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What if you worked 90 minutes a day without interruptions?
How much could you get done?
The important.
The difficult.
The urgent.
The work that shifts the needle.
As a lawyer, you need to be available:
I thought I had to be always "on" to be a good lawyer.
But what about the important brief I had to finish? The complicated contract I had to draft?
Constant interruptions kill focus.
Others interrupting you.
You breaking your own focus.
I know the pull of WhatsApp, social media, and news sites. Do you?
You’re not alone.
Knowledge workers in Germany are interrupted on average 15 times per hour according to a study — that’s every 4 minutes.
Interruptions cost. A study shows that you perform the initial task up to 27% slower after an interruption.
Worse, you miss the important work.
After a day of interruptions, I worried about my deadlines, my billables, and my promotion. And the next day it would start all over again.
My mindset was different when I had to deal with real emergencies.
Like the constitutional complaint I had to draft within a day.
I got to the office Monday morning. Learning that I had to draft a constitutional complaint for a key client in a landmark case. On that day.
I hadn’t even read the file.
I needed full focus.
So I switched all interruptions off:
Told my assistant to only put through the client I was working for.
Hung a do-not-disturb sign my partner had given me for deep work and power naps.
I finished the draft that day — together with a sharp colleague.
The partners impressed, the client happy.
We made the impossible possible.
I used deep work for emergencies like this.
What did I miss?
How much it would help me if I made it a habit.
Not all day, of course.
But 90 minutes daily?
It’s possible.
The world won’t end in 90 minutes. You can get back to the client after. If it’s urgent, they’ll call — and your assistant will put them through.
So what if you treated yourself to 90 minutes of uninterrupted deep work each day?
Block it on your calendar. Schedule it around meetings, calls, hearings — and lunch. Show up for it — as you do for others.
It allows you to focus on the input, not on the output.
Be proud if you show up and focus for 90 minutes.
The output will follow, I promise.
Close your eyes and imagine you’ve been doing this for three months: 90 minutes of deep work every day.
How much important work have you done?
How much lighter does your to-do-list feel?
How much better does it feel to finish work every day?
Deep work, deep fulfillment.
Ready to give it a try?
Thank you for reading.
Much love,
Jan
P.S.
Know someone who’s always "on"?
Share this with them — help them focus better today.
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