Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

Everyone wants a piece of your time. Your phone buzzes every few minutes. Slack notifications pile up. Someone always needs "just a quick decision."

Meanwhile, the critical work that requires your attention sits on your list, waiting for a moment that never comes.

But to build a great business, you have to overcome this chaos.

After doing this myself for the past 20 years, the single most important skill has been learning to master deep work so I can focus on what moves the needle—and block out everything else.

Let me show you why deep work changed everything for me and how you can do it yourself. 👇️ 

📒 DEEP DIVE

Why Every Founder Needs to Master Deep Work (and How To Do It)

It's the most important skill most founders never learn. Here's how you can win back your attention and push your business forward.

Before we can talk about how to do deep work, we need to face an uncomfortable truth:

You can only do one thing at a time.

I know you think you're different. You're a "multitasker" who can handle five things at once while checking Slack and responding to emails.

I hate to break it to you, but not only are you not a multitasker (it doesn't exist), you've lied to yourself for many years about what you think you can do.

Your brain works exactly like a computer.

And like a computer, your brain loads context into active memory, works on something, then completely unloads that context to switch tasks.

If my kid walks in during a podcast recording and asks me, "What's for dinner?" I can't continue talking about business strategy while answering. My brain has to completely shift gears.

That context switching takes between 15 and 30 minutes. The harder the work, the more context you need in your head, and therefore, the longer it takes to get back into the flow.

This is why your days feel busy but you're not making real progress on anything important.

What High Achievers Actually Do

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were once asked to write down the single most important factor behind their success.

Without seeing each other’s answers, they both wrote the same word: “Focus.”

If you study business history, you'll notice that anyone who's had an outsized effect in their space shares one trait: They stay in the problem-solving zone longer than everyone else. This allows them to find answers after others have already given up.

Buffett didn't just read 10-Ks like other investors. He studied them longer and deeper than anyone else was willing to. Eventually, he knew more about the business than their own management teams.

But you can't stay in the zone if you're constantly switching contexts. Sustained focus is a prerequisite.

Building Your Deep Work System

Getting Started

When you're brand new at this, every deep work session will feel hard. You'll feel the draw to check email, open Slack, or browse social media.

That's why you should start small and slowly build up. This is where Pomodoro sessions are super helpful.

Set a timer for 25-30 minutes and work on only one thing. If you do anything at all—check email, look at Slack, get up to pee, get coffee—the Pomodoro is over.

Reset the timer and start again.

Start with one Pomodoro in the morning, one in the afternoon. Once that starts coming easily, you can increase the frequency.

Finding Your Peak Hours (And Protecting Them)

It's also important to figure out when your brain peaks. For me, it's early morning. Maybe you're a night person. That's fine, too.

Just use your peak hours for deep work, not for scrolling or playing video games.

I start my day at 4 AM because that's when my brain is the freshest. By 9 AM, my world becomes complete chaos until 5 PM. I've accepted that during that window, I'm not getting any deep work done.

But that chaotic time has value. It's input for my deep work. I'm learning what problems my team faces, what's breaking, and what needs solving. Then I use my morning hours to work on solutions.

Making It Stick

One of the best ways to really make your deep work routine stick is to create a ritual around it.

I make coffee, put on a nose strip and headphones, and settle into my favorite chair.

Same sequence every day. 

The ritual is more important than you think. I recently had about 30 minutes before a flight. It's a weird amount of time; most people would probably spend it scrolling on their phone.

Instead, I went through my ritual and was able to fit in a mini Pomodoro and get meaningful work done.

Because when I do steps 1-4 in order, my brain goes: "Oh, we're doing deep work now. Got it."

When to Break the Rules

Sometimes you need to go beyond deep work. A few weeks ago, one of my customers hit a critical system failure.

I worked for two days straight—with no sleep.

People are always shocked to hear I do this about twice a year. But you can do almost superhuman things in short sprints when you're hot on the trail of a solution, the context is perfect, and you don't want to lose your momentum.

I do this maybe twice a year when the situation truly demands it. These should be rare exceptions.

Why Deep Work is the Antidote

Most people wake up and spend their whole day doing whatever lands in front of them. They essentially let everyone but themselves dictate their calendar and task list.

That's a completely ineffective way to work—and a horrible way to build a business.

As a founder, it's your job to know the one thing that you can accomplish to make all other problems irrelevant or at least easier. This should be as clear to your team as it is to you.

So, be intentional about your time—deep work, thinking, even chaos. Just don't let the chaos consume your peak hours.

🎙 EPISODE OF THE WEEK

If your business feels like it’s running you—rather than the other way around—this episode of "Build Your Business" is the roadmap you need to get out of chaos.

Matt and I break down why systems and SOPs are the foundation of any successful, scalable business. You’ll learn how to start with simple wins, avoid common delegation mistakes, and build systems that adapt and grow with your company. 

Whether you’re a solo founder or leading a growing team, this episode offers practical tools and mindset shifts to build a business that runs without you—without sacrificing quality or culture.

BEFORE YOU GO…

When you can focus deeply for extended periods, you:

• Start finding solutions that others miss

• Push past the surface-level thinking that most people stop at

• Develop insights that only come when you stay with a problem longer

That's what building a business really requires—the ability to think deeply about complex problems while everyone else is checking their notifications.

Start tomorrow. Pick the one thing that would make the biggest difference in your business if you solved it. Give it your complete focus for 25 minutes. No phone, no Slack, no interruptions.

Just you and the problem.

If you want to learn more, here are three books that completely changed how I think about deep work:

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

• Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey

• The One Thing by Gary Keller

Take note. Learn to go deep, and everything else starts to fall into place.

Talk soon,

Chris.