After 6 weeks, I had enough.
Management left little time to work on my most ambitious project.
In my first month as a manager, I made little progress in the new premium member area. When I was promoted to manager, I estimated I was around 50% done.
A month later?
Maybe 10% more.
At this pace, it would take months to finish my project.
And that was not okay to me.
I knew deep inside that this project would change the paradigm for our team. Bringing new revenue would “buy” us time to work on other important things.
I had to finish it.
I had to find time to work on it.
But I knew the moment I stepped into the office, the fire-fighting would start.
Some days, I would get requests while drinking coffee, before even getting to my desk.
At this pace, it would take months to finish my project.
I needed some focused time during my day.
From a young age, I liked to do experiments with my life. Like try a new habit for 30 days and see if I liked it. Or change something during my day for a few days. That sort of thing. It was fun for me.
Maybe I could do the same with work?
So I came up with a simple experiment: I would ask my team to not interrupt me for 1 hour every day.
I talked it over with Noah and emphasized it was just an experiment, just 2 weeks. When I had his okay, I fired a quick email to my team:
“Hey team,
As you know, I’m working on the new premium member area.
I believe this project will be a game-changer for us.
I’d like to complete it this month.
This requires some deep focus time. Lately, I’ve had a hard time finding a long block of time to work on it during the day.
As an experiment, for the next 2 weeks, I will work from a conference room from 10 to 11 am. I’ll be off email and Slack for this period. I ask you to please not interrupt me during this time.
After that (okay, maybe after coffee ahah) I will devote all my attention to you.
Thank you ;)
Dan”
The next day, the experiment started.
Over the next two weeks, I made tremendous progress on my project.
To this day, I still use the concept from this simple experiment.
I call it “The Power Hour”: one uninterrupted hour of work per day where you work on your most important project.
It’s simple and it works.
Give it a try.
You might struggle for the first few days.
I’ll tell you why in my next email.