We all have busy lives and many times cannot find the time to do things without getting interrupted. This reminded me of an example in the book Deep Work which I find fascinating and that we can all learn from. 

Consider the example of Brian Chappell, the busy doctoral candidate I introduced in the opening to this strategy. Chappell adopted the rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling out of necessity. Around the time that he was ramping up his dissertation writing he was offered a full-time job at a center on the campus where he was a student. Professionally, this was a good opportunity and Chappell was happy to accept it. But academically, a full-time job, especially when coupled with the recent arrival of Chappell’s first child, made it difficult to find the depth needed to write thesis chapters.

Chappell began by attempting a vague commitment to deep work. He made a rule that deep work needed to happen in ninety-minute chunks (recognizing correctly that it takes time to ease into a state of concentration) and he decided he would try to schedule these chunks in an ad hoc manner whenever appropriate openings in his schedule arose. Not surprisingly, this strategy didn’t yield much productivity. In a dissertation boot camp Chappell had attended the year before, he’d managed to produce a full thesis chapter in a single week of rigorous deep work. After he accepted his full-time job, he managed to produce only a single additional chapter in the entire first year he was working.

It was the glacial writing progress during this year that drove Chappell to embrace the rhythmic method. He made a rule that he would wake up and start working by five thirty every morning. He would then work until seven thirty, make breakfast, and go to work already done with his dissertation obligations for the day. Pleased by early progress, he soon pushed his wake-up time to four forty-five to squeeze out even more morning depth.

When I interviewed Chappell for this book, he described his rhythmic approach to deep work scheduling as “both astronomically productive and guilt free.” His routine was producing four to five pages of academic prose per day and was capable of generating drafts of thesis chapters at a rate of one chapter every two or three weeks: a phenomenal output for someone who also worked a nine-to-five job. “Who’s to say that I can’t be that prolific?” he concluded. “Why not me?”