Mainly not listening to anything on walks — like dog walk or walking back from dropping our kid off at daycare — has helped give me some time to let my brain run free

I also set automatic blocks of focus time on specific week days that I really try to stick to… but that’s not available to everyone, really depends on your company and role.

I have this too and it’s a pretty mixed bag of results, it mostly becomes time to catch up rather than do deep work. Or another slot to be scheduled over 🙃

Yeah I get it, it’s difficult to stick to it! 🙈 I really do try to only use those for deep work 🙏🏻 a thing I’ve also started to do is setting “themes“ for each workday — my Fridays, for example, are focused on self-development / learning new things / writing blog posts / etc.

Obviously sometimes there will be last minute things that will be more important 🫠 but usually I know that Fridays I’ll be quieter and allow me to put in a few hours of learning and writing undisturbed. This also helps with the context switching for me (I do it a lot at my job!)

For me, starting my day at 5am, then slowly transitioning to 4am was the key. I can get 3-4 hours of solid focused deep thinking and work done before my actual workday starts.

rad that you were able to carve out focused space that worksfor you! that’s pretty dang early though 🫠 and noticeably not during your actual workday.

Before sleeping. If you step away from phones and screens you can put 30 minutes :-)

true, I’ve found some of my best thinking or interesting connections formed come right before falling asleep or right after I wake up, away from distractions

Jogging sends me into a prolonged state of focus that I can’t seem to attain anywhere else in my life. It’s blissful, but fleeting.

ahhhh this is what hiking does for me too! sadly a weekend-only activity for me