Creating FOCUS TIME for DEEP THOUGHT

Building on a recent blog on Focus and Planning, let’s take a deeper dive into the area of personal focus.

As most time management gurus profess - every calendar should have a time block of “personal focus.” Mastering the art of being intentional and disciplined with our time is certainly a gift we give ourselves to maximize productivity.

This “focus” time block is one that we want to protect, because more likely than not, something will come out of that time that will be the most meaningful action or experience of our day.

Think about it from the perspective of Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google X.

His philosophy has the power to inspire us to think deeply about deep things.

In his words, we are all billionaires when we are born.

The average human being is born with the most valuable currency - 2.5 billion heartbeats. We start life with a 2.5 billion credit.

Every second that passes, we are spending our credit and exchanging it for other things in life.

So we want to choose wisely, right? Do we want to spend our heartbeats swiping on Instagram for hours … or maybe instead spend that time walking with a friend? Or learning something? Or creating something? Or maybe just being with our thoughts for some amount of uninterrupted time?

Everything is a choice, and it’s important to ask ourselves … what is the best use of our assets?

Cal Newport, Computer Science Professor at Georgetown, has written at length about the importance of “Deep Work” - recognizing that the over abundance of “shallow work” has become our norm.

We face an unending stream of shallow work every day … emails, texts, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Slack … and the list goes on. These distractions that face us throughout our day make it hard to climb out of that valley of shallow work.

On the flip side, deep work requires the art of creating uninterrupted space for ourselves, plus the discipline to ignore everything that can easily interrupt us.

It starts with creating a ritual that works for our schedule, and commiting to a focus period every day at the best time. Consistency is the key.

It acknowledges that we need to set boundaries, and create a distraction free environment. We can always schedule our distraction breaks at a later point - to tap into emails, texts or social media. Keeping that shallow work to a defined time on our calendar has been a powerful strategy for many.

Sometimes we need a special place or space to escape to … to think more deeply.

JK Rowling escaped to The Elephant House Cafe in Edinborough to work on her Harry Potter novels. There she could sit at a quiet table by the window, looking out over the darkly austere Edinburgh Castle. That space just may have inspired the creation of Voldemort and his army of Dementors.

Bill Gates escapes to a cabin in the woods in the Pacific Northwest for a week at a time, where he can be alone with his thoughts. In 1995, the idea for the Internet Explorer was born after one of these weeks.

EB White would walk to his rustic seaside shack in Maine, where he was alone with only his typewriter in front of him. It gave him time to reflect on that spider in his barn that he named Charlotte, and before he knew it, he gave birth to one of the great children’s novels.

These are all big examples of big results. But don't be intimidated. I’m not suggesting that this focus time always has to be about creating big results.

It can be as simple as taking advantage of reading a book or writing in a journal in the middle of a beautiful park in your neighborhood.

So where to begin?

Think about your memories. Gawdat looks at memories as a “register of moments you actually lived.” All those highlights in life that made you smile. We don’t remember the endless hours we may have been working on a powerpoint presentation or the time we spent binging the latest Netflix series, but we do remember the most treasured events in our lives which get recorded as memories.

What is the connective thread between these memories? Most likely living life, being with others, celebrating the big and the small moments.

You can also start by just sitting down and thinking about your bucket list.

Beware of the lengthy bucket list that can all of a sudden seem overwhelming. It’s good to get all those thoughts down on paper, and then prioritize 1 - 3 ideas to focus on in the near term, and put the other ideas in a safe place for future reference.

Then ask yourself - What is important and meaningful to focus on now? What’s going to make you feel most accomplished? Or what’s going to be the most fun?

And I’ll leave you with one final thought from the master business philosopher Jim Rohn:

“There are two major pains in life - one is the pain of discipline, the other is the pain of regret. Discipline weighs ounces; but regret weighs tons when you allow your life to drift along unfulfilled.”

You don’t want to look back on life and think “if only.”

So think about how you want to define your deep work. Think about your currency of heart beats, and how you want to spend those heart beats on maximizing life.

And remember it’s far less painful to invest in discipline, than be burdened by the pain of regret.

So put that focus block on your calendar. If you're not exactly sure what you're going to do with that time, that's ok. Just remove distractions. Maybe take a walk - but be with your thoughts. and you may be surprised at what surfaces. And after you've given yourself some time, filling up your “focus time” will be easy and natural.