Come and learn what I've learned! I haven't posted my retrospectives in a while. Last week was the first week that I had fully to myself and I challenged myself to establish a solid deep work routine at home. Here are some of the things that worked, that were okay and some that didn't work. # Retrospective Week 13 – A total of 13 hours completed. ## What worked: - I got 13 hours of fully concentrated work in. Awesome! I built myself a custom Scoreboard, too, to keep track of each day's work-hours. - I felt productive. - Started and finished a fully functional [Minimum Viable Product](https://redditgrowth.herokuapp.com) called "RedditGrowth" which helps identify trending subreddits that show sustained growth. A simple market research tool for Reddit, basically. - Creating a backlog, physically with stickies and virtually with Trello worked really well to structure and slice down my work-items - I used Pomodoros the full week. That made concentrating easier and less exhausting. - I rewarded myself for staying focussed with a 30 minute break after work. I took a nap, watched a movie or just chilled. - I made myself an idea backlog. - I built myself a standing desk and it felt good to focus yet not sit. - With a simple, physical "Todo -> Doing -> Done" system I always felt in control. - I used my awesome [WASD mechanical keyboard](http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/code-keyboard.html) which made me feel really cool. - I finally got to make a dream come true and code a web-application in Clojure. - I wrote my own little DSL for "Given, When, Then", cucumber-style integration tests. - I pushed the app to Heroku and learned how to use [multiple buildpacks](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/using-multiple-buildpacks-for-an-app) for one app because I needed to have [custom apt packages](https://elements.heroku.com/buildpacks/heroku/heroku-buildpack-apt) installed for running the [linear regression](http://incanter.org/docs/api/#member-incanter.stats-linear-model). Once I figured out how to do it, it worked really well. - I wasted far less time on Facebook, Instagram etc. by adding blocking rules directly on my router. **[Check out RedditGrowth as the result of this week's work!](https://redditgrowth.herokuapp.com/)** ] Behind the scenes, in case you're interested, my Trello board:  ## What went so-so - I didn't get as much writing done as I had planned to. My action item here is to establish a TinyHabit for it instead. - I charged ahead and built a product for myself. Not sure if anyone else cares about it but I think it's pretty cool. - Getting up in the morning got harder towards Friday. Not sure why, but I couldn't fall asleep at night. Probably because I didn't spend insane amounts of energy. - I spent a lot of time at home by myself because I set myself up with a home office. So far I like it and it makes me productive but I have to make sure that I get outside at least once a day. - Because all other time-wasting sites like Facebook and News are blocked, I spent a lot of time on Reddit (which wasn't blocked because my MVP needed access to it.) - I forgot to celebrate each completed Pomodoro sometimes. Rewards are super important to settle into the new habit and so I want to make sure I reward myself more immediately this week. ## What didn't (yet) work so well - I felt a sharp drop in productivity during the afternoons. - I haven't been biking as much as I used to the week before. ## Action Items: - Celebrate each Pomodoro! - Clean up my done tasks from last week - Plan my lunch-time better so that I can overcome the concentration slump at around 1:30pm - Recap and organize my goals, epics and backlog. Basically do an IPM Monday morning. - Find a new, lovely project to work on now that the MVP is built. - Start creating a blogging habit Well, thanks for reading. If you have any questions how to implement Deep Work in your life, feel free to reach out at alexis dot rondeau at gmail dot com.