Ask HN: How do you focus during the workday?

For me, the most difficult part of transitioning from working for other people to working on my own pursuits was a lack of structure. No deadlines, no daily accountability to others, no ladder to climb. This is freeing, but makes it very hard for me to get work done.

One option I'm considering is converting as much of my work as possible to offline. I've already deleted social media, but even still, I find myself getting more and more creative with ways to distract myself on my laptop during the workday (for example: Posting this right now).

Wanted to feel out the community here, many of whom are in a similar position, to understand if others have struggled with this and any strategies available to me/education on the matter.

I made a video about my approach here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hMVy4aKEZ4

But the gist of it is, you need to block distractions and be present in the moment, focusing on the task at hand. When I'm not feeling it, I use the Pomodoro Technique to get me started. Once the initial inertia is gone, I can keep going even without the technique.

As a remote CTO in a smallish company, because of timezones.. it's relatively easy to get alone time.

(I'm in Europe.)

In the morning (their afternoon): ~3 hours of communication/cooperation with coworkers in Taiwan.

Then lunch/break.

Then ~3 hours of focused work, without any interruptions!

Then a break.

Then 1-2h working with the CEO etc in the US. Or more alone work if there's nothing big to work on together.