This Monday morning I was working on my illustration, the rendering was frustrating but I was making progress. Then suddenly I remembered – I posted a tweet yesterday, but haven’t checked it yet. “Did I sound pretentious, did they even get my point?” – I worried, but resisted the urge to pick up my phone.

Six hours later I finally checked it. It got 50 likes, one person didn’t understand, one kind of agreed. I built up big expectations by now, this was kind of anticlimactic.

Here’s why I didn’t check it earlier.

Schedule your distraction

This week I finished reading Deep Work. The biggest takeaway from it was to schedule when I’m allowed to distract myself. Before my approach was to just schedule the tasks for the day and hope that I actually stick to the plan, I didn’t have any guardrails. But now I don’t allow myself to use the internet, unless the task requires it.

Cal Newport (the author) argues that for maximum productivity we have to minimize, if not completely eliminate internet use during deep work periods. I find this idea convincing but impractical. For example I use Google Calendar, it requires internet to function properly. If I followed the principles of the book fully then I’d have to use a physical notebook to plan out my day, which I can’t imagine myself doing.

So here’s my rule: In the first half of the day I don’t allow myself to use internet for anything that isn’t the tasks that I scheduled. Mostly it’s drawing and going to the gym. In the second half of the day I can do the shallow tasks that don’t require my core expertise. It’s mostly chores and administrative stuff. It works because now I don’t need willpower to negotiate myself into staying focused. Now the task either requires internet or it doesn’t, this clarity makes it work.

This approach has almost doubled how much time I spend drawing. Two weeks ago I struggled to get 1-2 hours a day, but now I consistently draw for at least 3 hours a day.

Steal this method

Here’s exactly what I do each day:

  1. Schedule your deep work for the first half of the day.
  2. Keep your internet off by default and before turning it on, ask yourself: “Does this task require internet right now?”
  3. If no – leave it off. If yes – use it only for this task and then disconnect again right after you’re done. Catch yourself immediately if you’re getting distracted.
  4. Track how many hours you worked. If you managed to get more hours of work this day than usual, you know it’s working.

I’m new to this as well, but I immediately saw improvements in my focus. This was a game-changer for me, I hope it will be for you too.