I wanted it, and at the same time I have three children under the age of seven, run a lifestyle business, and this week had a sick child who ruined all my routine.

The message reaching you from all parts of the internet is this: true focus means giving up your life.

Here’s what that message does to someone with an actual life.

It creates a binary. Either you disappear, which is impossible, or you don’t, which means you give up on focused work entirely.

Most people with kids, mortgages, and school pickups land on option two. They conclude they’re not disciplined enough for monk mode. So they stop trying to protect focused work at all.

The whole thing feels like a stacked deck where survival is the only attainable option.

Sad.

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The big cost

Here’s what happens when you don’t have protected flow.

You pour your energy into everything.

Picture a cup full to the brim. Now pour a little into seven other cups.

Result? None of them are full.

We do this in our daily lives:

• Code-switching

• Handling fires like a champ

• Researching and going wild on self-improvement

• Optimizing everything... calories, workouts, sleep... the whole damn thing

In it, we feel like we’re doing a lot.

Really, you’re quarter-assing everything. None of it gets high enough to matter on any timeline you want.

Months pass. Nothing has jumped.

You feel busy but stagnant.

You convinced yourself you were being productive because the day was full, but full and productive are different words for a reason.

Like that full cup at the beginning, you’ve only got so much energy to burn. Stretching it out in multiple places doesn’t mean they won’t hit. It does mean that you’ll have to wait longer to see visible progress.

This is why people go monk.

They aren’t just managing the same problems from some cabin in the hills.

They go dark to focus on one thing without distraction.

It doesn’t take long to reach a flow state.

You can do this in your normal life. You’ll have to make some hard choices, but they’re worth it.

Let me explain how I came to this conclusion.

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How I Got Here

I spent 16 years building a career without ever optimizing for flow.

Less money. More burnout. The money I did make was unfulfilling because I was living out of alignment.

The quicker you realize you can make good money and still feel like you’re performing for an audience you never auditioned for, the quicker you can reverse it.

I wanted to redesign, but I had no model for what that would look like. Every productivity system I found was built for someone with a different life. It felt inaccessible.

So I stayed in the status quo and did little things to reduce the anxiety:

• Meditation

• Walking

• Earlier bedtime

• Less screen time

Then I left my agency after 9 years of building it. No plan.

But that risk gave me something I’d wish for anyone: a clean slate.

Within 8 months, I rebuilt everything around flow. Four hours a day became achievable and required.

It was always accessible to me. I’d just never believed I could pull it off.

But before I explain the ins and outs, let’s get a disclaimer out so you can decide whether you want to keep learning.

This only works if you want to build your life around flow. That means trading off the automaton approach. No massive team or constant busy work as your default mode. This is self-selecting control over set periods of time. Some people thrive in the always-on, always-available, meeting-heavy model. If that’s you, this is just information, not something you’d be ready to use. The rest of this essay is for the person who looks at that kind of model and feels something die inside them.

Micro Monk Mode

Focus was always the point.

Disappearing was just one way to get there. And for most people with actual lives, it’s the worst one, because it creates a binary you can’t win.

I could retreat to a cabin for a week and feel OK about it. I spend six months there, and I’m a shit dad and spouse — no matter how much cash and safety that time would provide for my family.

So let’s create a very important distinction.

A retreat means leaving your life to find focus. A ritual means finding focus inside your life.

Monk Mode is a retreat. Micro Monk Mode is a ritual.

Same intensity, a different (and more accessible) delivery mechanism.

My Micro Monk Mode looks like this:

My window: 8 to noon, every day. No busy work during that block. No calls I don’t want to take. The only exception is an international call I genuinely want.

The type of work can change. Research, reading, writing, recording videos.

What doesn’t change: meaningful work only, never admin. Admin is what happens after noon.

The unbendable principle: energy over hours. It contradicts every other productivity system on the internet.

If your energy doesn’t match the flow, you stop. You don’t force it.

This is imperative.

Forced flow is contaminated product. It’s like cooking with ingredients that have gone off. The recipe doesn’t matter. The technique doesn’t matter. The output is compromised at the ingredient level. You can’t fix it with more time in the kitchen.

I learned this the hard way. I used to fill every available hour. Seven hours free between dad duties? Use all seven.

Time is precious. But making time the master instead of output quality is a failure.

If the energy isn’t there, the work suffers, and you produce something that looks done but isn’t.

Optimizing this way means the system doesn’t break if you lose a day. It doesn’t break if you lose a week, as long as you’ve been doing it long enough.

Tuesday I was sick. In bed all day. Nothing happened, and that’s the point.

The Proof

Here’s what protected flow actually produces. Take this however you want.

17 months. Nearly 200 coffee chats with total strangers. Zero ghosts.

The system handles the follow-up so flow time is never broken by admin. I built this once, and it’s run without changes for this long.

I built an entire typeface and website in a day. I built an email series I’ll run for a long time in three days. Connected everything in a couple of hours. Built once, and it stays built.

I work with a part-time video editor.

Flow has allowed me to create a schedule where we batch.

I record in flow, riding the wave of creation until I’m exhausted. Then I ship the work in the afternoon, during admin time, and he operates on his schedule.

He has freedom through structure and so do I. Both sides win.

The Trade-offs

Every other monk mode post ignores the cost or frames it as virtue.

The detox people say suffering is the point.

The disappear-for-months people don’t mention the downside.

Here’s the honest version of the trade-offs I make.

I’m a notoriously bad text responder. I’ll leave messages unread for up to 10 days. I always respond. But on my timeline, not yours.

My phone is face down or in another room when I’m in flow. I might miss a call from daycare. I accept this. If my not responding immediately doesn’t result in someone’s death, it will be fine. Inconvenient, but fine.

My partner is annoyed. She’s also adapted. Our love goes deeper than my response times.

I get fewer messages now. The ones I keep are enriching and worth both people’s time. Surface-level chat is gone, and that’s a gain. “Hey, how’s work?” “Great.” “Good weather by you?” That conversation wastes both our lives. I’d rather not have it at all.

These are deliberate, known costs of a system that produces results I can’t get any other way. I’d make every trade-off listed here again.

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I Know What You’re Thinking

“Four hours a day? That’s not available to me.”

It wasn’t available to me either. That’s the whole point.

I accepted the design I was in for 16 years. The question is whether you want to redesign. If you don’t, that’s a valid choice. But “I can’t” usually means “I haven’t.”

The first step is deciding whether you even want four hours of flow.

“Great for you, you run your own business.”

True. But the principle transfers. Your window might be 90 minutes instead of 4 hours. The principle is the same: protect one block of pure flow inside your life, whatever size your life allows.

No matter how small the amount of time is, do one whole ass thing in that time.

I genuinely get more done in the first 90 minutes of my 4-hour flow time than I did in entire days in the previous 16 years.

“Isn’t this just time blocking with a fancy name?”

No. Time blocking organizes your whole day into categories. Micro Monk Mode protects one window at maximum intensity and lets the rest of the day be whatever it needs to be. It’s a rifle, not a schedule.

This is why I block the morning. My energy is highest then. I go until it runs out, step away for an hour, then do some admin to wrap the day or nothing at all.

“What if I block the time and I’m exhausted?”

Then stop. Energy over hours. This principle makes the system honest where others are dogmatic. The gurus say push through. I say: forced flow produces contaminated work. Come back tomorrow.

What Works For Me

This isn’t a step-by-step. It’s the combination I’ve perfected through months and months of iteration. Take what’s useful. Leave what isn’t. The principle is the thing.

It took me six weeks of trying this redesign before I felt consistently in flow. Accept that there will be an uncomfortable learning period. Internally commit to the process first, not immediate results.

This is tool agnostic. You could do this with a pen and a notebook. You could do it with your phone and a voice memo. You could do it by going for a walk and thinking. Flow has no boundaries in execution. What matters is the state, not the setup.

Don’t dilute this with tool recommendations. A coffee and a quiet environment are the floor. Test that first. Then add where it makes sense.

In other words, avoid needing a perfect environment to get into flow. It’s not about the environment first; it’s a state of mind first. You’ll learn as you go what aspects of your environment heighten your flow state.

The path of least resistance to achieve flow

The digital environment. Spartan. Basic needs, nothing extra. This applies to your room and your screen. One application open. One tab. Even if you have the self-control not to look at your inbox, remove it from view.

Zero notifications on your computer. Messages siloed to your phone only, and the phone app hidden behind the search bar so you have to type “phone” to see calls.

No banner notifications, ever. You see emails when you want to. Messages when you want to see them. Your computer is a protected space.

The physical environment. No specific workspace needed. I work from home with my dog on the couch. Door open or closed. Sometimes I use noise-canceling headphones with calming ambient music when my mind is busy.

There’s a YouTube channel called Oneness that plays these Tibetan-style sounds. That helps when the mind is loud—but it's not required.

Coffee is the only anchor. Sometimes the first sip starts the flow. Sometimes the whole cup is gone before I begin. Sometimes flow happens at a coffee shop surrounded by people. The ritual is simple: you’re alone, and you have coffee.

The on-ramp. There isn’t one. I’ve been doing this for 18 months. The body learns the state. Flow becomes automatic. Coffee, quiet, one tab, go. At first it takes effort. Eventually it’s instant, if the energy’s there.

The ritual compounds over time. Trust the process, yeah?

Boundaries. You don’t announce it. You start. People who don’t like it drop off. The messages you keep are worth both people’s time. You only work with people who match your energy. Clients who trust you respect the window. The friction lasts as long as you let it.

