I have read at least 50 biography, from Napoleon , to Jeff Bezos
, read dozens of productivity & self help books- from Tim Ferris to Cal Newport & heard countless podcasts, from Andrew Huberman to Founders – in search of how the best of the best do their focused work. I have borrowed many habits, routines, strategies from those books, podcasts- and did countless experiments myself , to form my set of rules for focused work .
I will be sharing few of my rules for doing focused work. This will be a 2 part series. Here are today’s 3 rules :
1) 𝟕 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩:
As Matthew Walker, world’s most renowned sleep scientist says in his “why we sleep” book , The percentage of people that can function with perfect physiology – with less than 7 hours of sleep,(rounded to a whole number ) is ZERO.
I really try to prioritize , 7 hours of sleep- before everything else.
Time and time again- I have seen , every rule of focused work or productivity gets thrown out of the window , if I have under-slept the night before. If i sleep less, i lose my ability to focus, my mind becomes a monkey mind that jumps from here to there . 7 hour of uninterrupted sleep at night , is the bedrock upon which I can perform focused work the next day. If anyday, I have less than 7 hours of sleep- I try to have a 30 minute nap, either during the commute or after lunch at work.
2) 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞:
I try to do my most focused work, in a block of 2 hour sessions. I try to have, 2 such sessions in a day. These are the times, that i do the most cognitively challenging works, like reading a specification sheet, or debugging a complex system to find a root cause of a bug, or proof-reading a script that is optimized for audience retention, or practicing a difficult sleight of hand magic move till it becomes a muscle memory.
I try, to block out other things, to make room for 2 such sessions a day. In a typical such session, i work for 30 minute at a time , then walk for a couple of minutes or have some water – then work again- till i am exhausted, which is around 2 hour .
Doing work , at a stretch in a 2 hour period , rather than 10 minute at a time for many times- really helps to tame the beast, which is to go deeper in a given topic. Also, once i get in the flow, 2 hour passes by in like 2 minutes- and i can get so many things done . Else, i get lost in the see of context switching and distractions .
3)𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞:
Jack Ma , famously said – If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one. After you have picked one, then you focus on the next one. But, if you try to catch all of them at once- you will catch no one.
This Jack Ma wisdom has stayed with me for a long time. For doing focused deep work, less is more.
There are 2 type of implication of this minimalism, for me- one is daily, another is monthly or quarterly .
The daily implication is:
The longer the todo lists or the higher the variations among the tasks to get done – in a day ,i find the higher the chances I will lose focus and do subpar work. So, keeping the daily to-do list very short, really helps me to put all my focus on doing one or two things really well.
The longer monthly/quarterly implication is, i only try to pick one thing for every month/ quarter – for which, i try to really excel and improve . Apart from this, i have tens of other mundane things going in my life- as well, but – most of those are not things i aspire to be world class at, hence- i can get away putting 20% effort to get 80% of the result & be happy with maintenance or slow improvements over time.
But, the number of things I really try to master for next few months- is generally not 5 things, not even 2 things- it is always one thing at a time.
Keeping the focus on only thing at a time , has worked surprisingly well for me. I was humbled to get one of the highest national accolade for magic , for 1 month of focused effort. I went from being a programming noob to a decent competitive programmer- in a year , worth of doing programming competition everyday . I bagged my first local powerlifting trophy, in a month of focused training .
I cleared, CISSP, the most difficult cyber security certification exam in first attempt , in 2 months of effort, which often takes years of effort for many veteran infosec professionals . None, of these, or any of my small accolades- would ever happen , had I not focused on only one thing at a time. It is astonishing, how much one can get done- in 6 months of focused effort.

These rules have worked for me- may not work for everyone. But, feel free to steal these and experiment .
(Hope to write, a second part, with another 3 rule that I follow )