If you knew you only had 30 minutes to get work done, what would you do?
Reply to emails?
Check your notifications?
Enter a deep work state?
What if those 30 minutes are your *only* work minutes, so they need to cover deep and “reactive” things?
How can we design those boundaries?
It’s easy to blur the lines when you don’t have the constraints. When you’re not limited by 30 minutes of work.
I learned this lesson the hard way this past week – when Texas froze over.
My husband and I had to deal with freezing temperatures, enduring a massive snow storm, power outages, and being stuck at home with two young and very active boys.
But it’s been a great lesson. I feel it has made me better––more efficient and more aware.
I realized my ability to get things done when there is more pressure.
It makes you more aware of the time you waste being reactive.
This week was the launch of the February round of my Musician’s Profit Umbrella®
program, and I needed to put together several crucial items to kick off my program in the best way possible.
The power was going in and out, and we knew when the internet came on, we’d only have access to it for about 30 consecutive minutes before we were cut off again.
It’s difficult to create the boundaries for deep and reactive work on a normal day, when power is easily accessible.
When you have no other choice? You make it work.
One thing I learned recently that I was personally surprised by: “A-Players” don’t check their email on their phone. Or their Instagram. Or their Facebook. (At first – I said to myself: “WHAT?”)
They take deep work to the extreme, even without inclement weather forcing them to do so.
When we aren’t giving ourselves the space to implement, we are always in a mode of “let me just check my…”
Instead of telling ourselves: “For 15 mins I’m going to respond to emails, and then that’s it.”
The deep work allows you to implement what you are so brilliantly strategizing.
The strategizing part – for people in my program – is not something that they are required to do by themselves. That’s something they can count on me, and the group, for support. So there’s a lot of reactivity, because we are in a think-tank environment.
It’s a constant back and forth of ideation and idea generation, but what they need to do on their own is execution.
Deep work is actually implementing, creating an output of your work – a signal into the world of what you are doing.
What ends up happening for a lot of people who try to find ideas on their own is that they are unable to find the time blocks to truly work.
If you only have 30 minutes, what should you do?
How do you go from ideation into true action? (Because implementation is the name of the game.)
99% of the time, if someone comes up with a brilliant idea, someone else has probably also come up with it! What’s the difference between the other people and the person who becomes successful?
The successful person actually IMPLEMENTS the idea.
So this week – in those 2 hours between having power, I was able to dream and plan…
But as soon as the power came back on, I knew I had 30 minutes to take action.
Today, when it was all over, I woke up with a sense of gratitude to be able to have a full day of power. (I never thought I would truly appreciate a full day of electricity.)
All of the sudden, I have all this time.
I washed my hair, I put curlers on…
I felt so luxurious and breathed in the intentionality of my day.
I was so inspired at the end of the week, I recorded this video inside my Facebook group on my experience with deep work.
And when you watch the video, I’d love to hear about your experience in finding ways to create deep work environments and how you are able to maximize your productivity under pressure.
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