How Focused Deep Work Has Made Me A Better Freelancer.
By: Chloe Tomalin
Tags: Deep Work, Freelancers, Focus, Freelance, Community

Back in September I was having a hard time concentrating, we’ve all been there. Especially this year. If it’s not COVID 19, it was the US election. The fridge, your flatmate, your pet. They’ve all been pulling your attention, wandering into your zoom calls and waning your already limited attention span. Newly freelance and with no guide book to show me the way, I was lost with my time. I had all the ideas but no direction. All the gear and no idea and it’s ok to admit that.

So when I was invited to join Creative Morning’s digital ‘Fieldtrip’ with deep work community CaveDay I figured I didn’t have anything to loose and plenty of tips to gain. CaveDay have fostered a community based in every part of the world, spanning as many time zones as you can imagine. Their philosophy is to connect, share what you’re working on with others, limit distractions and lock your phone away. I’ll reiterate that last point for dramatic effect. Put your phone away. The average person touches their phone nearly 100 times a day and for each distraction, be that a notification, an email or another human you loose 23 minutes of concentration time to get back to your original state of focus.

Their philosophy is to connect, share what you’re working on with others, limit distractions and lock your phone away.

With your phone away you start your Deep work sprint. They span upto 1 hr and the idea is for you to get lost in the time. Your cave guide keeps time and tells you when time’s up and by not knowing the end point of the sprint you don’t watch the clock. You simply get down and do.

So how has it made me a better freelancer I hear you ask!?

Focus & Flow

Not only have I tapped into my tunnelled focus by monotasking a specific task each sprint. I find I enjoy the work more. Getting lost in the task, forgetting about all other items on the to-do list, the never-ending inbox chatter and making the slack jingle a think firmly out of my mind. I find my dedicated focus to that time helps the workflow and allows me to tap into my creativity. As I’ve assigned that time to the task, I feel free to develop ideas further, try new approaches in my marketing and branding writing or design and truly invest that time to my client. In addition, as a biproduct it helps me with my time management and billables. That very non-sexy admin bit that most freelancers hate but has to be done.

Concentration & Accountability

I’ve enjoyed meeting people from around the world, connected through our work or side hustles. Not everyone who joins the caves is doing work, some use it as dedicated reading or down time, regardless of the doing. The real work is actually the commitment to the time. Making a plan to make yourself accountable. Sounds long winded, making a plan to make a plan, but it’s beyond rewarding.

My concentration has been rewarded in droves. As someone with Autism, lack of concentration is often my default personality trait (Many other massive pros balance it out, of course) So getting in the concentration mindset and having it in my diary as blocked off ‘Work’ time Mon-Fri has been an anxiety weight firmly lifted off my shoulders. I put my noise cancelling Nura headphones on. Block out external noise from my gamer flatmate and the busy street outside and make time to control what I am solely responsible for.

The accountability of showing up and doing the work has become instilled in me too. There’s nothing more motivating that when you have a blip or finish a task and you aren’t sure what your next focused step is, but with around 50 faces on gallery view working away it’s inspiring, that sense of community, that we’re all in this together. The theme of 2020. For sure.

Sense of community and connectivity built over time.

Of course, we’re all human. That goes without staying. Sometimes the delivery man turns up, kids come in for a cuddle with dad, partners cook away in the background. This has always been the way; we’re just seeing it more now the working world has re-rooted to working from home as default. For me, I find it really endearing to see people in their natural habitat and seeing their lives go on behind them, whilst they focus in the time they’ve dedicated to their tasks. It’s also been nice to have that water cooler connection and chat with people i’ve now seen day in day out for nearly 3 months too.

Over time that sense of belonging grows. I’ve been attending cave-day every Monday — Friday (They do Saturday and Sunday too.) and it’s slotted right into my WFH routine. It’s like I’ve replaced those annoying ‘This could have been an email’ meetings in the office with my caves, getting more done to a higher standard in a shorter time period and I’m ok with that.

So here’s to freelancers finding a sense of community through the internet — who knew!?

I’d love to hear your experience of deep work or being part of CaveDay’s community and if you’ve got some suggestions for me, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Have a great day.