Deep Work and Focus: Protect Your Best Hours, 320+ Tools

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

You can install every app, block your calendar and still end the week with the important thing untouched. That is not a discipline failure; it is what happens when a person is the only defence against a system built to interrupt them. Here are 328 tools to change the system: 231 ready-to-use procedures, question lists, templates and checklists, 64 models and methods, 31 services shown on screen and 2 working files.

Open a lecture, take the procedure, and protect one block of focus time this week.

Why focus does not survive the week

Meetings fill the calendar, messages arrive in five channels, and every interruption looks urgent. Productivity advice adds more apps and more discipline, but the meetings, the information flow and the stress stay the same, and the person burns out trying harder.

What changes after this course

You have a personal system for goals and priorities, fewer and better meetings, an information diet, and a clear view of what drives attention and energy. You and your team work on the important thing first and recognise burnout before it arrives.

What is inside: 328 tools, counted lecture by lecture

You do not have to take this number on trust. Open any lecture and read its description: every tool inside is listed there by name.

• 38 downloadable resources: lecture presentations plus a focus decision tree and a personal energy assessment
• 231 ready-to-use tools inside the presentations:
• 81 step-by-step procedures: Getting Things Done (GTD), Pomodoro technique, timeboxing for focused work, 4-4-4 breathing exercise
• 53 question lists and scripts: time management peer feedback, monthly productivity reflection, burnout self-assessment
• 43 templates and sample documents: SMART goals, Today-Tomorrow-Someday task board, meeting invitation, action log
• 39 checklists: 15 elements of effective meetings, burnout recognition, effective message
• 10 scorecards, rubrics and matrices: personal energy assessment, stress and burnout cost estimator, facilitation information processing method selector
• 3 other working tools, 1 metric set and 1 ready AI prompt: Crossing the River team exercise, financial incentive decision tree, chart selection guide
• 64 models and methods explained with examples: time blocking, two-minute rule, Kanban task management, mindfulness for sustained focus
• 31 services shown on screen, including Todoist, Trello, Toggl Track, Asana, Notion and ClickUp

Where the tools are

The personal system (2 sections, 65 tools). Goals, priorities, planning, time wasters and procrastination.

Meetings (2 sections, 103 tools). Principles, preparation, closing, alignment and facilitating online.

Information (2 sections, 46 tools). The audit, goals, channels, hard news and measuring what landed.

Attention and motivation (2 sections, 36 tools). Motives, performance, loyalty, engagement and Motivation 3.0.

Well-being and burnout (4 sections, 95 tools). The modern well-being model, a programme, stress, burnout and reporting.

Who is teaching

I am Mike, the #1 HR instructor on Udemy, with 1,800,000+ course enrollments from 170,000 students, and the author of about 200 books on Amazon. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn and worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank across 20 years in HR. I hold PHRi, SHRM-CP and HCI sHRBP certifications and represent HRCI in Eastern Europe.

Some people use the Pomodoro technique: a timer and one task until it rings. Recently I found my own version with vinyl records: one side plays for 22 to 24 minutes, so I put on a record and work on one task, and when it ends I stand up, stretch, turn the record over and take the next task.

How to use the course

Start with the personal system, then fix your meetings and information flow, and use the well-being sections for yourself and your team. Section and lecture titles show how many tools are inside, and each lecture description lists them by name.

What is included

• 38 lectures across 13 sections, 19 hours
• 38 downloadable resources: lecture presentations and 2 working files
• 328 tools across the lessons, including 31 services shown on screen
• Lifetime access to all materials
• Active instructor support in the Q&A section
• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

Where to start

Track one ordinary day in 30-minute blocks and mark which blocks went to the most important task, then open the first lecture. Enrol now and start your first lesson today.

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