This is the hardest boundary to hold.

The afternoon. Whatever you want. Video games. More work if the energy is there. Admin. Parent mode. No guilt.

You put in a shift. If you did real flow for even an hour, you got more done than most people get done in a day. The afternoon is the reward for protecting the morning, not a continuation of the work just because hours are available.

Time will keep ticking whether you can produce excellent work or not. You gotta listen to your body and mind’s signals.

Don’t watch the clock. Get lost in flow.

Example: I’m writing this at 8:44 PM because the energy showed up. Some days the best work happens after the kids are in bed. The system doesn’t care when.

Your mirror

Here’s what I think actually happens. You watch the videos. You read the essays. You feel the pull to go monk.

And then you look at your life: the kids, the job, the calendar that doesn’t have a blank six months in it anywhere. And you think: not possible for me.

Then you do something worse than giving up. You make peace with it. “It is what it is.” You settle into the design you’re in. You tell yourself you’re being realistic.

You fill your days with busy work and call it being responsible. You pour the cup into eight tasks and wonder why nothing fills.

And you outsource the possibility of focused work to the people whose lives allow for it, as if that’s a life requirement and not a design choice.

That’s bullshit. I’m living proof.

Three kids under seven. Lifestyle business. Every school drop-off is mine. Sick kid this week. Can’t disappear for six months. And I produce more in four hours of protected flow than I used to in a full day of fragmented work.

I’m not special.

I committed to redesigning and didn’t let the trade-offs stop me from creating something that aligned with the work I wanted to do.

You have to believe you’re the best person to design your own system.

Not a guru. Not a CEO. You. Because you’re the only one who knows your life.

Picking up a productivity book or watching a video is like saying, “Give me the answer!” without knowing the question.

This takes faith.

You have to believe showing up is enough, even when you can’t guarantee you'll have the energy. The ritual, practiced enough, delivers you to the state. That’s 18 months of evidence talking.

And you have to trust that you’ll handle whatever comes. Sick kid on Tuesday? You handle it. The system doesn’t break. Missing a day doesn’t undo months of practice.

Somewhere in there, you stop looking for the next protocol. The videos stop calling to you. You stop outsourcing your schedule to people who don’t live your life.

That’s conviction. It starts with you. And it’s the only thing that was ever going to work.

The system you trust is the system you’ll run.

The system you run changes your life.

You can’t disappear. So don’t. Build something inside your life that works.

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If you want to watch this essay

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But let’s go back to when I was six.

I’m sitting at the table. Ham steak, potatoes, and peas. My mom asks, “Colby, would you like some peas?”

“No, thank you.” I despised the bastards.

“They’re good for you,” she says, and plops a spoonful on my plate.

We had a rule: clean plates required. Whatever’s there, you finish it. My parents grew up with parents shaped by the Great Depression. I get it.

Everyone else finishes. No issue with peas for them. Me? An hour later, still sitting there. I asked for a glass of water. Permission granted. I dump the little green globules into the icy water and try to down it in one gulp.

Gag reflex. Peas all over the floor and tabletop.

The only time I escaped the clean plate club.

Now, fast forward to my house. Three kids under 7. Meal time is the main event.

Whining. Negotiating. Getting up from the table with no words. Bringing a toy back. Fighting over the toy. My wife and I trying to hold on with constant policing, watching food get wasted like an assembly line for the useless. Little dollar signs flying into the trash or my dog’s mouth.

I understand why my parents ran a dictatorship at meal time. I just don’t do it. Times change.

But I still haven’t accepted it. I’m not weak and everything is figure-out-able, right?

Here’s what I’ve done in the past:

• Go to a parenting book

• Watch a video

• Ask my wife what she’s been researching

Outsourcing the problem to an expert in the field of getting your kids to just eat the damn food.

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We’ve done that every handful of months for years. The techniques aren’t bad. They’d work for a day. Then the novelty would wear off. My oldest kid could spot the costume before I recognized I was wearing one. Soon, I’d be walking to the bathroom to apply some clown paint and cry.

Parenting books and videos are no enemy. But on the grand spectrum they skew more towards propaganda than utility. Every kid is different. Context matters a lot, and a book won’t have it for ya.

And it’s a cycle.

If you keep outsourcing to a “better” system, and that system doesn’t work, you’ll do it again. “It must not have been the right system,” you tell yourself.

It was never the system. There’s no failure in trying to do the best for the kids. The failure lies in the idea that looking outward is the best play.

But meal time’s been pretty bangin’ the last two weeks.

And it didn’t take me long to realize I’d pulled from my existing knowledge to make it happen. From an unlikely place: how I used to onboard clients.

Turns out 14 years in marketing, nine of them running a globally recognized agency, 1,200 clients, and a client retention rate 11X the industry average could teach me how to tell the circus to leave town and restore some peace to my life.

