90 Minute Deep Work Sessions [Productivity Hack]

[SeeYouAtTheTop]

Thought this would be helpful for people who have trouble getting work done. It's been useful for me so thought I would pass it along.

Concept:

Block your work session into 90-minute blocks. From my personal experience, and reading about deep work, this seems to be the limit a person has for working on a task.

Execution:

The question becomes, how do block your time effectively?

The way I've been doing it is by using 2 critical apps:
1. Using a timer to actually time out your work session (I use e.gg Timer - a simple countdown timer)
2. Cold Turkey blocker

Timer - this is straight forward, it provides you with a countdown timer. Anything like it will do.

Cold Turkey - this is the key to success. Use this app to block all the noise. You can schedule blocks if you're very disciplined with your day, or you can just turn the block on, but either way this will actually limit websites from loading on your browser.

Doing a session and have the urge to look at Facebook?

Can't, blocked by Cold Turkey.

Finding yourself ghost typing in zerohedge while writing?

Nope, not anymore.

Implementing this "productivity hack" has helped immensly with just getting the work done.

Hopefully this helps.

For the sake of credit, I got this idea from the Ikario team, but I thought it would be useful for this community too.

 

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[dominicmarcu]

Thought this would be helpful for people who have trouble getting work done. It's been useful for me so thought I would pass it along.

Concept:

Block your work session into 90-minute blocks. From my personal experience, and reading about deep work, this seems to be the limit a person has for working on a task.

Execution:

The question becomes, how do block your time effectively?

The way I've been doing it is by using 2 critical apps:
1. Using a timer to actually time out your work session (I use e.gg Timer - a simple countdown timer)
2. Cold Turkey blocker

Timer - this is straight forward, it provides you with a countdown timer. Anything like it will do.

Cold Turkey - this is the key to success. Use this app to block all the noise. You can schedule blocks if you're very disciplined with your day, or you can just turn the block on, but either way this will actually limit websites from loading on your browser.

Doing a session and have the urge to look at Facebook?

Can't, blocked by Cold Turkey.

Finding yourself ghost typing in zerohedge while writing?

Nope, not anymore.

Implementing this "productivity hack" has helped immensly with just getting the work done.

Hopefully this helps.

For the sake of credit, I got this idea from the Ikario team, but I thought it would be useful for this community too.

Thank you for this! I will use this info!

 

[Shono]

Cold Turkey.

I've heard of this app before, but what's stopping me from going into the settings and unblocking the website to use it? In fact addiction science specifically says the chase of the drug is a potent dopamine rush in itself, so putting roadblocks in front of what we are trying to use actually makes us more motivated to use it, so assuming its an addicting website we are blocking thats unproductive, how does cold turkey prevent us efficiently from accessing it? does it have an iron clad, impossible to get past setting once you commit to lets say, 'block for 1 hr.' etc ?

 

[Skroob]

I've heard of this app before, but what's stopping me from going into the settings and unblocking the website to use it? In fact addiction science specifically says the chase of the drug is a potent dopamine rush in itself, so putting roadblocks in front of what we are trying to use actually makes us more motivated to use it, so assuming its an addicting website we are blocking thats unproductive, how does cold turkey prevent us efficiently from accessing it? does it have an iron clad, impossible to get past setting once you commit to lets say, 'block for 1 hr.' etc ?

Nothing. This kind of blocker works great if you're accidentally wasting time by getting distracted, mind wandering, that sort of thing. If you're deliberately trying to go to Facebook, the blocker was never enough to stop you.

Related: I feel like I read somewhere that George RR Martin writes on an old school IBM PC running DOS and like WordStar or WordPerfect or something, to prevent himself from getting distracted. Clearly that's not working out for him.

 

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[SeeYouAtTheTop]

I've heard of this app before, but what's stopping me from going into the settings and unblocking the website to use it? In fact addiction science specifically says the chase of the drug is a potent dopamine rush in itself, so putting roadblocks in front of what we are trying to use actually makes us more motivated to use it, so assuming its an addicting website we are blocking thats unproductive, how does cold turkey prevent us efficiently from accessing it? does it have an iron clad, impossible to get past setting once you commit to lets say, 'block for 1 hr.' etc ?

Personally, I have it set up to block news and social networks during my work hours which is damn near impossible to break. I haven't been able to stop a scheduled block, but I also don't have a ton of browser programming experience.

I enjoy it because I don't get caught in the task-switching loop that sucks up time.

The point is to keep your environment as clean as possible to get into a deep work state, which includes limiting distractions.

 

[Roli]

I also like the pause app, it doesn't block, instead a calming green screen comes up with the word "pause". It then gives you 10 seconds to reevaluate your decision.

It's good because a lot of the time we engage in mindless clicking and pause brings your attention back to where it should be.

 

[Striver]

Great method! I am also working by following these rules, but I split my schedule into 50 minutes of deep focus and 10 minutes of rest. I use the Tree app, maybe you have heard about it. There, I turn on the deep focus mode, and I can't enter social media, etc.

For my employees, I use this tool for tracking staff performance. It sends me an automated report with how much time they spend on tasks, converting it into a productivity coefficient. This info helps me to reorganize my workflow process when needed.

 

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[NathanN]

Just came across this thread now. Such great info thanks. Social media and mindless scrolling can always be a killer for me throughout the day so the cold turkey is something im going to implement to my phone for sure.

 

[Hadrian]

I use the Freedom app and it works brilliantly! And BrainFM for Focus Music to get into the Flow state!

 

[michaelasg]

what I do when I have crazy times and really need to deliver fast something in a very short period of time

45 minutes work followed by 15 minutes power nap. feed time every 6-8 cycles. I can do this pretty much indefinitely. The longest time I followed this type of approach was when I decided to change a schedule for a project that had to be done either in 3 days or at "the end of summer". I decided to pick the short one and have a worry free summer away of anything.

It worked, sounds insane thou...

 

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