The following large assembly in your calendar won’t have some other attendees—it would simply be you. A rising variety of high-performing leaders, together with managers at Google and different Fortune 100 firms, are carving out protected “focus blocks” and treating them like mission-critical conferences.
With fixed pings, shallow duties, and back-to-back calls, this is likely to be the one method to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time options that robotically block off calendars to guard deep work.
Paige Donahue is a product marketing chief at Google who helps YouTube creators develop their communities and monetize their followings. She says she’s began utilizing the Focus Time characteristic inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. “Earlier than, my day was actually only a stream of fixed conferences, and I feel lots of people can relate to that,” she says. “It was assembly after assembly, ping after ping, and I used to be discovering that I didn’t have plenty of time to do the deep work that’s actually essential to maneuver issues ahead.” Now, she notes, it’s a lot simpler to see ahead momentum. “[The focus time feature] is actually serving to me get within the groove and deal with tasks . . . as a substitute of getting slowed down by limitless conferences.”
Deep work has develop into a job requirement
Whereas the thought of “deep work” isn’t new, the urgency round it’s. Leaders can not deal with focus as a luxurious. In at present’s reactive office, carving out uninterrupted time for considering and creating has develop into a core management duty.
And staff need this simply as a lot as executives. In line with a current Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK employees, 47% mentioned they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% mentioned they’d like their employers to formally schedule such quiet intervals. This implies that defending focus isn’t a private quirk—it’s a cultural shift ready to occur.
Nevertheless it’s all too simple to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that will seem pressing (reminiscent of last-minute requests and fireplace drills) however hardly ever transfer you in the direction of the end-of-year KPIs that decide your bonus and future promotion potential.
At Lifehack Method, the place we coach executives and groups on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, groups flounder in shallow work. Once they defend it, they mannequin a tradition of depth, readability, and outcomes. Each Friday, our purchasers follow a Weekly Planning ritual the place they calendarize the whole week, making certain strategic work has nonnegotiable slots earlier than the week fills up with reactive duties.
Overlook time administration, begin managing your consideration
The calendar is a great tool, however the deeper shift is about what we select to guard. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant factors out, the outdated paradigm of time administration—squeezing as a lot as doable into the day—has limits and may even be detrimental. The brand new frontier is attention management: “the artwork of specializing in getting issues accomplished for the best causes, in the best locations, and on the proper moments,” as Grant defines it in a New York Occasions essay.
After we coach leaders in our applications, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The query isn’t “How do I match this in?” however “Does this deserve my consideration?” That pivot can imply the distinction between every week misplaced in shallow work and every week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your thoughts of these pesky pressing duties and provides your self the present of diving into your most leveraged actions. These are sometimes not even in your to-do listing, that’s how little consideration they have a tendency to get!
When a calendar block isn’t sufficient, carry a buddy
After all, defending time on a calendar doesn’t all the time imply utilizing it nicely. Getting ahead momentum is hard if you’re dealing with procrastination and nervousness about the best way to begin. That’s the place accountability is available in. Enter digital coworking, a rising pattern that pairs you with a accomplice on-line to make sure you present up and do the work. Lots of our purchasers right here at Lifehack Methodology rely closely on coworking classes as a pressure multiplier to hurry via in any other case procrastinated duties.
Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience discovered that real-time, refined suggestions throughout lapses of consideration helped individuals regain focus. The researchers concluded that it could be more practical to intervene throughout low-focus moments than to easily implement lengthy, uninterrupted blocks. For prime-stakes or inventive work, this means that light-weight accountability methods—like coworking classes or structured check-ins—can function the “suggestions nudges” that preserve individuals within the zone.
Digital coworking platforms are seeing traction amongst enterprise staff. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the world’s No. 1 digital coworking neighborhood. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members at the moment common 31% extra classes than the typical consumer, and 13% extra time spent on the platform.
Donahue shares that at work, she makes use of each digital and in-person coworking to make sure she says on activity. “I’m a giant fan of coworking. I really feel that it provides a layer of accountability and it’s simply good to sit down across the campfire with different people who find themselves in it as nicely. It’s an effective way to do deep targeted work virtually like a dash.”
Learn how to make focus time impactful
Defending focus blocks isn’t nearly willpower. It requires communication and tradition change. Leaders who succeed are inclined to:
- Deal with focus time like a sacred assembly. Don’t reschedule until it’s really pressing.
- Talk clearly. Let your workforce know if you’re offline for focus and if you’ll be obtainable once more.
- Pair safety with accountability. Use instruments like Focusmate, or—as we do at Lifehack Methodology—stack focus time with rituals like our Profitable the Week Methodology® planning course of, which makes deep work a part of the weekly rhythm.
- Mannequin the conduct. When managers visibly defend focus, staff really feel empowered to do the identical.
Defend your focus to future-proof your job
As instruments evolve and office calls for intensify, the rarest useful resource is not cash, concepts, expertise, and even time. It’s unbroken consideration. Leaders who defend it should drive innovation; those that don’t danger drowning in noise. Focus time will not be indulgent. It’s the one method to do the form of work firms truly pay leaders to do.
