From Checkout to Creative Director - Transforming Scattered Time into Strategic Success.

A Freelancer's Guide to Mastering Deep Work.

In the checkout lanes of Sainsbury's, where the hum of daily commerce played its tune, there was me. A young dreamer clad in the company's colours, scribbling furiously on scraps of paper between beeps of the scanner. That was 1999, Surbiton.

I was the one with the ink-stained fingers and clip-on orange tie, the one who thought genius could be captured between bags of potatoes and packets of biscuits. I was the optimist, the believer in serendipitous creativity, using snatched seconds to sketch out the future I was sure was just around the corner. Those little notes were going to catapult me from checkout to creative director, or so I thought.

The lesson I learned, though, was as clear as the 'ping' of a finished transaction: greatness doesn't grow in gaps. It needs its own space, time, and undivided attention. The world is loud, and time is a thief. We're all trying to outpace it, to carve out a moment to make something that matters. But our brains don't always dance to the tune we play, and when they refuse, it's frustrating. That brief window of time we have fought so hard to create for ourselves has been wasted, and we are left feeling frustrated and demoralised. Our dreams are on pause unless we can fix this.

Environmental Priming

But we aren't alone. Many others struggle with this, too. A comedian once told Jerry Seinfeld that he'd been struggling to write new material. Seinfeld asked him where he typically does his writing. At home, the comedian said. "Get yourself an office," Seinfeld said. It doesn't have to be fancy, he added, "just somewhere that you have to drive your car to. And when you walk into that office, your brain is going to go, 'I know what we do in here.' And it will do it."

In psychology, this is known as environmental priming—the brain learns to associate certain locations with certain behaviours and kinds of thinking. Tell your brain where to go, and it'll follow the path you've laid out. That's the trick — we're creatures of habit and habitat. It reminded me of the phrase 'Write Hot. Edit Cold'—separating our creative activity to avoid muddied thinking.

But what happens if nothing happens? How do we defeat the dreaded writer's block?

Beating Writer's Block

It's all very well creating the time for creative work, but what happens if nothing happens? Celebrated author Shirley Conran has the answer. Shirley often used The Abbey (our hotel) as her writer's retreat, locking herself away in Room 1 for weeks as she wrote her next best seller. One morning after breakfast, I asked her how she was so prolific at writing and how she handled writer's block. What she told me was so clever.

She would always deliberately leave her last paragraph half-finished. She knew how that paragraph would end, but that was the point. By doing so, she could carry on immediately where she left off when she woke up. A rolling start and the momentum of that paragraph would carry her forward into continuous writing for the rest of the day.

This phenomenon is known as the Zeigarnik effect, Named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. According to Zeigarnik's research, an unfinished task will remain prominent in our minds because we know that we have left it incomplete.

Throughout the night, her subconscious was planning how to finish that paragraph and the ones that would follow it. By leaving her desk set up precisely as it was the day before, with notes and everything, she could slip right back into her writing because she was primed to do so. She's not alone, it turns out.

James Cameron's 3 Desks

In 1983, James Cameron was hired to write the scripts for Aliens and Rambo II. He also had recently sold an idea of his own: The Terminator. This meant that in a 3-month period, Cameron had to write 3 scripts. To do so, Cameron bought two desks. In addition to the desk in his office, he set up a writing station in his bedroom and another in his living room.

At the desk in his office, he worked on The Terminator. At the desk in his living room, he worked on Aliens. And at the desk in his bedroom, he worked on Rambo. "That way," Cameron explained, "when I moved from one desk to another, all the notes and papers and everything were right where they were supposed to be. If I didn't know what to do next on Rambo, I'd go work on Alien for a while."

That way when Cameron moved from his Terminator desk to his Aliens desk or his Rambo desk, his brain was environmentally primed to go, "I know what we do here." So if we want to create work we are proud of, we need to start applying the lessons learned from these creative geniuses. We have to create our own '3 desks' and have a system to be more effective, so we know what we should be doing before we start.

Developing My Process

I decided to test this out for myself to share with you what has worked, and I can tell you the effects have been profound. Whenever I need to do an essential or meaningful task - to write my book - The Signature Service - or even this article, using this approach, I get more done in 1-2 hours than I do in the rest of my day.

1. Know what you want to achieve in advance (write a chapter of my book)

2. Choose a place to do the task (on my sofa next to my dogs)

3. Decide on a regular time you can commit to every day. (5am-7am)

Sounds simple. It is, but plenty of preparation goes into making it work. Let me break it all down.

Set yourself up for success:

Task - Be clear on your intent and what you want to achieve before you start, and stick to it. Take advantage of the Zeigarnik effect and borrow from Shirley by leaving something unfinished to kick-start your session.

Location - Choose a location for the task. It can be fluid, but a static place where you can leave notes is best - a room in the house, a walk, a train ride, or a local coffee shop. As James Cameron did, choose a specific location for a specific task. For example, I brainstorm when running, I write on my sofa, and I edit in my office.

Time - Stick to the same time to help your body adjust to settling into doing deep work. You may have to restructure your day to make time for it - For me to get up an hour early, I sometimes have to have a power nap or go to bed an hour early.

Deciding on your Task, Location, and Time is just the beginning. To make the most of that time, here are a few extra techniques and tips that have worked wonders for me.

Avoid Interruptions - Tell those around you what you are working on and why it's vital that they leave you alone to focus. If they want to ask you anything, instead ask them to leave you a message that you will check afterwards.

Use The White Paper Technique - write down any distracting thoughts that keep popping into your head for later. Knowing that they are captured makes dismissing them when they return much easier.

Eliminate Distractions - Leave your phone behind or switch off and avoid using email or social media.

Treat it like an exam - Take in only what you need to work on by gathering everything you need in advance (books, notes, pens etc).

Prepare like an athlete - Eat enough so you aren't hungry, stay hydrated (have water, but not too much) and be stimulated (coffee) but not crazy.

Once you start to get the hang of it, you'll find that the hour of pure, focused work will fuel you throughout the day.Skip the supermarket scribbles. Instead, build your day with intent, shape it like clay into the life you want — piece by purposeful piece.

Wake with the birds, rest with the stars, and craft your time into blocks of undisturbed gold. With clarity, commitment, and a little corner of the world to call your own, you're not just working; you're building empires in your mind, ready to rule the world outside.