When I worked in Silicon Valley,

I became a little obsessed with the most productive people in the office.

I had just left university and was hungry to learn.

Who were the superstars, and how could I emulate them?

I quickly spotted a small group who seemed a notch above the rest of us.

You could tell by the way everyone spoke about them at lunch and in team meetings.

They were well respected.

But for weeks, I couldn’t work out why these few people were more focused than everyone else.

They were mostly developers, tucked away in the quietest corner of the office.

I hardly spent any time there.

But when I started paying attention, I noticed something.

Each of them had their own little rules.

One guy had a light on his desk that turned red, then sometimes green, like some weird traffic-light system.

Another wore headphones all day, but also kept a sign on his desk that said:

“If the headphones are on, do not interrupt me.”

Again, a bit much. I certainly couldn’t see myself wanting to spend the weekend with them.

It all felt too Silicon Valley.

A bit too try-hard for my liking.

But then it clicked.

These weren’t odd habits. They were systems.

They had built ways to protect the one thing that made their best work possible: attention.

And that’s when I saw the real secret.

The most productive people were not necessarily more talented.

They were simply better at protecting their focus.

We all say we want to do meaningful work, be more focused, and be more creative.

But we try to do it in the middle of the noise.

In the middle of pings. In the middle of endless distractions.

In the middle of people wanting “just two minutes”.

We like to think creativity arrives like lightning.

A rare strike. A gift.

But that is almost never how great work is made.

Great work is usually not random. It is invited by creating time and space.

The people who produce extraordinary things do not wait for the mood to strike.

They create the conditions.

The chap with the red and green light on his desk was signalling one thing:

“When the light is on, I’m working on a task until it is completed.”

The same was true of the chap wearing headphones and keeping that very large sign beside him.

A prolific, productive and creative person needs long, uninterrupted stretches of thought.

Time to go deep enough for something original to emerge.

If you are writing, designing, building, problem-solving, parenting thoughtfully, creating a business, or even just trying to think clearly about your life, you need space.

You cannot find flow while the external stimuli in your environment are constantly competing for your attention.

History is full of people who understood this.

Beethoven counted out exactly sixty coffee beans every morning.

Not about sixty. Exactly sixty.

He was slowing himself down, creating time and space to work, allowing ideas to surface.

Picasso ate simple, repetitive meals and worked to a rhythm that left more energy for his art.

Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, went even further.

When he needed to write, he hid his clothes so he could not leave the house until he had finished the work.

Benjamin Franklin built his days around intention.

He began with the question:

“What good shall I do this day?”

And ended with:

“What good have I done today?”

Your best work does not come from waiting for inspiration.

It comes from protecting the conditions that allow inspiration to find you.

Most people are not struggling with a lack of talent.

They are struggling with a lack of space.

Too many tabs open.

Too many notifications.

Too many decisions.

Too many things are poking at you, stealing your attention and robbing you of your flow.

Then we wonder why our minds feel scattered.

Why our ideas feel thin.

Why are we busy all day yet feel nothing has been deeply done?

So maybe the answer is not to work harder.

Maybe it is to defend your attention more fiercely.

To make it easier for your mind to stay with what matters.

You probably do not need sixty coffee beans.

You probably do not need a desk traffic light.

And I strongly recommend keeping your clothes on in the office!

But you do need a way of telling the world:

This matters. Do not interrupt it.

Because you do not find your best work in the middle of noise.

You find it when you make room for it.

So here is the question:

What are you doing each day to protect your attention and make space for your best work?

Not next week.

Not when life calms down.

Today.

Kia kaha & love,
Chris xX

For me personally, these systems help:

• Exercise first thing.
• Listen to one song on repeat.
• Let the ideas come, then write them down afterwards.
• Highlight the single most important task, usually the one I keep putting off.
• Block out a set amount of uninterrupted time and stay with it until it’s done.

IMPORTANT: If I have 20 things to do in a day, it’s 100% certain that nothing important will get done that day. On the other hand, I can usually handle one must-do item that will actually propel me forward. If I block 2-3 hours to get that one thing done, I see it as a win for the day. My worst, unproductive days are when I cobble together 10 minutes here and there on tasks that could have waited or been neglected altogether.