avatarAshley Richmond

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How to Reliably Execute Deep Work Blocks on a Daily Basis for Maximum Productivity and Success

Improve your productivity and achieve your goals with 3 easy steps.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive — no matter how skilled or talented you are.” — Cal Newport, Deep Work

Deep work is a crucial skill for everyone.

You need to be able to focus for long stretches of time if you want to level up in life and keep moving forward.

But society is forever making this more challenging — with social media, Netflix, and other cheap dopamine hits.

You need to be intentional about your focus.

Whether you’re studying, working, are a stay-at-home parent, or retired, these habits will benefit you. Everyone has tasks in their day that require focus, and we’re going to learn how to optimize these.

Here are 3 steps to reliably executing effective deep work blocks to start increasing your success.

1. Take Advantage of Your Peak Energy Time

Our bodies have various rhythms which ebb and flow throughout the day.

One such rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, and this rhythm has the power to make a huge difference in our productivity, as well as both our mental and physical health.

What Are Ultradian Rhythms?

“The primary purpose of ultradian rhythms is to manage the cycles of energy production, output, and recovery that occur in all humans (as well as animals, plants, yeast, and fungi). Basically, ultradian rhythms are like mini-versions of circadian rhythms (our twenty-four-hour cycles of sleep and waking), except that they are much shorter, occurring many times over a single day.” — Pilar Gerasimo, Blue Zones

We have various ultradian rhythms, but the one we are looking to tap into is the Basic Rest Activity Cycle, or BRAC.

This rhythm consists of two distinct phases: The Peak, and The Trough.

The Peak is approximately a 90 minute period of time featuring high-frequency brain activity, followed by a period of 20 minutes of low-frequency brain activity — the Trough.

At the end of the 90 minutes, it’s crucial we give our bodies and minds a rest. Otherwise, we’ll be pushing our bodies and minds beyond their limit. However, so many of us continually push ourselves beyond this limit, wreaking all sorts of havoc on our bodies and our mental health.

Learning to pay attention to our ultradian rhythms is key.

There are two ways to leverage your ultradian rhythm to boost your energy levels:

1. Work during your Peak

Working during our peaks is key to maximum productivity.

It is during these times that our bodies and minds are at their best. We have roughly 90 minutes in this state (more on length below), and then we hit our trough.

2. Break during your Trough

We must take a break during our troughs if we want to achieve maximum productivity without burning out. As alluded to by the quote above, in order to make the most of our 90 minute work periods, we need to rest effectively.

“It’s possible to push ourselves past ninety minutes by relying on coffee, or sugar, or by summoning our own stress hormones, but when we do so we’re overriding our physiological need for intermittent rest and renewal. Eventually, there’s a price to pay.” — 99U

During this break, we need to physically and mentally move away from our work. Don’t stay at your computer, don’t continue churning work problems over in your mind.

A lot is happening during these 20 minute breaks:

“The mind-body resynchronizes its many rhythms and systems. Oxidative waste products and free radical molecules that have built up in the tissues during preceding periods of high performance and stress are cleared out of the cells. The stores of messenger molecules so vital to mind-body communication are replenished, and energy reserves are restored. Psychologically, your mind works to make sense of and integrate the day’s experiences. Past experiences, feelings, and events are synthesized into a coherent stress-free whole, creating new levels of meaning and understanding.” — Ernest Lawrence Rossi, Ph.D

Dr. Martin Seligman, father of Positive Psychology, advocates in his book, Flourish, for getting ourselves physically active at the bottom of the BRAC cycle.

Some practices to include in your break include:

If we skip this naturally occurring signal for a break and instead power through, we will eventually get through the trough and into the next peak. But this peak won’t be nearly as high as if we’d stopped and taken a break.

We will be incredibly less productive and less efficient, and we’re actually putting ourselves at a big health risk as well. Skipping these breaks can increase inflammation, lower immunity, increase blood pressure, and slow the metabolism, among many other things.

In the long term, this can lead to mood imbalances, autoimmune issues, and even brain damage.

Our goal with this is to start learning to be aware of our own ultradian rhythms — both the peak and the trough — so that we can maximize our productivity by working during our peaks and resting during our troughs. You won’t need to track forever, but tracking for a while is helpful to learn about your rhythms.

2. Do Deep Work

“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.”- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

Deep work is a term recently popularized by Cal Newport, author of books such as Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.

Deep work is an intentional period of time where you’re working on an important and meaningful task with no distractions. It’s a skill you need to develop, as our society with its constant distractions, notifications, and short-form content has stripped us of our ability to focus for long periods of time.

So we are going to learn how to get into deep work and how to leverage it for optimal productivity and fulfillment.

Working deeply is incredibly rewarding and brings a lot of meaning and contentment to your life. This is something author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discusses in his book, Flow. He explains that getting into a flow state is an incredibly pleasurable experience. Flow happens when you’re working on something meaningful to you, you have clear goals you’re working towards, and the task at hand is challenging for you but not too hard.

The key to working deeply and getting into a state of flow is to create rituals and routines. Cal Newport explains,

“The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration…. The easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep.”

For example, my first deep work session of the day is first thing in the morning. I wake up, make the bed, get dressed, make tea, then head upstairs to my office. I put noise-canceling headphones on and I work exclusively on one task that I determined the night before.

You want to remove decision-making as much as possible. You want to know exactly what you’re working on and for how long before you start. You also want to minimize distraction as much as possible. Close the door, put headphones on, close your tabs, turn the wifi off, leave your phone in another room.

You’ll want to start with shorter sessions. If you can only focus for 15 minutes right now, do that. Just do a bunch of those blocks. Work your way up until you can do 60–90 minutes.

3. Workspace Optimization

You can optimize your workspace to allow an even greater level of focus and productivity.

Here are some key points:

  • Alternate between sitting and standing every 10–30 minutes.
  • Go for a 5–15 minute walk after every 45 minute work block.
  • Do your hardest work earlier in the day (0–8 hours after waking). Hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and dopamine are highest during this time, leading to increased levels of focus and awareness.
  • Do your creative work 9–16 hours after waking. You’re more relaxed and your serotonin levels are higher — making this an optimal time for creative work and tasks such as brainstorming.
  • Place your screen at least at eye-level, but ideally a bit higher. Looking up increases alertness and posture.
  • Make sure the room is well-lit, ideally with natural lighting. If not, opt for a cool-coloured bright overhead light. This will greatly improve your level of alertness.

Want to transform your health, one habit at a time?

Sign up for my free weekly newsletter, Momentum. Each week you’ll receive one new habit to try. I’ll explain why it’s important and how to make it easy. This newsletter will help you to create the momentum you need to move towards a healthier and happier future.

Self Improvement
Productivity
Success
Entrepreneurship
Personal Development
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