Tag: concentration

I’m locking myself in a room

Posted on by philipdodson

Thursday and Friday I’m locking myself in a room.

It’s not an experiment to see what kidnapping might be like. It is to focus.

Not to make a plan for the next 12 months but just for the next 12 weeks.

Anything longer than that is pointless and I am going to have just 2 or 3 main areas that I am focusing on.

It’s part of the 12-Week Year by Brian Moran a great book that compliments deep work so well.

My focus for the next 12 weeks is my new project The Deep Work Project which amazingly is all about focusing.

We all need time once a week, once a month, once a quarter to plan and to plan properly. It doesn’t mean I’ll succeed, but I’ll get a lot closer than I would without anything written down.

I’ve had a good break now, I’ve switched off, shut down, and most importantly it has been guilt free. That’s something I have finally learnt at 51, guilt-free downtime and leisure time enables me not to resent work-related tasks.

Amazingly, when you do decide to lock yourself away, switch off the phone, close off the distractions of the internet and get out some good old-fashioned Sharpies and paper, you can really get into your flow, be creative and focus.

This is the very core of deep work, it is building the ‘muscle’ of concentration and allowing ourselves to do our very best work.

Like everything this is a work in progress, I am the world champion at procrastination and it is a long slog to the nirvana of concentration but it’s a journey, not a sprint.

What does your best work look like?

Posted on by philipdodson
‘Eruption’ by Philip Dodson

I attended a great workshop a few years back, facilitated by Judy Rees, and one of the exercises was if you had to visually illustrate what your best work looked like, what would you create? What would you draw?

what would you draw, paint, make or write to demonstrate you at your best?

Do we even stop to look at what factors combine to create our best work, when we are in complete flow, when we are ‘on fire’?

The more we work in a focused, deeper way, the less the shallow distractions occur and the better we can work.

The challenge for us all is that is personal. What creates the environment for deep work for me will be different to you.

However, we all have an environment and mindset that will come together to enable us to do deep focused and meaningful work.

Take a moment to work out where that is for you and then see how you can apply it.