Today we’re gonna optimize your productivity to get you more high-quality output in less time.

Deep work and productivity are both super-important for freelancers because they help you raise your Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) and create more time to work on your business instead of just in it.

This post was inspired by Camilo’s goals check-in today in the Accelerator community — seeing it made me appreciate that I haven’t yet talked to you about all my nerdy productivity hacks!

And so I bring you this first post – probably the first of many in the coming months/years – on the topic of productivity for freelancers and agency owners!

Preface:

The 4 Productivity Pillars

Most of the productivity wins I’ve enjoyed can be filed into one of 4 categories / pillars…

1. Focus
2. Organization
3. Automation
4. Prioritization

Today we’re focusing just on “Focus.” (See what I did there?)

Today’s Pillar — Pillar 1: Focus (Part 1)

If you’ve read / heard of Cal Newport’s Deep Work, you know the deal…

Less distractions + better focused energy = more, better work

Cal specifically defines “deep work” as:

“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit”

— Cal Newport’s definition of Deep Work

Today’s strategies are designed to help you maximize and extend your deep work.

Both IN your business (e.g. client work)…

And ON your business. (e.g. marketing, SOPs, scaling, etc.)

Let’s dive in!

---

4 Strategies for Deeper Focus

Today’s strategies at a glance…

Each Strategy, In Detail…

---

🔄 Strategy #1:

Cycle Between Deep Focus and “Deep Breaks.”

Don’t try to maintain intense focus for 3+ hours at a time. Cycle between intense focus and intense breaks (that don’t have phone/social media). I like 50-minute work cycles with 10-minute breaks.

In more detail…

If you try to focus deeply for too long, you’ll burn through your “focused energy stores.”

If you cycle your focus with regular breaks, you get more hours of intense focus in your day.

How to do it:

Common tools and approaches for cycling your deep focus are…

• The pomodoro technique
• Focusmate
• Focus app — this is what I use these days, along with sunsama. I love the “just 5 more minutes” feature and that it syncs between Mac + iPhone + Apple Watch
• Work cycles sheets

During your “deep breaks,” don’t check your email or mess around on your phone.

Instead, try to do something that gives your brain some “time off” and ideally has you looking at something far away.

Things I often like to do in my little 10 minute (50-10 work cycles) breaks:

• Making a specialty coffee pour-over — ideally with a nice single-origin anaerobic or Colombian thermal shock process, but you do you
• Pet Magpie
• X3 workout while looking out the window
• Taking out the trash
• Taking a short walk
• Stretching
• Meditation
• Pushups
• Burpees
• Vacuuming
• Dishes
• etc.

---

💯 Strategy #2:

Optimize Your Schedule for Your Energy

Every task you do requires a certain amount of energy, and affects your energy in an up/down way. Put the tasks that are important and require the most energy first in your day.

In more detail…

Every task you do can be rated on three energy continua / criteria…

• 🤏/🏋️‍♀️ — Required energy (in the form of creativity, willpower, fortitude, etc.)
• 🔺/😑/🔻 — How draining it is and how it affects your energy (up/neutral/down)
• 😍/🥱/🙀/😑 — Whether it’s fun, boring, scary, or meh (or some combo)

Some tasks require little energy (🤏), but are also boring (🥱) and bring my energy down. (🔻) — for example, checking email.

Other tasks, like planning curriculum for a new course, are mentally intensive and require a lot of energy (🏋️‍♀️) but are still generally energizing (🔺) and fun (😍) for me.

So with that in mind, which of these do you think should come first in my schedule?

• A — Inbox (🤏🥱🔻)
• B — Planning course curriculum (🏋️‍♀️🔺😍)

The answer is B.

With the 3 rating criteria we have here, it becomes clear that my inbox needs to go later in the day than my creative work, because it drains me of the energy I need in order to do that creative work.

If I start a day with my inbox, it carries a very real risk of jeopardizing my creative work for the day.

Where things get difficult…

Some tasks are scary (🙀), require a lot of energy (🏋️‍♀️) AND bring your energy down (🔻)!

(And are also very important to do.)

These ones are tricky, and in my mind are best to flag for when we focus on the “Prioritization” pillar in a future post.

We want to be careful not to fill our schedule up with these sorts of tasks, unless they’re things that really move the needle for our business growth and are worth the high energetic trade-off.

Assuming you determine that the “high energy required + draining” task is indeed a high priority for right now, I find it’s usually smart to schedule some “easy fun work” for after it.

💡 For example…

If I need to do some cold outreach (scary 🙀, boring 🥱, high fortitude required 🏋️‍♀️, draining 🔻) I might do some coding or design work afterwards (low energy required 🤏, fun 😍, energizing 🔺).

