You will test a protected deep work routine for five working days and measure the result.
You now know what deep work is, why switching costs you, and how to structure a focused session. This exercise turns that into a routine and tests it for five working days. At the end, you'll have a log that shows what a protected hour a day produced, compared with a normal week. Allow about 30 minutes to set it up, then the blocks themselves through the week.
Pick a daily slot of at least one hour when you are least likely to be interrupted. Look back at your time map from lesson 1.4 and your switch count from lesson 4.2. When did the fewest messages and requests arrive? For many people it is first thing in the morning, before the team is fully online. For others it's late afternoon, once the meetings are over. Shift workers and parents with young children may find it is the hour after the children's bedtime.
Same time every day is best, because it becomes a habit sooner and your colleagues learn when to expect you offline. If your schedule makes that impossible, pick the best slot each day during your weekly planning and block it in advance.
Put the five blocks on your calendar now, labelled clearly, for example "Focus: campaign brief". Treat them as meetings with yourself.
A focus block works much better when the people around you know about it. Send a short message to your manager and the colleagues you work with most. It can be as simple as this:
"From Monday I'm trying a focus hour every day from 9 to 10am to get the campaign work moving. I'll be off Teams then. If anything is urgent, please call my mobile and I'll pick up."
Two things in that message matter. It says when, so people can plan around it. And it says how to reach you if something really can't wait, so nobody worries that you've disappeared. Asking people to call rather than message also makes them stop and decide whether the matter really is urgent, and many things turn out to be fine until 10am.
If your workplace culture makes this feel risky, start with your manager alone and frame it around the outcome you're both after. Communicate at work: writing, speaking and meetings, especially lesson 3.3, Agree how and when you update your manager, has more on how to set this up.
When the block starts, quit email and chat completely, since a minimised window still shows its badge. Turn on do not disturb on your laptop. Put your phone out of reach, ideally in a bag or another room, with only calls from your manager or family allowed through if you need that. Module 5 shows you how to set this up properly with focus modes.
Have a sheet of paper next to you for distractions, as in lesson 4.3, Work in focused sprints. Work on one task only, the most important one from your daily plan. Use pomodoros or a single long block, whichever suits the work.
At the end of each block, take two minutes to write a log entry with these columns: the date and time of the block, the task, what you finished or produced, the number of distractions you wrote down, and any interruption that broke the block.
The output column is the important one. Write something concrete: "first draft of sections 1 to 3, about 900 words" or "found the cause of the late deliveries on the Jurong route". At the end of the week you want to be able to see what the hour produced.
Marcus ran his trial from 10 to 11am, after the morning driver rush. On Monday he sorted last month's late deliveries by cause, with four distractions written down and no interruptions. Tuesday was the roster session with Siti, who drafted the roster herself while he watched; a warehouse call broke in once and he took it.
Wednesday's block was lost entirely to a customer escalation. On Thursday he went back to the late-delivery cases and found that most of them on two routes came from one loading bay, which was the finding he had been after. Friday went to Lina's appraisal comments, which took 45 minutes, and he used the rest of the hour to prepare for the meeting with the warehouse supervisor.
Four blocks out of five held. Compared with the previous week, when the late-delivery analysis did not move at all, he had a finding to bring to the supervisor.
On Friday, read the log back and write a few lines. Which blocks held, and what broke the ones that did not? Did the slot work, or would another time be better? What did the week produce that a normal week would not have? What will you change next week?
Marcus kept the 10am slot and added a rule: if an escalation takes the block, he moves it to 3pm the same day instead of losing it.
A finished trial is five days of log entries showing the slot, the task, distractions and output, plus a short note at the end on what you will keep and what you will change. Set up the blocks and send your message to the team, then start on Monday.
Run a daily deep work block for five days, log the output of each block, and write what you would keep or change.
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