How to Do the Work That Really Matters

Time to read: It's a long one! 1.5 minutes!

Deep work is rare.

Not because people are lazy. But because focus is hard to protect. There's always something urgent that gets in the way, and we humans like the dopamine hit of checking something off the to-do list.

The work that advances your career, builds your reputation, and creates opportunity is almost never the reactive, urgent stuff. It's the thinking, creating, and problem-solving that requires you to be fully present for an extended stretch of time.

That deep work doesn't happen by accident.

It starts with a ritual. Something small and consistent that signals to your brain that it’s time! A cup of coffee. A specific playlist. Clearing your desk. It doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that you do it every time, until it becomes a reliable on-ramp for focus. For me, it’s a clean counter and a cup of tea. (My office is the kitchen.)

Then protect the time. Notifications, open tabs, and email will try to distract you (read the newsletter about creating your environment). The sneakiest distraction is the urge to switch tasks the moment things inevitably get hard. The hard is good. It’s you stretching, creating, and using your gifts to do important work. It's not a sign you should stop. It's a sign to keep going.

The quality of thought that emerges on the other side of that resistance is where your best work lives.

Start small if you need to. The human brain can focus for 25 minutes. Take a break and come back again. 25 minutes of genuine focus beats three hours of distracted effort.

This week: Schedule one deep work block. Treat it like your most important meeting. Show up, do the ritual, close everything, and see what you're capable of. Know someone navigating a demanding season at work? Forward this to them. They can join us here.

Know someone navigating a demanding season at work? Forward this to them. They can join us sign up here.

Questions about focus or making the most of an intense stretch? Email me. I read every one.

Next week: Your environment is talking to you. Let's make sure it's saying the right things.

Managing Your Mind, Not Your Time

Time to read: 67 seconds

Goodness I love green glassware

You blocked the time. You cleared the space. You sat down ready to work.

Then your brain had other ideas.

The presentation is due Friday. Did you follow up with that client? You should really call your mother. What if the project falls apart? Is it too early for lunch?

No app blocks those distractions. No tidy desk fixes it. This is internal noise — and for most people, it's the hardest part of focus.

Here's what's happening. Under pressure, your brain generates a constant stream of unfinished business. Undone tasks, unresolved worries, unmade decisions. It's not trying to sabotage you. It's trying to make sure you don't forget anything important.

The trick is to give your brain a place to put that stuff. Two things will help you manage your monkey mind:

• 1. Do a brain dump. Take 5 minutes to write everything down so your brain knows nothing will get lost. Then your brain can let go, and you can focus.
• 2. Work with your energy. You know the time of day you are sharpest. You have a 2–3-hour window when your thinking is clearest. That window is precious. Don't spend it on email. Mine is in the early afternoon. Many people focus best in the morning.

Answer email when your energy dips. Do the deep work when you're at your best.

This week: Try a brain dump before your next focused work session. Write everything down, work and personal. Then close the list and get to work. Notice if it's easier to stay on task.

Your Environment Is Working For You or Against You

Time to read: 60 slow and luxurious seconds

You sat down to focus.

Then you noticed the laundry. A Teams message caught your eye. Your phone pinged. Forty-five minutes later, you've done everything except the thing you sat down to do.

Your environment did that.

We like to think focus is a matter of willpower. But willpower is a limited resource, and it’s easy to drain it with distractions. Instead, how about you design your surroundings so you're not burning through your willpower in the first place?

This applies to....

• your physical space, the clutter, the noise, the phone sitting face-up on your desk.
• your digital space, the tabs, the notifications, the apps, engineered to grab your attention and keep it.
• the people around you, the open-door culture, the colleague who drops by, the meeting that could have been an email.

All these things are necessary at times. Left unmanaged, they will run your day.

The good news: small changes have a big impact. Close the tabs. Put the phone in a drawer. Signal to the people around you that you're heads-down. Clear your desk. Open only what you need and get to work.

Make focus the path of least resistance.

This week: Pick one thing in your environment that consistently pulls your attention and change it. Move your phone. Turn off notifications. Find a quieter spot, and see what happens.

Why Focus Feels Impossible Right Now

Time to read: 55 seconds

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Your to-do list is long.

Your inbox has thousands of unread messages.

Your phone buzzes. A meeting appears on your calendar. Someone needs something. You have three browser tabs open that you were going to handle today.

Somewhere in there, you have work to do. Important work. The kind that moves your career forward.

No wonder focus feels impossible.

Here's the thing: it's not you. When the pressure is on, your brain does exactly what brains do under stress. It scans for threats. It jumps between inputs. It mistakes busyness for progress.

Focus isn't the absence of distraction. It's a skill that you can learn and strengthen.

Over the next six weeks, that's what we're going to do: focus on focus.

You differentiate yourself when you consistently do deep, meaningful work, even when everything around you is loud and chaotic. It builds your reputation. It creates the conditions for opportunity. It delivers for your employer and is fulfilling for you.

You can't control what comes next in your career. But you do own the quality of your work right now.

That's where we start.

This week: Take two minutes and do an attention audit. Be honest. Where does your focus actually go during a typical workday — not where you intend it to go? Jot it down. No judgment. Just notice.

Awareness is always the first step.

You're Not Imagining It. Here's What Helps.

Time to read: 76 seconds

Vintage is more fun that stock photos of random models in an office

The world is a lot right now. You still have a 9am. Let's talk about that.

This week, I want to acknowledge something out loud: it is genuinely hard to care about your inbox when it feels like everything outside is on fire. You are not weak for feeling distracted. You are human. A very tired, caring human.

You've told me you're struggling to focus. That you sit down to work and your brain is somewhere else entirely. That you feel guilty for worrying about a deadline when bigger things are happening. I hear you. I've been there too, as I've written about.

Here's what I want you to know: showing up to your work right now is an act of courage. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet, unglamorous kind — where you make the coffee, open the laptop, and do the thing anyway.

A few ideas for getting through the day:

• Give yourself five minutes before the noise begins. Close your eyes, put your fingers on the keyboard so everyone thinks you're working, and breathe.
• Pick one person you get to help today. Start there. The rest will follow.
• Step away from the headlines for a few hours. The world will need your attention later. Right now, so do the people in front of you.
• Be embarrassingly patient with yourself and the people around you. Everyone is carrying something you can't see.

You don't have to be unaffected. You just have to be present. And on the days when even that feels like too much, just show up. That counts.

Please email me and tell me how you're really doing. I always want to know. Really and truly.

Lessons I Live By. #3

Time to read: 36 seconds

Happy winter in the US!

Today's lesson: Nothing is urgent.

For years, I behaved as if everything, every day was urgent. Homework! Cooking dinner! Scheduling! Planning! Coaching! I drove myself and my family crazy.

The truth is, I was uncomfortable with uncertainty and lose ends. I operated as if urgency ensured everything would get done. I believed it was possible to force life to be certain if I just tried hard enough.

This lesson took me a long time to learn, and I'm still learning. Nothing is urgent. (OK. A broken arm is urgent. A natural disaster is urgent.) In daily life, very little is urgent. However many things are important. We often sacrifice the truly important under the falsehood of urgency.

Homework is not urgent. Your email is not urgent. Your relationship with your children and employees is important. I found that I confused the two and focused on the wrong things. Take a good look at what is actually important in your life and figure out how to focus on that. Drop the urgency.

Your life and work will get a lot easier!

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