How Important It Is to Take the Time to Do Deep Work in Your Business. It’s important to set aside time to work on your business. Despite what we said in our last blog about this, if you don’t know what to do with this time, you might not get the benefits.
When you work on your business instead of in it, you should spend time dreaming, brainstorming, imagining, developing, continuing your education, reading, and making. There aren’t any things that are directly related to servicing clients in this. It doesn’t include things like billing, record-keeping, reaching out to clients, or other things. It doesn’t even involve taking care of your clients (i.e., conducting a session or a class). Working on your business includes all of the things you can do to grow, scale, or improve your business.
Here are some “big brain” activities that are sure to make a big difference for you. Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, came up with the term “deep work.” This type of work is called “deep work.”
There are many reasons why deep work isn’t given the attention it deserves, not the least of which is how important it is. “Deep” work is hard to put on or cross off a list, which makes it hard to fit into your daily to-dos. It takes a lot of concentration, focus, and uninterrupted time. It takes a lot of time to do deep work. This puts projects, tasks, and outreach on your to-do list.
I break down deep work into three broad categories:
Vision
“Forest”: I like to think of vision work as the 40,000-foot view of your business, or as the “forest.” For those of you who like David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, this is your Horizon 3, 4, and 5 projects. Working at this place could include brainstorming, dreaming, researching, or figuring out what the company needs to be more innovative and grow. Your business might need to move in a certain direction, or you might be thinking about a project or job you want to do in your business. If it’s creative, operational, or somewhere in between, then it could be interesting or useful. Seeing the big picture comes before and leads to strategic work.
Strategy
Strategy work is making a plan to make your dreams come true. My favorite way to think about this is to call it “planning work.” It’s often hard to figure out all the steps, resources, or knowledge you might need to make something happen, like a big project or writing a blog. It’s easier to finish a project when you give yourself enough time to think about it from all angles and figure out how to do it well.
Creative
Creative work is the time you spend building everything on your road map. You use the planning you did during strategy sessions to make your vision come true, making your dream come true. Creative work can be shown in a variety of ways:
