If you want to do deep work, you need to reach a state of deep focus. You can get halfway there by eliminating distractions. A typical modern workplace in “digital”, however, is what I call a high distraction environment — the opposite of what is required to do great focused work.
The company encourages collaboration by expecting you to be available for a chat or a “quick call” during the working hours. You start each week with at least several hours of meetings already in your calendar. Some of those meetings require preparation time, possibly several days in advance. Todos keep piling up and the priorities are constantly shifting, so you have to spend mental energy deciding where to slot each new task. Just as you manage to carve out half an afternoon for work, something urgent comes up that needs immediate attention. I’m not even talking about sitting in an open office where people around you are talking all day.
You feel like your time is out of your control, you’re constantly distracted and struggle to find enough time to do your work. I know I do! And it’s not just my experience, this happens by default unless the company or your team make it their priority to promote focused work without distractions. Distractions such as those above are insidious because they are “work” — collaboration (for lack of a better word), helping other people, keeping yourself informed. However, by engaging in them you produce nothing of value. Unchecked, they will eat all of your time.
Even worse, they pollute whatever time during the workday left for work. Nagging thoughts about other tasks and meetings don’t let you bring your full focus to the task at hand. With chats, I can either be present and people can message me, or working; not both. I found that I cannot focus (and get on with my work) when I have a chat window or email open, even if nobody is writing. While I dislike some of Jonathan Blow’s opinions, this time I fully agree when he says in the video above
You can’t have a lot of stuff nagging on your mind. Programming is like [deeper design thinking] too. You’re trying to put together intricate structures in your mind and you’re trying to visualize things that are very abstract and hard to visualize, and you need a lot of focus to get there. Somehow, I don’t understand why, but the threat of being interrupted — even the idea that I can be interrupted — can prevent that focus from being attained.
Linus Torvalds wants his computer to be completely silent to avoid distraction:
The way I work is that I want to not have external stimulation. I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat.
These people realize that you absolutely need your full focus to produce extraordinary work. They consistently do it and consistently achieve remarkable results.
Why is the lack of focus so bad? Feelings aside, doesn’t the work get done in the end? Yes, but it’s the result of shallow effort which leads to work of lower quality delivered later. I’m saying “we can do better” at work a lot; I’m striving for excellence, not mediocrity. Few companies are openly satisfied with creating a mediocre product for their customers, but that happens when people who work on the product don’t get the space they need to produce brilliant work. As a software engineer, I shouldn’t be struggling to find time to do my job well, it’s ridiculous! Yet this is the grim reality. I still do good work, but I know I could do much more. I know because I have — in low distraction environments.
You might say “Well, just get better at time management and setting priorities”; sometimes I’m saying this myself. Some of this can be done from the bottom up. I’ve had very good experience working remotely in a time zone where I only had four hours crossover with my coworkers because I could do four hours of highly focused work every day knowing I wouldn’t be interrupted. Turning off email and chat for a certain period also works, but not as well because I know other people are there and might need my help. People wear noise-cancelling headphones at the office to dampen the noise, but headphones give me a headache.
The magic happens when the whole company embraces ways of working that lead to excellent work, such as Basecamp with their Shape Up process or Doist that has bet on async-first communication. To a typical Scrum shop, this looks like blasphemy: how will any work appear or get done if there are no regular ceremonies? Unfortunately, this requires heavily investing in talent and attracting (and keeping) the right people, who care about their work. The larger and more rigid the company, the harder it is.
For me, the solution is simply to be left alone. I know what to do, let me do it. In the time free from distraction, I’ll make things better — for everyone.