You know that incredible feeling you get when you're "in the zone", just blasting away tasks and kicking some serious project ass? When you get that "I'm so good at this, I love my job" feeling...

And then the phone vibrates, and the magic is over. Your focus dissipates like a dream, you reply to a message or a tweet; lol at a meme, delete that stupid newsletter you never open (unlike Breaking Freelance, that you love).

You come back to whatever you were doing with that dumb feeling of "uhhhh... where was I?" But it's hard to recapture the flow - just like getting back to the dream you were just flying in. I hate that.

I covered productivity topic in #010 - 🔕 Hacking Productivity - got some great replies on that one from some of the readers. Be sure to check it out if you missed that one!

I shared almost 20 things I do to keep productivity at a high, but there's one thing I do to get me over that hurdle of "I really need to do this now and must concentrate until I'm finished or else..."

The Void

I call this "going into the Void".

I have a small home office I can darken completely, so I do that. There's nothing in my view apart from my screen.

I turn off all the notifications on everything, put my phone on do-not-disturb so only my select few contacts can reach me if there's an emergency.

Drink water, do the toilet thing, don't be hungry. Do everything before you start, so there are no "internal" interruptions and excuses to stop.

I put on my noise-cancelling headphones - the best investment I did in 2019.

(I have Sennheiser PXC 550, if you're wondering, glorious reviews and currently (again) on 50% off) And play ambient music with no lyrics, so I don't get distracted by the songs that I know. Because before I know it, I'm doing a full-blown karaoke instead of working.

And then, I start.

Depending on the size of the task, I will aim to either do the complete work or if it's something big, I'll do a large chunk for about 90-120 minutes before taking a break.

I don't do this often. Mostly on Fridays, when I need to cram a week of procrastination into one day of work... 😅🔫

How does your work setup look like?

Send me a photo if you'd like - I'd love to see it.

Missed previous emails?

No problem, you can read them in 📜 Breaking Freelance Archive.

Cheers!

T.

Tom Kozacinski, sir Freelance-a-lot