The kids are away with Cara to a family gathering, and I’m here at home in the garden room – I’m about to start writing an essay for uni. The mission for the next few hours is to write my first shitty draft, and to do it without any distraction or break…just write until I’m done, and it doesn’t matter how shit...

“Your time is more valuable now than ever” This is what someone in my team said to me a few weeks ago – and my first thought was…my time has always been valuable! But, because I’ve reduced my working hours by 40%, there is a perception that the value of my time has changed somehow. And it’s exactly the perception I...

Often times, my motivation to do deep work comes from what’s at stake. What I mean is, what am I a) missing out on or b) what could happen if I don’t do the work.  For example, today I’m at the library and it’s the middle of the school holidays (we’re off work for a week). Cara and I agreed...

I thought I’d write for you a mini-series about the decision to work part time in professional services. It heavily overlaps with the Deep Work topic, so I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.  If you have any questions, email me at chrismarr@hey.com.  I’m not sure how many parts there will be…perhaps I’ll continue it for 6 months or so as I...

I find it hard to discipline myself with iPhone apps like instagram, twitter and even LinkedIn.  I go looking for distractions. And I never feel good about it. To break myself out of the unhealthy habit of scrolling endlessly, what works for me is simply deleting the apps from my phone.  As a better alternative, I’m working myself into to...

From 3rd April 2023 I will be working part time hours in my job at IMPACT.  This was a deliberate decision made by me, and influenced by many factors that I’ll go into more detail about in a future note (if you have questions, email me about them…it’ll help me explain my decision).  What’s relevant to this Deep Work blog...

My good friend Scott was asking me about Deep Work by Cal Newport the other day, and so I looked out the book to re-read it. I’m about 150 pages into the book and it still feels so incredibly important for the work I do today. There’s no question I’ve slipped with my Deep Work practices, and I want to...

The last time I sat down to write and research my book was a month ago. I’ve been here before, but yet there’s always a brief initial disbelief – “has it really been a month?” A few thoughts: I can’t see what the final ‘product’ looks like right now. I’m in this messy period of conflicting ideas, which is really just a perfectionist...

When I feel like I want to go to a cafe to do my writing I know immediately that the whole idea is a distraction (Resistance), and the best thing I can do is sit down at my desk and get on with it. But not today. I just HAD to get out of the house. Our landlord is coming...

I had to rearrange my commitment to this project last week due to last minute child care arrangements. As a result, no time has been clocked for this project since 3rd June.  Instead, I spent a lot of time with Spencer and Luna – we went to the local zoo and spent time playing in the park and enjoying the...

It’s 10:30am and I’m ready to get out for a walk and clear my head.  I was a little all over the place today.  I thought the best place for me to start was by looking through all my writing so far and really think about how to make it relevant to the project. Initially, this started off as a...

Perfectionism is telling me there’s only one way to do this. There’s only one plan. It’s this way or not at all. It’s all or nothing. There’s no middle ground. I hate how perfectionism shows up for me. It really does hold me back. It’s probably at the root of most bad days I have. I’ve written about here (2018) and more...