If I were to try to start my day with cold outreach and then do something intense afterwards, like writing, coaching, strategizing, or sales calls, I would find myself verrrrrrryyyyy drained at the end of the day.

(And likely wanting to seek out vices to self-soothe and relax.)

---

🗓️ Strategy #3:

Batch & Theme

Switching between different types of tasks is bad for productivity. Smush similar ones together and theme your days/week to get a productivity boost.

In more detail…

Every time you change what type of task you’re working on, you lose a little bit of productivity. It’s called context switching.

For example, I’m currently writing this on a Wednesday.

Wednesdays are awful for my deep work, because they’re my “Accelerator office hours” days + meeting days.

This post – which would normally take me about 2-3 hours to write – is on pace to take 5 hours or more because I’ve had to write it over the course of 3+ different sittings.

Easy way to upgrade your productivity: theme your days (or segments of the day) for certain types of tasks, and smush together similar ones in whatever way is best for your energy.

(In the case of the Accelerator, it’s a priority for me to make coaching calls available to students in all timezones, so the loss of deep work time is the sacrifice I make in order to fulfill that priority.)

But by being creative & intentional with my batching and theming, I can still find ways to create deep work time, even amidst the many coaching calls, podcast interviews, etc. that seem to find their way onto my calendar these days.

Below is what this ends up looking like in practice. (The gray blocks are my pre-planned day themes and the purple blocks are events on my calendar)

My big “calendar rules” that work well for me:

• Meetings as late in the day as possible, always
• Meetings smushed as back-to-back as possible
• No meetings / podcast interviews / etc. on Tuesdays or Thursdays EVER unless I can’t avoid it
• No more than 4 hrs of calls a day unless I can’t avoid it
• No more than 13 hrs of calls a week unless I can’t avoid it

I even made an SOP for adding events to my calendar because I’m so bad at following my own rules.

Steal it and tweak it if it please you. 🙂

---

📵 Strategy #4:

No Notifications in the Morning

As you allow more “inputs” into your brain, your focus goes down and distractibility goes up. Ruthlessly regulate your “inputs.”

In more detail…

Preserve your pristine “tabula rasa” attention — Don’t check notifications, email, slack, social media, etc. until 12pm or later.

(Bonus points for 2pm or later!)

This is also known as “limiting your inputs.”

Why do it:

All it takes is one…

• “Bad news email”
• “Small request” from a team member/client
• “Urgent fire to put out” message
• Upsetting/triggering/interesting social media post
• Interesting “learning rabbit hole” you accidentally fall down for a few hours

…to hijack your focus and attention and derail the rest of your day.

Different strategies to do it:

• Turn off your wifi and data on your phone before bed
• Lock your phone in a drawer
• Get an iPod / extra phone that you can use for “regular apps” and googling, but that doesn’t have any messaging or social apps installed
• Use tools like freedom.to to block apps
• Use tools like inbox when ready, newsfeed eradicator, meetEdgar, etc. if you absolutely need to go onto / use email/social platforms but want to stop them from stealing your attention
• Schedule “reactive time blocks” on your calendar to have standing times where you support your team / clients, vs. trickling it throughout the day whenever you have a free moment

I know that depending on your role/craft, this isn’t always possible.

And hoo-wee, do I know it isn’t easy even when it is possible.

(I’m now writing this part on Thursday morning and had SUCH a hard time not checking my inbox first thing this morning. (I’ve been very much in a reactive and message-answering place lately between manning the community and the DYF inbox.) The tension in my chest is real.)

But it’s also an absolute game-changer.

Do yourself a favor and just try it on 2 or 3 non-back-to-back work days.

(I do Tuesdays and Thursdays as my “deep work days,” so that’d be the best time for me personally to try something like this.)

Try it, and observe how it feels to do your creative work without the opinions of others floating around in your mind taking up space — you’ll be blown away by how much lighter you feel (once you can get past the anxiety of not checking your inbox, anyway 😅).

Start with a low “no notifications until xyz time” bar — maybe the first 2 hours of your day. And then gradually work to increase it once you see that your business didn’t burn down in that time. 🙂

---

❤️‍🔥 Take Action: Be Held Accountable

If you got some ideas from the list above but know you’ll struggle with actually doing this stuff, even when you know it’s useful, do the following…

This flow works incredibly well because none of us want to have to tell our partner, peer group, or mentor that we didn’t do what we said we’d do.

---

Next Steps:

By now, I bet you have some ideas for things you can do.

Pick one, and actually do it!

Productivity tips are useless if not implemented — follow the 5-step accountability process from above and get implementing!

Best of luck!

— Zach