Working with other people in a creative setting is a wonderful thing and the community and collaboration aspect is needed for big breakthrough ideas. Ideas flowing through people collaborating are beautiful and healthy. Once you have those massive ideas you need to execute on them. At that point in the creative process I suggest avoiding other people at all costs and putting your head down to work. Does this work for every job function or even all of the time? No of course not but when you need to find a time and space for deep work. Give it a try.

Creative Time for deep work

Phase 1: Put on large headphones. If you work in an open office setting this may be the norm anyway to cut out general noise to focus. But it is a clear and visual sign to other people to interrupt unless the issue is really important. Even then maybe wait? You do not even need to have anything playing in the headphones, just have them on. Airpods or Buds of some sort will be less effective as they do not create a visual that you are working from a distance.

Phase 2: Find an office or room with a door and work there. Working behind a closed door even with wind creates an actual physical barrier between you and other people. Not all roles have offices or the chance to do this. You may need to get creative. Book a meeting room for an hour, ask to use someone else’s office. Your boss is in meetings all day, take their desk. Hiding in a bathroom might be a little extreme but would work as long as wifi reaches.

Phase 3: Just leave. Go to another space if possible, work from home. And when working from home set up an offline message or just close your chat or email. If there are common spaces in your office set up in an unexpected area so you can’t be found and can get done what you need too.

Phase 4: Which can apply to any of the other phases, set up time on your calendar to say you cannot be bothered, it could be a block of 2 hours in the morning or afternoon to get your work done. If you need to write a proposal, or create a mock up design you need to get into the flow state and that does best with no interruption. On top of this just tell people you need a few hours to get something done.

Phase 5: Might not work. Tape a sign to your back at your desk and say “Don’t talk to me I am working” This has never worked for me but I would really love for someone else to try it.

We all know that office and working life can be taken over by collaboration time, and that time is important but finding space for deep and detailed work is the real counterpoint to that. These are a few strategies that may work for you but if you have your own that is already working stick with that. Just don’t push so far that people won’t come to you when then really do need help

Avoiding people is great! Until you need them. Make sure that when you do create your deep work isolation time that it is only for sections of time carved out for a purpose. That most of the time you open to collaborate if needed. The open loose collaboration time can be very fruitful and create major breakthroughs that dont always appear in structured meeting times. So treasure your time working alone but make sure you don’t become the lone wolf in the office or team by cutting everyone off of your flow.

In conclusion, we need to work with other people but you also need to be able to work without them to get work done. It is smart to develop strategies that work for you to do that. Suggested methods:

1. Large headphones

2. Move to a closed room

3. Move out of the space you are in

4. If you work from home, put up an away message

5. Block off calendar time.

Always remember that you need to come back out and work with others at some point down the road. Being a lone wolf creative is great, but at times you need a few other minds to bounce ideas off of and find new angles