Deep working from Home

I’ve been reflecting on how to get better on all the things I love. Lots of practice, lots of errors, and lots of learnings, right? It’s particularly hard for me because I want to be good at a lot of things. Drawing, painting, Muay Thai, amigurumi, and being a good human to name a few.

Earlier this year, I read Deep Work by Cal Newport. I won’t butcher the summary too much here but what I took away from it:

If you want to get good at anything you need to plan your time and space properly, and find ways to get yourself into “flow”

While it all made sense to me, I also have a very curious elderly parent. We haven’t lived under the same roof in over a decade. Now we are… and she’s always wondering what I’m doing. When I tell her, it doesn’t register to her. Small interruptions are fairly common.

The first few months of working from home (with my mom) were difficult. Getting no-interruption, focus time is something mom doesn’t understand. It’s also hard for me to translate/explain with the generational barrier. Mom was doing manual labor for most of her life, spending hours in factories with loud machines and equally loud co-workers. The idea of “context switching” or “flow” is very foreign to her. The best I can do is to politely ask her to let me “study” and don’t interrupt me because what I’m doing is very difficult. She’ll respect it (after a couple of repetitions).

Fortunately, in recent months we started to establish our routines. In the mornings, we spend time sipping on tea and walking the dog. Afterwards, I get into my daily workout routine and small tasks. Mom catches up on the news (while my dog naps next to her). Later in the day, we have a bigger chunk of time where we do our own thing. She just learned the basics of crochet after seeing my amigurumi collection. She now focuses on making small accessories for herself, giving me quiet time. That’s my chance to capitalize on reading the next self-improvement book, drawing/painting, crocheting, etc.