Choose a focus style that fits your life and lock it in

On Monday, Maya, a product manager, stared at a color‑blocked calendar that looked like a game of Tetris. Meetings, status checks, and pings swarmed her day. She’d promised to deliver a new pricing model in two weeks, but after three days of “quick syncs,” she had a tab full of half‑finished spreadsheets and a cold cup of coffee to show for it. Her boss didn’t mind how she worked, only whether the model was right and on time. That night she sketched three options: work later, work more, or work differently.

She mapped her realities. Mornings were quiet until 10 a.m. After that, Slack never slept. She chose a rhythmic approach: 7:30–10:30 a.m., door closed, notifications off, model only. She wrote one rule on a sticky note: “Three hours deep before the first meeting.” She posted it by her monitor and sent a short note to her team: she’d be offline each morning, with her phone on for emergencies.

The first day felt strange. At 9:10 a.m., a calendar alert tried to drag her into a last‑minute “brainstorm.” She declined with a short message and offered a specific time later. The second day, an exec pinged her. She called, settled the issue in three minutes, then returned to the model. By the fourth morning, the spreadsheet started to breathe. Assumptions were clean, scenarios clicked, and the first clear pricing curve emerged. A coworker later joked that she seemed to be “working less.” She smiled and let the numbers speak.

Two weeks later, she presented a pricing design with sensitivity ranges and rollout steps. It landed. The exec team adopted it with minor tweaks, and support requests about pricing dropped by half after launch. She didn’t add a single hour to her day. She had simply protected three hours that mattered most.

The science supports her move. Regular, protected focus reduces attention residue from task switching, preserves working memory, and accelerates learning on complex tasks. Pick a depth style that fits your situation, then convert it into a simple, public rule. Consistency compounds.

Start by writing down your real constraints: peak quiet times, mandatory meetings, and family needs. Choose a focus style that matches, then turn it into one clear rule, like three morning hours with your door closed. Put those blocks on your calendar for the next seven days and tell your team how to reach you for true emergencies. Track your deep hours and interruptions, then refine the length, location, and protections while keeping the commitment. End the week by sharing one concrete result you produced during those protected hours. Give it a try tonight.