They hired you for your skills in strategy, your ability to grasp the big picture, your track record in business transformation. And then you find yourself spending all your time managing issues, in meetings that don’t seem to deliver anything, and dealing with the small stuff. Sound familiar?

I know it’s a familiar reframe from the people I coach. They tell me about all the demands they have and how little time they have to work on their priorities. And it’s a situation I’m familiar with firsthand. As an executive, I found it ironic that I had to try to fit my strategic work into tiny gaps in the day, or into my nights and weekends. Often it just didn’t get done because the urgent tasks took over.

There’s been a long history of management and self-improvement gurus who’ve looked at this issue. How to shift your focus from the small things that consume daily life towards the things that really matter. Steven Covey’s offered us a four-quadrant take of urgent and important vs non-urgent and not-important work made popular in the classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (a book I still reread from time to time). David Allen offers us the Getting Things Done methodology that helps you trap every action you need to do and manage it accordingly. And many more have added their voices through values-led leadership, goal-driven activity and more.

One of the most recent to enter the arena is Cal Newport. He’s a professor of computing science at Georgetown University, well published in his field and author of a popular book on the value of skill (over passion) in the modern workplace. His take is that focus is the new IQ in the modern workplace.

Cal Newport’s most recent book is Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. He contends that we should all spend more time in deep work: work that requires focus without distraction, which allows you to master complicated information and, ultimately, create insight and produce new ideas. How do we do that? Basically by reducing the amount of time we spend on “shallow work”—meetings, emails, social media, and so on—and building our “deep work” muscle by taking it seriously. What is deep work? Anything that requires our unbroken focus to make breakthroughs.

Wading out of the shallows

Let’s look at the first part of that equation. How to we reduce our shallow work? Most people I have coached or work with think this is impossible, so much so in some cases they don’t think it’s worth trying. But while it can be contentious, it can be done. In fact, it needs to be done so we can secure the big changes we want to see.

Newport suggests:

  • Turning off social media: first take a month-long website fast to observe the impact NOT being in contact has. Then work out which of the websites that you trawl through regularly really work for you and ruthlessly ditch the ones that are not valuable to you. Now, I’m pretty much a non-social media site user. But I do have lots of emails, a fondness for news sites and a few blogs I spend way too long on. My advice is to think broadly about your use of devices: how many news sites do you need? Do you really need to play games when you are waiting? How many blogs really deliver something worthwhile for you? Do you need to spend time “virtually” shopping and not buying anything? Are these activities really delivering the return you want?
  • Putting more thought into your down time; instead of just squandering it, fill it would things that are valuable to you. Your down time can drain or replenish you. Doing things that are nurturing—whether exercising, reading, drawing or working on your obscure hobby—can fill you in a way that endless episodes of Game of Thrones are unlikely to do.
  • Being thoughtful with time. Or, if you prefer, manage your time as tightly as you would manage your budget. If you schedule every minute of the day (and, when things go off kilter, reschedule it) then you can operate more efficiently. One experiment Newport tried was scheduling everything in blocks. Block out the time you will do the “shallow” work, like emails and small tasks. Don’t let yourself do any small task as a one-off, but only in scheduled shallow time. And when things go off kilter (which we all know they will) just pause and do a quick reschedule of the day. That way you are in control, not being controlled.

Flexing our deep work muscle

How about building our “deep work” muscle?

Well, the first step, like in any exercise program, is to not wait for motivation to hit but instead to add rules and rituals that minimise the amount of willpower you need to move into unbroken concentration: basically, you are trying to make deep work into a habit. There are a few important steps in setting up these new habits:

  • You need to understand how much time you need (and can schedule) for deep work. Can you disappear for a week or two at a time? (I know I’ve never had a job where I could.) Can you disappear for a day? How about schedule the same time every single day to do the work that matters (say early mornings)? Or, are you so disciplined that if you had hour or two hour chunks of time mapped into your diary you could drop into those times when they were there?
  • You may have success with what Newport calls “grand gestures”. Many writers practice this, when they lock themselves away on retreat to really focus on progressing their work. Newport’s story of a man who found he worked really well on a plane away from pressing daily demands resonated with me; when he needed to deliver a book outline, he booked a business class ticket to Japan to have that quiet and unbroken time. So maybe that is a bit drastic, but I found that travelling to interstate meetings was ideal time to think strategically. For you it may be sitting and watching the horizon for a while, or taking your team offsite to work on challenging issues. These may not be everyday strategies, but it’s good to have them in reserve.
  • Execute your strategy like a business. Keep track of the hours you spend in deep work. Literally build a scorecard and record it.
  • And get some downtime. There is no research showing that we can be effective when working 12+ hours a day. And nothing that backs our ability to focus when we are tired and without downtime. On the contrary, downtime helps to recharge our energy to work deeply.

Once you create the space for deep work (and guard it, obviously) you need to practice focus. You have probably found yourself producing incredible work when set impossible deadlines? Short deadlines can create the conditions for incredible focus. So set yourself short deadlines for the big things you have on your plate and see if you can break through. Be structured about how you attack your problem. For example, first review the relevant problem variables, then define your next step questions (so you don’t engage in looping around the problem) and thirdly, consolidate your gains by reviewing any answers you may have to your next step questions.

Is it achievable?

I can hear the objections: managing every minute of every day just doesn’t sound like fun; I like to just watch mindless TV when I get home—it’s relaxing; I just have too much on; I plan but something always goes wrong.

I’ve been putting into place many of the strategies Newport suggests, and I have to say, even though I don’t like some of them (like cutting down my idle reading time), I do like the results. I’m producing more, aligning my time with the results I want to achieve and starting to see some new ideas coming through. I’m persuaded enough to keep trying.

I guess it all comes down to the question: do you want to be victim to others choosing how you spend your time—and therefore find yourself spending it in shallow work that isn’t meaningful—or do you want to do work that matters?