Creating the space for your team to focus
It’s circa 2009. I’m a contractor for a major telecoms company, leading one of their smaller development teams.
It’s a normal day until my Boss — the Head of Digital — taps me on the shoulder.
“Matt, would you come into a session with us please?”
“Uh… Sure.”
I do my best to look relaxed, but my heart rate is climbing. I know that the company isn’t meeting its digital goals. My small team would be an easy target. My heart rate clicks up another notch.
I like this job. I need this job.
When we reach his office, I can see another senior manager inside. There’s nothing normal about this.
“Take a seat,” my Boss says. “We want to talk about what it is you’re doing?”
“Uh, this week’s sprint is to—”
“No.” He leans forward, cutting me off. “We want to know why your team… of five… is outperforming all of our others.”
What I learned from Tim Ferriss
In my article on ownership, I said this about the responsibility of leaders:
If we want our teams to take ownership seriously, we need to give them the time and space to do it. That’s easy to type in an article, of course, but it is infinitely harder to do.
We all know why. The world of work has only gotten louder. When I first read The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, I remember being impressed with—and implementing—his email autoresponder strategy. My responder at the time read something like:
Hi there,
Thanks for your email. In order to focus on work, I check my emails at 11.30am and 4.30pm. If your message is urgent, please call me on XXXX XXX XXX.
Thanks, Matt.
Twenty years later, the simplicity of this seems almost quaint. Back then, all I had was email and phone. These days, I have email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, Figma, and Calendar notifications. Many of these involve multiple accounts for different clients.
And yet, the simple premise of Ferriss’s argument holds. If we want to improve our productivity and focus, we need to batch our tasks.
The 2% difference that makes the difference
The two managers study me from across the table, the challenge still hanging in the air.
“We want to know why your team is outperforming all of our others.”
I smile. I can’t help myself as the tension washes out of my body. “Are we? That’s great.”
My Boss makes a face. “It’s good for you, it’s not so good for everyone else unless we can figure out what you are doing differently.”
I nod. “Okay, tell me what they are doing?”
Over the next few minutes we go over how the other teams operate. It’s standard stuff. Standups. Sprints. All that. In fact, ninety-eight percent of it is exactly what we’re doing in my team.
And yet, the 2% difference stuck out like the crack in a phone screen.
“They have no time to focus,” I say.
How much work can you do in a day?
The answer, of course, is it depends.
In my view, the typical 8-hour day allows for 4.5 hours of focused work, but only if the day is set up correctly. Most people and companies manage far less. Instead of focused work, they peck and scratch at projects between incessant interruptions.
The 2% difference that made all the difference to my team’s performance was simple. I batched as many of the “interruptions” as possible into specific parts of the day.
In recent years, authors like Cal Newport and Nir Eyal have popularised this concept as Timeboxing, but I simply thought of it as clearing the decks so we could do what we were paid to do. Deliver.
The psychological principle behind timeboxing is Implementation Intention. When we set aside specific time to do something, we are far more likely to do it.
How we structure our day to optimise focus
For the teams I lead, the goal is to catch all the communication and interruptions into the morning.
In practice, this batching means:
9am-midday: Meetings & Collaboration
The first few hours of the day are reserved for standups, pull requests, stakeholder discussions, and “office hours”. The goal is to remove blockers and ensure that everyone has everything they need to do their 4-5 hours of focused work.1pm onwards: Focused Work
Once collaboration is over, leave people alone to do what they need to do.
That’s it. Like I said, the core of this is very simple. The biggest pushback I get is that this is too simplistic… that life doesn’t really work this way.
And often, those people are right.
Implementing focus time can be difficult, especially in environments where interruptions are the norm. But this isn’t about slavish adherence. It’s about creating a meaningful default that works to everyone’s benefit, especially the clients’. Yes, sometimes you’ll have to take a call in the afternoon. That’s no reason to be ruled by a tsunami of noise.
Baby steps towards a focused work schedule
Setting up any new behaviour is hard. Here are some simple steps I’ve used to help teams move towards the goal:
Educate teams and stakeholders – Communicate the benefits of deep work (for everyone) and set clear expectations so everyone knows where they are.
Don’t start focused work until everyone has what they need – Ensure that morning meetings provide all the necessary information to make deep work sessions productive.
Use calendar blocking – Set visible “Do Not Disturb” times in team calendars to reinforce focus hours.
Encourage ownership – Empower product owners and leadership to shield developers and designers from unnecessary distractions.
Be role aware – Some roles are inherently outward-facing and benefit from longer “collaboration windows”. (That’s fine… These are often the roles that protect the core team from endless distractions.)
Don’t just try it. Make it your default.
Based on long experience, here’s what I predict will happen when you try to prioritise time for focused work:
It will be hard and you’ll get some grumbling.
The team will quickly grow to like it (the clients might take a little longer).
You’ll get more done with less stress. You’ll be over the hump.
Something will derail the whole endeavour.
You’ll be tempted to go back to the way things were (after all, it’s just easier).
That last point is the danger zone because real behaviour change is hard. It’s not about the start — because we all like shiny new things — it’s about getting back on the digital horse when you get knocked off.
I’ve failed at this often. Stuff happens, especially when you are dealing with large, complex projects. I’m often pulled out of focus, but that’s not my default.
My default is space, focus, and delivery. My goal is to have more good days than bad days. Because — trust me — good days compound.
By prioritizing deep work, your team will significantly enhance their productivity and impact. I know that from long experience… and our clients know it too.
Structured focus beats scattered multitasking every day of the week.
