This episode captures a brutal 2-3 out of 10 focus day where constant communication switching between email, Slack, Facebook, and deal reactivity destroyed deep work capacity. The struggle to protect maker time while running a service business created zero progress on critical Land Pricer prompt engineering despite having scheduled blocks.
Key Takeaways:
- Reactivity Masquerades as Urgency Less than 1% of daily communications qualify as truly urgent, yet the dopamine hit of checking multiple channels every few minutes obliterates focus systematically.
- Meetings Kill 90-Minute Blocks Having a standing noon meeting makes the 9:30am-12pm window psychologically unusable for deep work—the brain won’t engage knowing interruption is 30 minutes away.
- System-Delegated Filters Unlock Focus Creating AI-powered triage systems that give assistants authority to handle 95% of inbound communication removes the perceived need to constantly monitor channels.
Listen to the full episode for real-time problem-solving on deep work protection and how talking through the struggle revealed the actual solutions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, Vacant Land Funding Partner. Quick update on the deal side, it is quite possible one of those two problematic Tennessee deals that we have, we might actually be getting an impending offer here. And I’ve just been grinding out some of the work, additional phone calls and so forth, trying to…
figure out one way or another to get people to visit. I have another person who reached out over Facebook, to, actually lives in Austin with me, but wants to buy out of state, going to visit Tennessee next week. See if we can work something out there. There’s still a couple other builders looking at it. TBD, but I will be feeling much, much better once I can find a buyer for that property and then that one that we’re putting up for absolute auction.
next Thursday on May 22nd, which I remarked on about three podcasts last week, plus my email newsletter in case you didn’t see that. So with all of that in mind, today just wanted to go over and trying to balance makers versus manager schedule here. It’s a famous Paul Graham.
brief blog post slash essay back in the day. It’s probably like 20 years old, but it still holds true. And I’ve remarked on this sometimes as well of just, you know, especially trying to launch land price or in the midst of continuing serious land capital at, you know, a high functioning level. Just being able to carve out more time for deep work. I feel like that is.
probably the biggest struggle for me personally, at least over the last couple months or so, I feel like I’m only able to get one, maybe two days where serious deep work can get done, and more often than not, usually Wednesday tends to be pretty good for that, and then some might have to get shunted to the weekend.
just because especially the funding business, it’s so reactive and there’s so many things going on, even, you know, and I’m delegating so much to my core VA or various clients working with us, realtors and so forth. know, responsiveness is key in a service business and there’s still just a lot that needs my attention in various business development where I feel still required to be diving into routine deals and…
marketing and content production and just follow-ups usually upon logging in. I’ll try to handle some stuff in the evening and so forth too and I just, you know, I think today especially it was just struggling with it just felt super distracted and there were various meetings that were interspersed throughout the day which you know can always serve as an excuse but it’s like, man, you know, I something else coming up in a half an hour. Do I really want to try to get my brain focused?
into a deeper work state. So I really struggled with that today.
You know, just being completely honest about where things were at in terms of, yeah, my mind just felt like frazzled in terms of like, you know, focused level. felt like, you know, two and a half, maybe three out of 10 today. You know, a lot of reactive stuff was done, but like in terms of actually driving the hairiest problems forward just wasn’t really there. mean, there was some key delegation and meetings for land Pricer to solve.
how to scrape comps according to what we need for AI solution, but like my key task and the blocker that I’m preventing effort or forward progress on of just additional prompt engineering, like it’s just a nasty hairy task that I just, I didn’t get anything done with today. I’m recording this by like late afternoon. And just like.
you know, trying to figure out, okay, how could I’ve handled this better? So I’m just trying to figure out, you know, is it really going to hurt my business to be a little less reactive at the start of the day to just try to nail some bigger tasks out of the way first? Or can I be more efficient with those? That’s why I keep going back to some of this, you know, automate to accelerate and some of these AI solutions and systems I want to build into place to give my assistant even more.
control on.
communications within the business. So I feel less hamstrung to need to jump on that right away. And then, you know, that already starts to just take additional focus and energy and so forth that I could be putting into just maximum focus as soon as I log in. I think that’s probably going to be a pathway there to explore more.
