I am a bit of a productivity nerd, so whenever I stumble over a new tool or process, I try it out, or sign up for their email sequence. That’s how I ended up receiving daily (sometimes more) emails about focus blocks, an accountability strategy organised by Mani Vaia.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I am not the target audience. I’ve been optimising my work existence for most of my life, using time, energy level (hello monthly cycle) and the presence of my kids as input criteria to prioritise and decide how and what to work on.

And there’s no way you are going to find me at 7 am roaring to start my work day. I’ll be more likely to prepare lunch boxes, getting ready for school drop-off.

Specific times aside, what do you see missing here. Might there be another reason for the person to be distracted by social media?

To be honest, I don’t really see a task for the 7 am time slot. “Finish Project A” is too broad for most of our monkey brains.

Especially as the first order of the day.

So, while focused working can be transformational for your work, you first need to get clear on what exactly you should be working on!

This is especially important when you want to get things done in between kids’ schedules, while not quite awake just yet, or after sunset.

So, before you commit to focusing for an entire hour (or, my pomodoro friends, 25 min), define what you want to focus on.

Too difficult?

Define the first easy step towards working on your task. Something so easy that ignoring it would feel kind of… ridiculous.

To stay with the example above, what does it mean to finish Project A within the next hour?

Or, to borrow from product language: What’s the deliverable? What does “done” look like?

Let’s say you need to write up a summary of all the findings to be sent to the client. That’s the outcome.

That report, that’s the “done” version of this task.

It may take an hour, it may take more or less. But now you know what exactly you are working towards.

So then, what’s the first small, easy, step?

Opening up a document to write the report.

Sounds too easy? THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT!

You want the first step to be SO EASY that even you can’t come up with an excuse as to why you did not do it.

(Oh, and maybe you’ll activate Freedom to make sure the internet can’t distract you.)

Now, you are ready to start working on this final task to finish the project.

You’ve defined the outcome (the finish line, so to say). And you know how to start.

Off you go!

And of course, you still may have to combat some of those distractions. Clarity of purpose makes it a lot easier though.

So - what are you trying to achieve today? And what’s the easiest next step?