Distraction blocking
A key benefit of asynchronous work is that it reduces interruptions and gives you back time for deep work. But to do deep work, you must cut out all distractions during your focus hours. Here are a few strategies that’ll help.
Plan your week in advance. Set up your days such that you have at least a couple of uninterrupted, three-hour work slots on your calendar every day. Make sure you block these slots out. Apps like Google calendar allow you to define these as focus time, so your deep work slots are visible to your colleagues. You’ll also need to learn how to decline avoidable meetings. Dropbox has some delightful suggestions on how to respectfully decline meetings.
“Thanks for including me! I’m wondering if we could try to solve this over email instead?”
“I’ve been in so many meetings lately, but I’m trying to be more disciplined about my schedule. Could we try to solve this without a meeting, first?”
“I’d be happy to give you feedback on that! Before we schedule a meeting, could I review it in Google Docs?”
Ration the distractions. Your smartphones, laptops and tablets all come with a “do not disturb” feature. Be sure to enable that when you’re in a deep work session. On the Apple ecosystem you can use Screen Time to control which apps you can use when, and for how long. Android and Windows devices have similar features as well. It’s amazing how much you can achieve by just introducing a little friction on your devices.
Use an app blocker. While features like Screen Time are fabulous, sometimes you need a heavy-handed, no-way-out solution. App blockers like Freedom allow you to define rules that apply to all your devices and when you begin a deep work session, any app or website you blacklist becomes inaccessible. Whether or not you like it. So even if you instinctively navigate to a distraction - you can’t use it. Yet again, the friction is liberating.