Putting Deep Work Into Practice
What I learned from using DoneDaily to support time-blocking and daily structure.
Intentionality And Productivity
Productivity has always been an area of interest to me, and something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. At its core, it’s pretty simple: it’s about how to make the best use of your time. We all have limited time, and I think that’s a reality everyone has to face at some point.
Because time is limited, how we choose to spend it matters. I think it’s important to be intentional about that — not just in big, long-term ways, but in the way we approach each day. From a broader life philosophy standpoint, I believe that using time well is one of the most important things we can focus on.
But even at a purely economic level, I think the same idea holds: we should try to pursue the highest and best use of our time. It's one of the clearest ways to create more value — both for ourselves and for others.
Deep Work
I first read Cal Newport’s Deep Work back in 2017. Over the years, I've read many interesting books. But few have had as much impact on how I live — and on my day-to-day habits — as this one. The core concept — that the ability to focus deeply on meaningful work is becoming increasingly rare and valuable — resonated with me immediately.
It shifted how I thought about structuring my days. The ideas stuck. But the bigger challenge, as always, was putting them into consistent practice over the long term, especially when the daily pressures of work made it easy to slip back into a more reactive mode. I’ve been timeblocking on and off for years.
Discovering DoneDaily
I heard about DoneDaily earlier this year when Cal Newport mentioned it on one of his podcast episodes. It’s a daily coaching and accountability service built around the principles of deep work. You work with a real person, send in your daily plan and reflection, and receive regular feedback to help you stay on track.
It’s designed to help you stay focused on the work that matters most and build the consistency to keep doing it. I decided to try it during a particularly busy stretch at work.
How It Works
Each night, I sent my coach a short update. I would include my time-blocked plan for the next day, a reflection on how closely I followed the plan that day, and anything else I was tracking at the time, like my daily screen time. It didn’t take long to write, and it wasn’t intended to be a polished report. The goal was simply to build the habit of setting clear intentions each day and following through as consistently as possible.
The next morning, my coach would send a brief response. Sometimes it was encouragement, and sometimes it was a practical comment about a key part of the schedule to focus on. The feedback helped keep the process active rather than allowing it to turn into something mechanical or easy to overlook.
In addition to the daily check-ins, we had a weekly Zoom call, usually about 20 minutes. We would review how the week had gone, talk through any challenges, and adjust the plan if needed.
What Stood Out
One thing I appreciated about DoneDaily was the quality of the coach matching. I was paired with someone whose background, values, and approach fit naturally with my own, including being able to have open conversations about faith when those topics came up. It wasn’t something I had specifically requested, but it made the experience stronger. Having a coach who understood my broader priorities made the conversations and feedback more useful.
The daily accountability also made a difference. The coaching was not about micromanaging or creating external pressure. It was about having someone pay close enough attention to help me stay aligned with my own standards and priorities. Having that steady outside perspective made it harder to drift into distractions or rationalizations, which can be easy to do when working alone.
What It Helped Me With
Using DoneDaily helped me stay more consistent with my deep work blocks, even when it would have been easier to drift into shallow tasks. It helped me prioritize important work over urgent distractions and see more clearly when my daily plans weren’t realistic. Over time, small adjustments helped me stay more focused and organized.
DoneDaily didn’t change the fact that I was dealing with burnout and dissatisfaction in other parts of my work life. It wasn’t a solution to those larger challenges. But it gave me a structure that helped me keep showing up and doing the work I had committed to, even when the bigger picture was difficult. That consistency made a difference.
Why It's Interesting For Teams
Focus and speed are real differentiators in most types of work. If you believe that, then helping a team protect its time and focus seems like a high-return investment. Giving people the structure to do their most important work without constant distractions would likely have an impact not just on individual performance, but on the overall pace and quality of the team's output.
As I was using DoneDaily, I kept thinking about how useful something like this could be for a team. Most teams have some level of shared goals, but individuals often differ in how they think about focus and how they structure their time. Having a common system for how to approach work, and a shared expectation around protecting deep work, could help bring better alignment across different roles.
Not every job requires the same kind of deep work or the same amount of it. But every individual does have a highest and best use of their time, and that should inform the way they structure their days. A system like DoneDaily could help people think more deliberately about that — and could help teams better understand each other, the work each person is doing, and why they structure their time the way they do.
Cal Newport talks about setting office hours — reserving specific blocks of time for questions and collaboration so that deep work blocks stay protected. A structure like DoneDaily would support that principle at a daily level. It would make deep work a normal and expected part of the team culture, rather than something left up to individual preference.
Creating that kind of environment could help teams be more productive and work together in a more deliberate and sustainable way.
Why I'm Sharing This
There are a lot of different approaches to productivity, and it’s easy to move from one system to the next without much lasting change. What I appreciated about DoneDaily was how simple the structure was, and how much it helped me stay focused on the work I had decided was important, even when other parts of life and work were difficult.
It didn’t solve every problem, but it gave me a consistent framework to stay connected to the work that mattered most. That was valuable, and I thought it was worth sharing for anyone who might be thinking about how to build more structure and consistency into their own work.
If you’re curious about DoneDaily, either for yourself or for your team, feel free to reply to this email or send me a DM. I’m happy to share more about my experience, or to help connect you with the founder if you want to explore potential group discounts for your team. And I'm always happy to talk about productivity in general.