I wonder if client meetings count as deep work.

They require my absolute presence.

We have very good deep discussions

because we organize our agendas to do that.

I'm Cal Newport and this is a deep questions,

habit-to-up mini episode. The format here of course is that we take

live questions from my listeners about tuning up their productivity habits in a time in which our

professional lives are increasingly disrupted.

As I record this I am sitting here with a sore back a back that is sore because I have been

nearly immobile in this chair here in my deep work HQ for the past three days.

That's because I was crashing a big deadline

that hit last night.

And I bring this up because I violated my own advice in these past three days.

I thought it might be instructive to briefly talk about it.

What I did is because I have this big deadline

is that I essentially dropped everything else. I did not do daily planning, including time blocks. I did not do my twice daily check-in on my taskboards and calendars to make sure that I have closed open loops and have

confidence that I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I did not do schedule

shutdowns. I just fell into this mindset which is common I think for a lot of people of this thing is due it's time consuming

I just want to rock and roll on it and get it done and I did and the things got done

But I don't think it was great that I had fallen a little bit on my standard habits because here is the reality. How much time would it have added to my day for example to have every day so let me

stand back let me look at my tasks as stored on my trello boards let me look at

my calendar let me look at my weekly plan let me

...