Time management is one of my favorite topics. As someone who always tried to do everything (as a child I had at least two afternoon activities every day!) I realized early on that I must manage my time properly. Alongside the many methods I adopted and developed for multitasking, I always made sure to leave time for deep work. As product managers who are constantly in meetings and get questions from all around, this is critical.

One of my best tips for doing deep product work used to be to work from home. It was a countermeasure to the popular symptom of product managers doing their real work – market research, customer insights, backlog grooming, etc. – when the workday is over, since they couldn’t get to it during the day. To avoid that, I used to recommend that you disappear from the office for a day, or even half a day, and get your work done. No one will feel the impact of your absence this way (plus, it’s important work that other people will surely benefit from).

And then came COVID-19 and changed everything. Working from home is no longer a means to disconnect from the office hustle, it’s just another location that saves you the daily commute. If in the past it used to be a quiet place during the day, now perhaps your spouse works from home too, and your kids who got used to having their parents around during the day no longer remember that you were actually supposed to work and not be available for them. The lines have blurred. 

The world has changed, no doubt, but finding time for focused deep work is still key to your ability to manage your time properly and maintain the balance that is right for you to avoid burnout. The problem was that even when I decided to take the time to do deep work, I found it more difficult than ever to succeed. But since I’m taking my time seriously, I found a number of things that work for me and allow me to get into “focus mode” and do what I have to do. Writing this article, for example 😉

Here they are – my best tips for getting into and staying focused to get your important work done.

Find the Right Time of Day

I was never a morning person. Before I had kids I wouldn’t get out of bed before 9am. That’s why I found it very surprising that morning time seems to be the most productive time of day for me to do deep work. If I write my blog articles in the morning, it would take me significantly less time than if I do it in the late afternoon. 

I assume it is personal and changes from one person to another, although many people (myself included) seem to have the most productive time during morning hours. To find your most productive times, start to pay attention to your productivity levels during the day. You can try a few time slots that you think might work, and see which ones worked best for you.

Create Rituals to Begin and End Your Workday

With the lines being so blurry, it is important to clearly mark for yourself the beginning and end of your workday. In the morning, it helps you put everything home-related behind you, even if you clearly see in front of you home-related things that need to be done. At the end of the workday, it helps you leave work behind and truly be present in the time you allocated for other things.

The morning routine could be a walk around the block, a short physical exercise, or even drinking coffee and reading the daily newspaper. It needs to be distinctive, and not just slide from running the house straight to work. I usually take 30 minutes, and I can assure you this time pays off during the day in the overall work done due to greater productivity.

My favorite end-of-workday routine is a short retrospective: what did I get done today? What did I want to get done and couldn’t? What am I taking out of this for a more productive day tomorrow? Another great end-of-workday routine is to write down everything you still need to do. By writing it down, you allow your brain to stop worrying about it, and you know you will get to it the next day easily just by reading it.

These routines are meant to truly clear your mind at the end of the day so that you can stop thinking about work for a few hours, not just stop doing actual work as you schedule might dictate.

Define Specific Goals

As you know, I’m a big fan of defining clear, specific goals. I do it at the company level and at the personal level. I have weekly and daily goals, written down each day (so that I can get to them during the day when I have a few minutes and I’m not sure what do I really need to be working on right now).

But here I want to talk about a different type of goal: the goals you set for yourself when you are about to start a focused working session. Let’s say, for example, that you have now 2 full hours to work on your product strategy. That’s awesome and very important. But what are you actually looking to accomplish within these two hours? “Working on the product strategy” is way too vague. It is much better to define a more tangible goal. Maybe something like “having an initial direction to discuss with the CEO”, “writing down the full line of thought we created in the meeting yesterday”, or “preparing the skeleton of the strategy deck”. 

Specifying these tangible goals helps you twice: once because you can make sure it is indeed achievable within the time you allocated for it, and then because as you work you don’t get distracted by the other interpretations of “working on strategy” so that you can actually get to the outcome you need relatively quickly.

Onboard Yourself Into Focus

It’s hard to switch gears instantly and enter the zone of productive work immediately. Let’s acknowledge that and work with it (because that’s our reality, fighting it wouldn’t really work). 

As you are about to begin your few hours of focused work, start with your mind: other than the things you are about to work on, is there anything that you are worried about? Any thought that simply doesn’t let go? Identify them and leave them aside as much as possible. It could be a friend that you must talk to about something, something that you need to do, or someone who made you angry earlier today. What helps me to put these thoughts aside is to ask if there is anything I can do about it right now, and if so – do I choose to do it right now. In some cases, I would, but in most cases, I would choose to leave it for later. This deliberate decision is the one that allows me to stop thinking about it for the time being.

If your mind is clear but you are still not “into it”, try a quick exercise (one minute of jumping jacks for example), put on a song that you like and sing it out loud, or change where you work (go into a different room) – anything that would allow you again to quickly disconnect from the world out there and enter your productivity zone.

Disconnect

I know, easier said than done, but that’s the whole point. You can’t do deep work with constant notifications on your phone, laptop, and smartwatch. Make yourself deliberately not available for a while. Put everything on silent or even airplane mode, and put your phone away. Do not accept calls, meetings, slack inquiries, or anything else during that time. I found the Pomodoro method (below) quite helpful here too since it allows me to disconnect for a predefined, relatively short, period of time, which allows me to do it wholeheartedly.

If you are not alone at home, you might need to disconnect yourself physically as well (that was the whole point of working from home originally): close the door to your room or sit somewhere that won’t call for others to ping you.

You can also try other locations: I work quite well from coffee shops. I like the hustle around me, and I would occasionally have my earphones on to soothe the noise if needed. Not being physically at home goes a long way in focusing my attention on work and not other things.

Use the Pomodoro Method

When I first heard about the Pomodoro method I thought it was nonsense. I thought to myself “who are these crazy people who need to work with timers in order to get real work done”? I’m in the flow, leave me alone. But when I tried it – or perhaps when the world around me changed and made it much harder to focus otherwise – I found it very helpful.

In short, it’s a method that is based on short (25 minutes) sessions of deep focus, and then a 5 minute break, repeatedly. Turns out our brains work better this way. You can go like this for 2 or 3 hours, then you need a longer break – at least 30 minutes. During the breaks, don’t be tempted to get other work done. Let your mind wander. It needs it, we are not built for constant attention. 

I hope you will find these methods useful for you as much as they were for me. Your time and your mind are the most precious resources you have. Your company needs you to use them well, and these methods help with both. So go treat yourself with some productivity time!