What I’ll share for the rest of this essay works for kids, but it applies to any interaction where you need a clear path to a result in the simplest fashion.

Remember 90/8/2

Over that 14-year career, I’ve come up with my own ratio on what creates long-term trust and success between individuals, regardless of their personalities.

90% of any result comes from nailing the basics.

8% comes from collaboration. You can suggest, but both parties have to agree and believe.

2% comes from spontaneous magic. Only available if you’ve done the other 98% first.

The 90%: A Visual Model

I was so tired of endlessly policing. And the more I policed, the more I felt like I was repeating the cycle I experienced as a kid. An autocratic state that required clean plates. (Love ya, Mom and Dad. Zero shade. I get the approach.)

My kids are six and three. Every day of their lives they’re encountering visual models. Colors are the easiest ones.

So I told my wife, “I’m thinking like a traffic light system. Let’s make meal time 60 minutes of free will with boundaries.”

She picked up on this half-brained idea quickly. Five minutes later, as all super moms do, she acted, cutting out green, yellow, and red circles about the size of a softball.

“Let’s add orange,” I said.

Ten minutes later, we’d taped up a green circle on the cupboard with the number 60 on it.

Yellow would be 30. Orange 15. Red meant the kitchen was closed.

We’ve all heard a picture is worth 1,000 words. This little traffic light system was the foundation stone for the whole thing.

Where there’s friction in your life or business, is there an absence of a visual model? No complex maps or Miro Boards. Keep it to 4 items or less.

When you add a visual model, you’ve removed every barrier to understanding. That’s the goal.

The 90%: Setting Expectations

There’s a reason I was able to keep clients a lot longer than anyone I was competing with. And it sure as hell wasn’t because I was smarter or more talented. I was in marketing for over a decade and to this day see myself as a pretty damn average marketer.

But what I’m a master at has served me in every facet of life: setting expectations.

Here are my rules:

• Be honest, not clever.

• Get as elementary in language as you can when expressing them.

• Say them over and over and over (one expectation said hundreds of ways).

• Demonstrate them often (What does “good” look like? What does “not good” look like?)

• When you need to correct, frame it back to something solid (a contract... or in my case with the kids: a stoplight). This is why the visual model does so much heavy lifting for you.

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The 8%: Collaboration

Expectations and a visual model can still lean autocratic. There’s gotta be meaning behind why they should agree to the expectations or it all falls apart.

Our expectation for the kids looked like this: “The kitchen is open for 60 minutes. These lights tell you how much longer it’s open for.”

Then, a direct incentive: “While the kitchen is open, you are free to come and go as you please. Two rules:

1. Do one thing (when you’re eating, you’re eating. When you’re playing, you’re playing.)

2. If the kitchen closes before your food is done, your consequence is being hungry.”

Freedom with bumpers. Two simple rules, a visual model, and constant reinforcement of the expectation.

They were gifted agency and autonomy. “Your time is your own. But the kitchen is only open for 60 minutes.”

And I got my wife on the same page. “Our job is to establish the boundary and enforce it. Their job is to push against it. Let’s just do our job well.“

We’ve been in the trenches long enough to know it’s easier to say these things than execute them. We gotta be allies.

Then, indirect incentivizing.

I told them they didn’t have to focus on the time. That’s my job. Every time we switch a color from green to yellow or yellow to orange, I grab my announcer voice: “The kitchen is closed in X minutes! If you don’t want to go hungry, you have X minutes to finish your food.”

And then I stacked: if everyone finishes with time left, you get to choose a bonus. Of course, they choose TV. Requirement: everyone has a clean plate.

As the days progressed, I whispered in their ears 1:1, “Hey, I’m so proud of you for taking your health seriously. It’s amazing you already finished with 40 minutes left! You can keep playing, but if you want a bonus, go cheer on your brother/sister to finish too! Then everyone gets some well-earned TV time.”

Food’s been getting devoured. Whining is going down. Policing transformed into simple time checks and nudges.

Peace, at last.

When you’re dealing with other people, are your friction moments coming from too much structure or too much freedom?

If they don’t feel like they have a say, they’ll rebel more. Freedom is a must. Just add some bumpers to avoid anarchy.

The 2%: Spontaneous Magic

Three days in, my son — who would negotiate everything and make me and my wife feel like short-order cooks — had a clean plate in the first 20 minutes. He heard the “15 minutes til the kitchen is closed!” time-check and asked for more food.

He’s six. Dude wants sugar all the time.

This time, he asked for an apple.

“I know I should have healthy food during mealtime,” he said.

That’s the 2%. The spontaneous magic that only shows up after you’ve done the other 98% first.

Instead of forcing peas down someone’s throat, we’re choosing apples willingly in 2026.

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P.S. If you want to watch the YouTube video that goes deeper on this concept, you can find it here:

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