For the last decade, I’ve been working remotely from my hometown of Rajkot, roughly split equally over the years where I started out as an individual contributor and then transitioned into an engineering manager. One thorn that has pricked me throughout the journey is that it’s very difficult in India to do Deep Work.

I’m not quite sure what makes Indian society such a challenging setting for Deep Work but I have my suspicions. It’s quite rare to come across other people who consistently work in long, focused slots here. Everyone seems quite content with jumping from task to task, with frequent interruptions in cramped, loud work environments – just walk into a typical Indian corporate office if you don’t believe me. Therefore, I don’t think there’s inherently a lot of value given to Deep Work here, even for knowledge workers. Then there’s the constant barrage of social obligations, the very loose commitment to being professionally punctual (when meeting with others) and the usage of the (interruption magnet) mobile phone as the primary computing device by a vast majority of workers.

So, how do you get some focused work done here? Here’s what has worked for me:

• Prime Environment: I’ve invested in creating a space where I can be alone without any unexpected visitors for set hours throughout the week. Even on the rare occasion where someone drops in unannounced, I do the very un-Indian thing of being locked in to my work with my noise cancelling headphones ignoring them until they get the idea and leave by their own accord. I set aside time to keep up maintenace for this space as well to avoid unexpected infrastructure problems, but there’s always more things I can do (next on the list is setting up an invertor for power outages).
• Set Expectations: I’ve continually set expectations with friends and family that I’ll be unavialable for any obligations throughout the working week. I skip attending any occasion I don’t feel like attending from within. You need to grow some thick skin to handle the social retaliation this results in, but I’m quite OK with it.
• Embrace Imperfection: There’s always going to be unexpected events in life! I’ve determined you cannot avoid a 2 hour interaction with a plumber on a Monday for a major leak (that takes 10 minutes to fix), or a 4 hour wait to consult with a Doctor who only sees patients on a Wednesday. The only real solution here is to make up for lost focused hours as best as you can.

Another interesting strategy I’ve seen friends who are business owner operators take is they groom an Executive Assistant that deals with a lot of the meatspace interactions on their behalf (sort of like a Nandu for a Raja Babu), but ironically I haven’t been able to find the time to experiment with this approach.

Do you also struggle with this issue? If so, have you discovered any novel strategies for reclaiming Deep Work hours?