To do the work, you need *time* to do the work

How do we create more time to do deep work?

And no, I’m not talking about emails!

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The whole idea of creating time in your calendar to get work done seems far-fetched to people. (Myself included sometimes!)

But as Cal Newport often reminds us, activities fill the time you have. A better word might be “expand" actually! If your calendar is open, if there’s just one hour of availability, it will get filled. Usually with meetings.

That means, if we want to do the work, we have to make time to do the work. We have to hold sacred time for deep work. And we have to prioritize the work we do for ourselves.

Someone once explained it to me this way. To this day, it’s still the best explanation I’ve ever heard.

Who’s your most important client? If they call, you immediately drop everything and pick up the phone. You never show up late for meetings with this VIP. You treat them like pure gold.

Who is this mysterious best client ever?

It’s you!

The problem is, we’re not treating ourselves like our most important clients. We’re not showing up for ourselves. And, it turns out, we’re often treating ourselves like garbage.

We deprioritize things we need to get done and prioritize everyone else in our lives. And that usually comes at the cost of our physical health. Not to mention the complicated emotions tangled up in feeling like you aren’t living your purpose.

But you can’t pour from an empty cup. (I know you’ve likely heard this countless times, but it’s so true!) You can’t serve anyone else if you haven’t served yourself first.

This concept is very personal for me as a working parent. I’ve always been highly responsible and I often defined myself by others’ views and needs, frequently losing myself and who I really am and what I truly value in the midst.

The past 15 years have been a journey of coming back to myself though. Of figuring out what’s important to me and how I can serve myself first –– even though I have kids and there are so many competing (often conflicting!) demands for my time and attention.

It’s not about being selfish. It’s about sticking to my values, being clear on my purpose, and maintaining my health so I can serve and be at the top of my game.

Sure, I make compromises sometimes. But I always know what I’m taking away from and the impact it will have.

As long as I’m honest with myself, I’m okay with that. And I’m okay with saying no so that I can make time for deep work, too.

Two practicies keep me focused. The first comes from my friend Jeremiah Owyan who taught me to “pay yourself first everyday”. Whether it was working out and meditating or working on your business (versus in your business) do it first thing in the day.

The second is to block my calendar marked as Deep Work. I try to keep two hours a day blocked off this way, rotating depending on the day. If that time gets schedule, I move the deep work time to a different time slot that day. It’s great knowing that there are two hours a day waiting for me to get my work done – or extra time to take an emergency meeting or meet up with a friend for coffee.

And one bonus idea for teams – coordinate your deep work time so that you keep it meeting free. We did this at Altimeter, keeping mornings free of meetings so that we could get or best work done.

I’m curious: How do you make time to do deep work? Hit reply and tell me how you find bubbles of time!

– Charlene

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Good Things:

• Reads: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is about human-centered design, but the principles can be applied to so many fields. Definitely worth a read!

• Referrals: I spent $7 on happiness, and you should, too! It might not sound like much, but a pencil case I found on Wirecutter is bringing me so much joy. You open it up, then pull it down, and it becomes a makeup bag. And it’s cute –– it has a cat on it! Highly recommend for a daily smile.

Resource: My coworker has a neat ergonomically correct setup: a laptop stand that props their computer up at eye level and a portable Bluetooth keyboard. I’ve had terrible neck pain after working in London for two weeks, hunched over a laptop, so I’m very interested in this laptop stand. And it weighs about 2 pounds –– lighter than the laptop itself!