How cultivating "Ultrafocus" will double what you accomplish each week

During our workdays, we engage in two distinct types of work: focus work and collaborative work.

Focus work is most productive when we give it our undivided attention. It includes creating concepts or plans, writing reports or papers, learning new skills, performing complex analyses, programming and numerous other "maker" tasks.

Collaborative work, on the other hand, requires interaction with others. It involves attending meetings and calls, reading and writing emails and group chat messages, brainstorming collaboratively, leading co-workers, and many other "manager" tasks.

Modern knowledge work, it turns out, is very collaborative. For example, before the Covid-19 pandemic, knowledge workers spent 70-85% of their time on collaboration and were interrupted on average 50 to 60 times per day.

However, with the pandemic, video meetings became the "new normal," and knowledge workers were forced to put in an additional seven hours of meetings into their schedules each week – up from 14.2 hours in February 2020 to 21.5 hours in November 2021.

To manage all the collaboration and interruptions from meetings as well as emails and group chat messages, many of us try to multitask throughout the day. However, this is not only a very ineffective strategy. In humans, multitasking doesn't even exist.

The myth of multitasking

The term multitasking was coined by computer scientists in the 1960s to describe the ability of machines with multiple processors to perform more than one task simultaneously.

However, unlike machines, humans do not possess multiple processors. While we can do two things at the same time when performing habitual tasks that don't require any real processing power – like talking on the phone while walking – we're not computers. Therefore, we can’t multitask when doing demanding tasks. In short, multitasking is impossible for anyone who has a brain.

What we call multitasking is actually rapid task switching, where we switch back and forth between doing different things. While that might feel productive in the moment, research shows that it’s a really bad idea. Here's why.

First, task switching can significantly reduce our efficiency. Even brief interruptions can add up to enormous delays. In one of her studies, attention expert Gloria Mark cites evidence that work takes a whopping 50% longer when we're continually switching tasks. One reason is that it takes an average of more than 23 minutes to get back to a task after switching our attention away from it.

Second, trying to multitask comes with significantly higher amounts of stress. Frequent task switching leads to higher levels of frustration, mental effort, and feeling of time pressure. According to Mark, switching tasks throughout the workday leaves us constantly feeling unable to keep up. On top of that, another study found that it even makes us more prone to anxiety and depression.

Third, constant switching destroys our ability to focus deeply at work. As Mark has found, we switch tasks about every three minutes, with half of these switches being self-interruptions. This means that uninterrupted time is a rare luxury in the modern working world. As Johann Hari describes in his excellent book "Stolen Focus", most of us never get an hour without being interrupted at work. This applies across company hierarchies: The average CEO of a Fortune 500 company, it turns out, gets only 28 (!) uninterrupted minutes a day.

Don't get me wrong. Collaboration is important. The Raison d'être of organizations, after all, is that people can accomplish things together that they cannot do on their own. Collaboration enables employees to craft jobs with greater meaning, and organizations to serve their demanding clients better. The problem is not collaboration per se, but constant switching throughout the day. Fortunately, there's a better way, and all that it takes is 90 minutes a day. Here's why.

Why it all comes to 90 minutes

In a predominantly collaborative working world, spending much of your time — let alone most of it — in a state of deep focus is neither desirable nor possible.

Here's the good news: You don't have to. According to a study by McKinsey, the average knowledge worker spends only 5% of their time in the deeply focused "flow state". That's just two hours out of a 40-hour week, or 24 minutes a day. As we're switching tasks about every three minutes on average, this shouldn't come as a surprise.

Now, the researchers at McKinsey also found that we're much more productive when we're deeply focused – by a whopping 500%. Moreover, they calculated that bringing up the share of deep focus from 5% to 15-20% increases our overall productivity by almost 100%. In other words, you can roughly double what you accomplish each week by including just one 60-90-minute session of deep focus each day.

Doing this is attainable even for the busiest knowledge workers. As productivity expert Tony Schwartz wrote in an article: "Don't default to victim mode and tell yourself your company won't let you do it. Build at least one period of uninterrupted focus each day for 60 to 90 minutes and see how much more you get done”.

If you want to pull that off, cultivate "Ultrafocus" – my approach for tackling your most important work of the day in a highly focused state, even on a busy schedule. Here's how.

How to cultivate Ultrafocus

My approach includes three domains: planning and timing, minimizing distraction, and maximizing focus.

In my upcoming book "Ultraproductive", I describe many science-based and battle-tested practices across these domains. Here are six of them to help you start cultivating "Ultrafocus":

Planning & Timing
Merely putting a challenging focus task on your to-do list won’t work. There’s always some seemingly more urgent (and less challenging) task you could do instead and cross of your list. Here are two tips for avoiding this trap:1) Realistically schedule your “Ultrafocus” session on your calendar, taking into account your chronotype and the professional and private demands on your time: For the 75% of us who aren’t night owls, “Ultrafocus” is best done in the morning — ideally even before checking email or group chat.

2) Set a clear goal for your “Ultrafocus” session, such as "finish the plan" or "create the first draft of the presentation" before starting. This will create a sense of urgency and make staying motivated throughout the session a lot easier.

Minimizing Distractions
Focusing deeply for 60 to 90 minutes at a time is hard, so don't make it harder for yourself – and minimize distractions upfront, especially those from your devices. Here are some simple tips for doing so:

1) Minimize distractions from your computer. If you need to do online research for your focused work, do it before you start. As most distractions come from being online, turn off the internet. If that's not possible, shut down your email, group chat, and all other programs that are not necessary for your focus work.

2) Minimize distractions on your smartphone. Turn off notifications that you don't need to see the second they come in (ideally, that should be all of them). Unmute your smartphone so people can still call you in urgent situations. Last but not least, put your smartphone out of reach, ideally into another room.

Maximizing Focus
According to Gloria Mark, "[…] simply looking at how we can break off external interruptions really only solves half the problem." Instead, once we sit down to focus deeply, we must deal with the urges from within us to stop or distract ourselves. Here's how:

1) Use focus tools like Freedom to avoid accidentally distracting yourself. You can adjust the length of your focus session based on your available time (e.g., 45 minutes instead of 60-90 minutes). You can also edit your blocklists by including (i.e., "blacklisting") your favorite go-to website, or by excluding (i.e., "whitelisting") ones that you might need for your focus work.

2) Use my Pomodoro 2.0 technique to overcome the initial resistance to challenging focus work. Start by setting a timer for 30 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, decide whether to continue for another 15 to 60 minutes — and then reset the timer. Nine out of ten times, you'll end up extending your session. And after 45 to 90 minutes, you'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish in such a short amount of time.

TL;DR

1) What we call multitasking is actually rapid task switching, which reduces our efficiency, leads to higher stress levels, and destroys our ability to focus deeply at work.

2) Instead of trying to multitask throughout your day, cultivate "Ultrafocus" by tackling your most important work in a highly focused state for 60-90 minutes each day.

3) To cultivate "Ultrafocus", be deliberate about planning and timing, minimizing distractions, and maximizing focus: Realistically schedule your session on your calendar, set a clear goal upfront, minimize distractions from your devices, and use tools (like Freedom) and techniques (like the Pomodoro 2.0) to maximize focus throughout the session.

Here's a challenge for you: Pick one challenging focus task you want to accomplish — and "Ultrafocus" on it for 60-90 minutes on the next workday. Also, let me know how it went.

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Until next week,
Christian