It’s just like the way I orient my day as well. mean, everybody has different lifestyles and so forth, but like you have to account for everybody’s circumstances. And you know, the way that I’ve set up to be most efficient within my own life is, you know, my wife and I are getting up shortly after 6 a.m. You know, like one of the first parents in to drop my daughter off for daycare, like seven. And then typically at least.
Five out of the six days that I work out per week, it’s like right in the morning. So that’s like roughly an hour, then breakfast after, and even that, you know, it’s as efficient as possible. Shower up all that, but I’m usually like not fully logging into the computer until, you know, 9.30-ish a.m. or so forth. And, you know, that’s where I feel like I have to jump into some reactivity and then I have standing meetings at noon and so forth. So it’s like, you know, there’s a bit of a gap of time that
If can really nail it, it works. then Wednesdays I work out usually later in the day so I can be more efficient getting started earlier. But I’m really just trying to solve, how do I nail these gaps more effectively? Maybe I have to adjust calendar to have things more set in stone and turning off certain apps for checking. And I thought I’ve done better with that. I even have like Notion Mail and so forth so I don’t have an open.
Gmail tab within browser but it’s still, and I’m sure I’m not the only entrepreneur or business owner that just finds that dopamine hit of just, because it’s like easy, You’re flipping back between email or open phone, Facebook notifications, Messenger, what have you, Slack, and it’s just like a.
you know, how many times am I checking and rotating through that on a day by day basis? And it’s like, you know, affecting focus in such a negative format. Just to give you an idea, the, you some days are better than others. This one was not very good at all from that perspective. So I’m just, you know, wondering, okay, maybe for some of these times, I just need to be more comfortable like turning off all of those.
possible communication channels.
and just being okay getting to things that come in later. And it’s just like, yeah, mean, sometimes, you know, I’m waiting for broker calls and so forth for key, dispo items and progress. even as I’m talking through it now, it’s like, okay, know, it’s none of these things are almost ever urgent. Like a truly urgent item might be like 1 % of the time with communication. you know, I’m just having to
run through this that it’s okay. And we have like some key transactional deal, cash crunch going on this week, you know, just timing things out properly. So that’s actually a little bit more urgent to time out. you know, people really, yeah, I guess I should leave some channels open that like I system can say, okay, don’t bother me for anything except for this item. So I don’t know what it’ll all like this has just been an all over the place day, but I’m actually trying to
You know, sometimes this podcast is almost like therapy for me to work through problems for my own business and like talking through it now. Like, okay, actually some of this that seemed like a bigger problem in my head now that I talk it through it, I actually think I’m figuring out solutions here, which you might be able to pick up from, just this conversation alone and maybe even helping your own company and, you know, feel free to DM me, text, whatever.
for your own tactics when it comes to this. mean, it’s ADD culture, right? In the Western hemisphere and culture at large. So I know I’m not the only one trying to figure this out. again, never been easier to be successful in business, never been simpler to be successful in business, but never been easier to be distracted.
So certainly feeling that one today, but you know, this is what separates the good from the great are the folks who can really figure out that level of focus needed to drive things forward the most possible. So I just need to be better about it, no excuses. So again, hopefully some of this is helpful as you hear my own current struggles going through it.
trying to figure out how to be better in my own business and maybe you have your own solutions to figure out or maybe some of the ways that I was remarking can help you as well so we can all continue to grow together. With that, SeriousLand.Capital for New Funding Needs had some really interesting deals that came in, including this one in Washington state that very likely we’re going to be funding at the end of this month, even in a difficult macro, think is…
very, very solid option and have a lot of Dispo coming up here shortly. And then Land Daily Diligence Facebook group for the zero cost review of your land deals coming up again here this Thursday and also landpricer.ai, which I just remarked on again earlier and can have our new engineer on the team. A lot more progress pushing through this week and
to unblock myself and get the additional image analysis done ASAP. With that in mind, I hope you all take care, subscribe, and share. Bye.
