How To Get Into Flow and Complete Your Work In 4 Hours

“I wish I had more hours in the day.”

"I wish I had more time."

How many times have we said that to ourselves?

I said that more times than I can count back in university.

I was spread thin between academics, my business and other university commitments.

And since it was my final year, everything university-related took priority.

But this caused a problem.

The more time I invested in university, the less time I had for the business.

Because I wanted my business to grow, I made the most of the time I had, but it wasn’t enough.

I kept wishing I had more time, more time and more time.

But wishing for more time didn’t mean I was getting it, so I needed to change my thinking.

Instead of focusing on my little time, I asked myself, “How can I make the most of the time I have?”

And this changed everything.

Whether you’re working a 9-5, running a business or juggling life priorities and want to get more work in 4 hours, this newsletter will show you how, so let’s get into it.

“I’ll Just Work More”

Many of us have been brought up believing you need to work long hours to achieve success.

Many entrepreneurs have this belief.

They believe they will only succeed by working 10 - 12 hour days, sacrificing weekends and always being on.

If you haven’t experienced it yourself, long work hours often lead to exhaustion, decision fatigue and in the long term, burnout.

All these compound and push you beyond your mental limits.

This leads to a decrease in efficiency and work quality.

When your efficiency and work quality decrease and add more hours to make up for it, you perpetuate a cycle that leaves you with less every time.

Busy, shallow work becomes a stable part of your working hours. Filling these working hours to make you feel productive, but you’re making little to no progress.

As more shallow, multitasked work fills your hours and uses your energy, you have less time and less energy for the deep, important work that would yield more results in your business.

This contributes to increased stress as you’re often doing urgent work while neglecting the important work. Increased stress can lead to burnout and decreased well-being which impacts both your personal life and your business.

Another reason shallow work is so prevalent is distractions.

Productivity and high-quality work hinges on uninterrupted, deep focus rather than longer hours.

You have 10 hours a day to do your work but if you can only focus for 4 of those hours, what do you do with the remaining 6?

Common distractions that break your focus and reduce your productivity are:

• Multitasking (you can read the previous newsletter here)

• Notification overload

• Multiple open tabs

• Random thoughts

• Cluttered desk

• People

These distractions seem small but they create big inefficiencies.

Studies show that it can take up to 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption.

So if you get a new notification every 5-10 minutes, you’re never regaining your focus.

In a workday full of pings, notifications, and emails, these micro-distractions add up, leaving little room for deep work.

This lack of depth is why tasks take longer, feel incomplete, and drain energy.

This is made worse when you don’t have time on your hands and need to get work done.

So how do we shift from distracted to focused?

You learn to access and leverage flow.

How You Can Get More Done in 4-6 Hours Than 10+ Hours

Flow is a state of consciousness when you are so fully immersed in an activity that you lose yourself in it.

You dive into a task without distractions. You’re fully engaged with what’s in front of you, your creativity is increased, you enjoy what you’re doing, and you get more done, in less time and with better results.

This means you can complete ‘big-needle moving tasks’ in a structured or limited timeframe without burning out.

When you enter a flow state and zone in on a single task, the quality and speed of your work increase exponentially.

You’re leveraging your full cognitive abilities and you get tasks done quickly and at a high level with fewer errors and corrections.

As Cal Newport writes in his book, Deep Work,

“To produce at your peak level, you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.”

He emphasises that full concentration, even for a few hours, yields far better outcomes than unfocused work done over many hours.

Newport emphasizes that full concentration, even for a few hours, yields far better outcomes than unfocused work over many hours.

This means a deeply focused 4-hour work block could lead to you accomplishing more than 10+ hours of multitasking and interruptions.

When you’re limited in the number of hours you have, you are forced to prioritise what matters.

By narrowing your focus, you ignore the endless stream of “urgent-but-not-important” tasks to focus on the “important-needle-moving” tasks.

Even in a single 90-minute focus work block, tasks can be completed more efficiently because the brain isn’t juggling multiple priorities or engaged in distractions.

I found this to be my experience as well.

When I had 60-90 minutes to work on my business, I used that time mainly for outreach.

I cleared my desktop, had my systems and blocked out all distractions.

I got those emails and DMs out faster, more efficiently and with fewer mistakes.

I grew my business and achieved milestones without needing to hustle for 60-hour weeks.

The greatest advantage of mastering deep focus and learning how to get into the flow state has to be the increased time freedom without sacrificing business growth.

Working fewer hours while achieving more not only scales your business but also creates lifestyle flexibility.

You move away from the dogma that success comes from working long hours and that instead, it comes from how effectively you use your hours.

You have more room for personal growth, your health, family and friends.

And even if you don’t want to work fewer hours, you develop a very valuable and rare skill that allows you to achieve more from every input of effort.

Bringing Flow Into Your Life

So how do you master the 4-6 deep focus hours?

“To master the art of deep work, you must create routines and rituals.” — Cal Newport

Here’s the routine I use — and you can use it too:

• Step 1: Set Up Your Work Blocks

  • Time-block 60-90 minute sessions

  • Depending on how well you can focus, you can use several structures:

    • Pomodoro Technique (25-5): 25 minutes of focused work and a 5-minute break

    • 50-10: 50 minutes of focused work and a 10-minute break

    • 60-30: 60 minutes of focused work and a 30-minute break

    • Create your own

  • For each work block, you want to focus on one task only.

    • Avoid task-switching.

• Step 2: Eliminate Distractions

  • List your typical distractions and provide actionable advice on eliminating each (e.g., turning off notifications, using "do not disturb" settings).

• Step 3: Get Clear on Your Goals

  • If you have larger projects, break them down into smaller tasks and allocate one task per work session.

  • Before beginning a work session, have a clear image of what you want to achieve at the end of it.

• Step 4: Take Action & Build Momentum

  • Once you’ve outlined what you’re doing and cleared the distractions, get started.

  • Use techniques like the “two-minute rule” or “countdown method” to get started immediately.

This routine not only saved me in university, but it’s the same routine I use to this day.

Deep-focus work has become a normal part of my life.

Every day, I will have at least 3-4 hours of deep work. Sometimes more or less, but not a day goes by without it.

As you adopt this new routine, know that it will take some time.

It’s a new skill you are learning, so give yourself the time and patience to develop it.

And as you improve, you’ll find yourself accessing flow with ease and working less.

“A deep life is a good life.” — Cal Newport

And that’s it.

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I’ll see you in the next one.

— Shana