How to protect your deep work time

Even if your work is flexible, you still need to get things done

I recently spent some time analyzing how I spent the 8784 hours of 2024. It was mostly a good year, with lots of adventures, but as I studied the data I couldn’t help seeing something surprising: how few hours I worked.

I know lots of people overestimate their workweeks, and I knew I was logging under 40 hours/week, but I was still surprised to see that my average was about 32 hours/week. On what I like to think of as a “normal” workday, I’m at my desk by 8 a.m. I aim to work until at least 5 p.m. I often do a 30-60 minute stint at night. My logs show I clocked some work on more weekend days than I didn’t.

But my workdays were also incredibly fragmented. Flexibility turns out to be a double-edged sword. Because I could do things during the workday, I often did do things during the workday.

On some level, that’s OK. It was a productive year! But I also sometimes felt like I didn’t have time to execute on the ideas I had, which was frustrating. And so, as I’ve been thinking about my schedule this year, I’m aiming to do a few things to protect my deep work time. If you work flexibly, these might be helpful to you too.