreated to be alone and spend time with His Father. He even rejected time with his earthly family when He was preaching (see Matthew 12:46-50). If Jesus couldn’t be in two places at one time, can we?

The great news is that focus is like a muscle. The more we exercise it the better we get at it. When we practice focus and develop those muscles, our concentration will grow stronger and we will be able to focus for longer periods.

Last week, we talked about the reality that we are terrible multi-taskers. Interruptions and attempting to multi-task kills our productivity and threatens the quality of our work. We also discussed two practices to help us get back our focus so we can be more productive while producing our best work. Those practices are:

Practice 1: Control When You Check Messages. With our boss’ approval, this one is totally up to us. We must create the discipline to check our messages (phone, email, text, social media, etc) at set times during the day.

Practice 2: Eliminate External Distractions. This is all about creating systems that will give us pockets of deep work during our day. We discussed ways to eliminate external distractions including phone calls, texts and music.

I know you will love the final two practices. Practice number three is my favorite and it is made possible by the other practices.

Practice 3: Schedule Deep Work Appointments with Yourself

If you implemented the practices in chapter four of “Redeeming Your Time,” you created some big and inspiring goals.

Accomplishing those goals requires deep work. Deep work produces more and better work in less time. It has to. It is impossible to not produce more and better work in an uninterrupted block of 30 minutes versus three 10-minute sessions.

Yes, our ability to focus for long durations is limited. But our abilities will grow. Most experts agree that 90 minutes is a good duration to shoot for. You may need to start with much smaller chunks of time. No worries. Just keep stretching for longer and you will get better and better.

Another bonus to deep work is stress reduction. Not only will you plow through your task list much quicker with deep work but you will also not be interrupted by everyone else’s emergencies and be forced to decide if your current project is what you should be working on.

Start small with your deep work appointments. Put them in your calendar and take breaks between them. If you get distracted, no problem. Make a note of what got your attention and change your system to get less of those types of interruptions.

When should you schedule your deep work? I’m a morning person, so I love knocking out big tasks first thing in the morning. Pick what works best for you.

Practice 4: Create Space for the Shallows and Serendipity

When I first read about deep work and checking my messages at set intervals, I had a ton of reasons I could not do it. Raynor does a great job of knocking out all of those excuses in the book (grab a copy).

One of the things I worried about was how “un-friendly” I would seem to those I work with. I love a good office culture and part of a great culture is based on the casual conversations you get to have with your co-workers throughout the day. What are people going to think when I have my “Do Not Disturb” sign up three-quarters of the day?

Creating space for “shallows and serendipity” is how you fix that problem. A productive office culture has to limit interruptions at times during the day. Setting expectations with your team ensures they know when and how they can get to you in case of an emergency and when they can expect a response if it is not an emergency.

Since I am most productive in the morning I try to set my deep work in the mornings and my “shallows and serendipity” times in the late afternoon. I am generally a little burned out by late in the afternoon so trying to do deep work during this time would be like pushing a boulder up a hill.

But I get energized by meetings and phone calls where I get to trade ideas and work together with others to make things happen. So, I schedule as many meetings and calls as possible in the afternoon. This is when I try to do most of my callbacks that have accumulated during the day. This is also my time to take a random call or visit with my co-workers.

By creating time in the afternoon to respond to messages and schedule calls, I have “earned” the right to stay focused during my deep work periods earlier in the day. The key is setting expectations with those you serve.

That is it. Four practices to make the most of our inability to multitask. Start putting some of these practices in place during your work day and I know you will see a positive difference in your productivity and stress levels.

We love helping leaders build great businesses. If you’d like to learn more, check out our free resources at www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.

Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.

Curt and the team at FHRS help leaders build great companies through Virtual CFO, strategy, tax and accounting services.

Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA and is a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children.