After reading Deep Work by Carl Newport, I was determined to try the four philosophies of work he presents in his book: rhythmic, bimodal, monastic, and journalistic. I already tried the rhythmic philosophy and have a blog post about how it went. Right after, I moved along to the bimodal philosophy. I planned to do it for a month, from the 17th of October to the 13th of November of 2022. But things didn’t go as planned, so I stretched the experiment until the 4th of December. Then I wrote an entire blog post going over the experiment and what went wrong, and after 1550 words, I decided not to post it.

My objective with this series is to understand and experiment with various ways of scheduling to achieve productivity most effectively. And reading back the post, I only saw myself trying to do something I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t plan the bimodal schedule as well as I did for the rhythmic one. And that was my biggest struggle. Before life got in the way of my plans, I did. And while it’s a good exercise to see that sometimes things don’t go our way, I also felt I didn’t try as hard as I could to make it work. And then what’s the point of posting it? Just to say my life was a sequence of inconveniences that prevented this schedule from working? So I put the post on the side and decided to re-try the schedule another time. It took longer than I wanted, but here we are.

The Bimodal Schedule Rules

The philosophy of a Bimodal schedule divides the days of the week into deep work days and shallow work days. The scheduling is done weekly instead of daily, leaving between 2 to 4 days to exclusively do deep work tasks. The weeks don’t have to look all the same, but the days have to be differentiated according to the tasks at hand. Also, each deep work day should aim for 4 to 6 hours of deep work. More than that, Newport says it’s not possible to be in a deep focus.

Since I had already tried and failed, I had an idea of how I felt about this schedule. I know the best days for shallow work are Monday and Friday (alongside Saturday and Sunday because I never do anything productive on those days). So, I was left with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for deep work. I allowed some flexibility between the five days of the week to accommodate any last-minute changes.

I quickly saw that my phone was the biggest reason for distraction. I had to keep it away so I wouldn’t react to every little sound it could make. Also, I had to set alarm clocks to mark the times I had to be working. I can easily lose track of time, and setting timers can be all the help I need. I was supposed to start working at 9:30 am, finish at 12:30 pm for lunch, and then be back at 2:30 pm until 4:30 pm.

Week 1 – 10th of July to 16th of July

This week I divided my deep work days into writing blog posts in the morning and doing artwork in the afternoon. And one thing I saw is that different projects will require different schedules. Doing art doesn’t require the level of focus that writing needs. And this is even something that Newport mentions in the book. Different projects might work best in different schedules. So it’s not just a matter of which schedule works best for each person, but also the schedule fit for the project.

I didn’t want to make room for any shallow work days. Monday was a lazy start, but I was enjoying so much scheduling my day to focus on the blog in the mornings and art in the afternoon, I didn’t want to change that. But I still scheduled Friday as a shallow work day because I knew from my first attempt at this schedule how freeing those days were.

Breaking away from my phone was harder than I thought. That was probably the rule I broke the most. But when I was kept away from my phone, I saw an improvement in my focus. I could still hear it beeping away with notification, but since it wasn’t at hand, I didn’t feel as much of a need to reach for it.

Whenever I remembered to turn on the alarms, they worked wonderfully. Even if I was late for a few minutes, they worked as a promise to myself. In a way, they were an obligation to sit down and work. Knowing an alarm would go off kept me more aware of the time and to work through my morning routine more effectively and not let myself laze around as much.

Week 2 – 17th of July to 23rd of July

In the second week, I was still facing the same problems. Forgetting to set my alarms made a huge difference, and separating from my phone was a struggle. I knew I had to be more strict with myself if I wanted to have the opportunity to really focus.

I only had 3 days of deep work scheduled for the week, but one of them slipped from me. I got distracted in a conversation, and I ended up not doing as much as I wanted. It was a challenging week filled with almost-deep-work days. I still accomplished some things, but a lot was left undone.

At this point, I also realised that I had to set a measurable goal to see how much I was accomplishing. In the rhythmic scheduling, I set the goal of writing 900 words in 90 minutes. Although, even in that experiment, I faced the same problem. Not every aspect of writing a blog post is about writing. There’s also editing and proofreading, and that goal doesn’t work for them. I still don’t know how I can measure other tasks besides writing. It’s something to work on in the future to find different ways to measure work, even for different projects.

Week 3 – 24th of July to 30th of July

By the third week, I had no doubts the schedule was working. For the first time, I found a schedule that was working. I was checking most (if not everything) of my to-do list, and while I was still mixing writing with art, I was happy. I was feeling productive. And every day I woke up, I wasn’t feeling lost, without knowing how my day was going to go. Maybe I was lucky since I didn’t face as many challenges as I did on my first attempt. But the fact is it was working. Was it perfect? No. Was I into a deep focus? Not quite. But I could see if I kept it going. It could make a difference.

One thing was clear, my afternoons were all very different. In the morning, I could maybe start working a few minutes later than I was supposed to, but it would usually be very similar. Start at 9:30 and finish at 12:30. Although the afternoon changed a lot. I sometimes would start an hour late, and other times, keep working until 5:30 to 6. I’ve realised that after lunch, I have a drop in my motivation. I feel more sleepy, it’s hard to concentrate. However, focusing on art in the afternoons allowed me to cheat that. I was excited to work on whatever project I was doing, and since it didn’t require as much brain power as writing, it was easy to shake the sleepiness away and even work for longer. It was bringing me a lot of joy, and I think that also helped a lot.

Week 4 – 31st of July to 6th of August

The final week was also the one I felt I did the least. I felt I only focused on ticking things off the to-do list, and if I didn’t plan much, then I didn’t have much to do. I didn’t give much importance to the schedule and let myself be constantly distracted. But I was still accomplishing my to-do list! It took me a whole day to do what could be done in 2 hours if I was focused.

On Wednesday afternoon, it rained. It’s not very often we can enjoy the small things in life like the smell of the wet grass on a rainy summer afternoon. And so, since I had worked for 3 hours in the morning, I allowed myself to have that moment to read and treasure the amazing atmosphere. Those 3 hours didn’t feel like enough to consider a successful working day and earn a break. However, if I can, I want to enjoy those unpredictable moments we wish for so often but never enjoy when they do happen.

What I’ve learned from this experiment

I already knew from my first attempt how liberating the shallow work days are. They worked for me as a way to clear and tidy my head. Not having to worry about doing something very productive that brings a lot of value to the work was relaxing. And that’s because I knew there were other days to do that. I wasn’t procrastinating, I was prioritising other tasks that needed to be done without compromising the time I needed for the more important tasks.

Setting alarms was the best thing ever. It’s something so simple and yet so powerful to me. They acted as a commitment to myself and helped me avoid losing track of time if I got distracted. Speaking of, now I’m well aware that my phone is my biggest distraction. I still need to work on that aspect so it stops holding me back.

Going forward

Since different projects require different scheduling, the next two deep work philosophy schedules will be focused on writing for the blog alone. It’s the easiest task to see if I can get into a deep focus and also a great help to later decide what is the best schedule for me to write. I currently have two passions to divide my time: art and blogging. And I need to find a way to conjugate the two without compromising either. My blog posts aren’t done in 15 minutes. Just this post alone is over 1800 words, and it takes time to write and edit. Although my art also can’t be done in 15 minutes. So, I need a schedule where I can spend as much time as each project requires without affecting the other.

Hopefully, trying all these different philosophies will help me divide my time between my two passions, making me feel more productive and able to accomplish everything I want to do. Until the next time, when I try the monastic schedule for a week.