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Comment by BlackRing | Hacker News Reader

Remote work taught me that working in batches can really drive up my efficiency. 2.5 hours at the start of the day, a half hour break, then another period of work about the same length, and then finally one more. I find this breaks up things and allows the 'down time' to settle in my head so I can come back and prep to get "in the zone" for another two hour purely focused work period. All that ties in wonderfully to his routine keeping, which is a great template to work with.

It helps to shut off all notifications on your phone or computer as well, including email.

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Author here. Yep, "batching" is great advice. I am a big fan of Pomodoros. Also, I usually only check my email twice per day: once time in late morning and once in the late afternoon. Each time I spend roughly one Pomodoro just one email. After implementing this routine, I've found myself far more on top of my mailbox despite spending less time. Kudos to Cal Newport for recommending this in his book Deep Work, which is where I got it from.

I didn't realize it was called The Pomodoro Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) until now, and it's been the one approach to my work that's had the most success.

Cal Newport's book looks interesting, so I'll take a look at that and give it a look. Thanks!

I love this too. I actually wrote a simple web-app that I use to "pause" my emails throughout the day for this very purpose. Starting at 8AM, my emails batch until 11AM, then again until 4PM. I found the notifications hitting my phone were a big distraction, so pausing them helped me to ignore them during working hours.

I don’t use the email app on my phone, problem solved, haha.

+1. I have the account configured, but disabled auto-refreshing. It only fetches emails when I manually "pull" them.

Me too, on the desktop.

I just have no audible notifications for email on my phone.

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