Scheduled Deep Work

An excerpt from this past week's ART:tickYOU-lations newsletter. You can find the full version here, and sign-up for my every-other-week (or so) email here.

When asked what he thought of the role of inspiration in creative work, the American painter Chuck Close shot back, "Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work." As a person who wants to do significant creative and impactful work-- whether in writing, engagement with businesses, or other entrepreneurial pursuits-- I have been thinking a lot about how I better build this into my workflow and routine.

Perhaps because of years spent in the swimming pool, filled as it is with scheduled start-times and a coach hovering nearby, stopwatch in hand letting you know if you are late, I have realized that I respond positively to external structure for getting things done. This works better for me than letting it emerge naturally. Too much freedom and I don't "get up and go to work" with the kind of vigor that I might given appropriate structure and accountability. 

As I have mentioned in this newsletter before, Cal Newport's book Deep Work has been a helpful resource as I try to build in such rhythms for focused attention. But if I am being honest, it has all stayed more theory than practice. 

At the end of 2016, Newport put up a post about how he was shifting his own approach to deep work given changing demands on his time. He wrote:

I increasingly found it insufficient to support the long periods of deep work (think: 4 – 7 consecutive hours, multiple times a week) that I need to really support my increasingly complicated pursuits as a professional theoretician with heady aspirations. The problem was timing. By the time the average week started, I had already agreed to enough meetings, interviews, appointments and calls in advance that no such long unbroken periods remained.

In response to these issues I began to drift toward a new and even more effective strategy: deep scheduling.The idea is also straightforward. I now schedule my deep work on my calendar four weeks in advance. That is, at any given point, I should have deep work scheduled for roughly the next month. Once on the calendar, I protect this time like I would a doctor’s appointment or important meeting. If you try to schedule something during a deep work block I’ll insist I’m not available.

So, here is my creative challenge. 2 weeks of planned creative blocking and accountability to focused engaged work within those blocks. This morning, I put into my calendar two weeks worth of 'creative blocks,' shown below.

In this time, I commit to writing, creative work with companies, and focused attention on entrepreneurial ventures. I will commit to doing so without interruption from teaching, meetings, and all other digital distractions. I will let you know how it goes by next newsletter. If you give it a try as well, please do the same!