The Power of One Focused Hour a Day
We all complain about lack of time. But our perceptions of time are largely illusions.
And one of the biggest of those illusions is the relationship between time and our ability to create value. We can do far more in a far shorter about of time than we think. What matters more than just about anything else is your intensity of focus.
With just one focused hour a day of deep work, we can see exponential results from our efforts.
Here’s how:
Plan Your Days the Night Before Planning your day the night increases your productivity. You‘ll preserve willpower by making decisions about how to spend your day in advance
Make Sure Your Creation Time is Uninterrupted Your one hour must be uninterrupted. Turn off all notifications, put your phone in airplane mode or leave it out the room altogether. Say no to everything other than your essential priorities
Get Into Flow One focused hour works so well because it produces flow. You can hack flow by single-tasking and by paying attention to patterns. Focus on one thing for 30 minutes, put on some headphones with an instrumental track on repeat and you’ll hit flow pretty regularly. And find similarities between the days that you experience flow and replicate those on a regular basis
Don’t Start Your Day on the Internet Starting your day on the internet damages your brain, training it to be distracted. Allocate the earliest part of your morning for a focused hour of uninterrupted creation time
Use Your Calendar The easiest ways to make the time for your focused hour is to download the Google Calendar app and use the feature called “goals” that allows you to pick a goal and tell it for how long, what time of day and how many times a week you want to work on that goal. The app finds the time on your calendar and schedules it. Set it and forget it. Now you have a constant reminder of the goal you’re working on
Make Sure You’re Well Rested Being well-rested makes a huge difference in your ability to focus for an hour
One focused hour a day is the equivalent of having two full weeks to work on whatever it is you want.
In one focused hour a day you could write a book, build a company, learn an instrument and so much more.