Drifting Through Your Workday? Here’s How to Take Control

The modern professional doesn’t suffer from a lack of effort. More often, the problem is a workday that makes focus harder than it needs to be.

You start the morning reacting to emails, messages, meetings, and other people’s priorities. By afternoon, you’re trying to make progress on meaningful work between interruptions, distractions, and constant context switching.

If you’re searching for how to take control of your workday, another productivity hack probably isn’t the answer.

Your environment may be.

At Brick & Mortar, we provide professional workspace—including coworking memberships, dedicated workspaces, private offices, and meeting rooms—designed to make focused work easier.

Because sometimes fixing your workday starts with changing where you work.

The 2026 Deep Work Deficit

Professionals know they need uninterrupted time to do meaningful work. The problem is actually getting it.

According to Reclaim.ai’s 2026 Deep Work Trends Report, professionals surveyed said they needed an average of 4.2 deep work sessions per week to feel productive but were achieving only 2.9. That’s a 31.3% deep work deficit.

More recent 2026 Reclaim.ai research found the same underlying problem: employees continue to report a gap between the amount of sustained focus they need and the amount they actually get.

The workday fills up. The important work gets pushed around it.

Emails need answers. Meetings interrupt the middle of a productive block. Notifications pull your attention somewhere else. Home distractions blur the line between being available and actually getting something accomplished.

Eventually, your workday starts controlling you.

Willpower can only solve so much. Your environment either protects your attention or continually asks you to fight for it.

A workspace intentionally designed for work removes some of that friction.

Here’s how to start taking control back.

Step 1: Choose a Workspace That Matches the Work

Not every workday requires the same environment.

Some days you need a professional place to sit down and focus. Other days you need privacy. Sometimes you need a meeting room for a client. Sometimes you simply need to get out of the house and into an environment where work feels like work again.

The first step is choosing your workspace intentionally.

Coworking Memberships

Coworking gives you a professional place to work without committing to a traditional office.

Instead of trying to create focus in an environment filled with competing demands, you walk into a space specifically designed for productive work.

Brick & Mortar offers flexible options for professionals who need workspace regularly as well as those who only need it occasionally. Explore Brick & Mortar coworking options and locations.

Dedicated Desks

For the professional who values consistency, a dedicated desk provides a permanent home base within a shared environment.

It removes the daily friction of finding a place to work and setting up your monitors, allowing you to slip into work mode the moment you sit down—with everything you need to be productive already waiting for you.

It’s the consistency of having your own setup without the overhead of maintaining a traditional office.

Private Offices

When your work requires complete confidentiality, zero interruptions, or a personalized environment that supports your business, our private offices provide an enclosed workspace designed for focus.

It’s where your most complex conversations, highest-value decisions, and most meaningful work get done.

And unlike working from home, the separation is clear: You came here to work. That mental boundary matters.

Step 2: Build Your Schedule Around When You Work Best

Taking control of your workday also means questioning the assumption that productive work has to happen within one rigid schedule.

Your most focused hours might happen before the traditional workday starts. You may need a professional place to take an early call, stay productive later in the day, or work around responsibilities that don’t fit neatly between 9 and 5.

Brick & Mortar’s flexible, tech-enabled access is designed to give members more control over when they use their workspace.

That means you can structure the workday around the work itself.

Protect Your Peak Hours

Know when your concentration is strongest? Protect that time.

Instead of spending your highest-energy hours answering emails or dealing with preventable distractions, reserve them for the work that actually moves your business or career forward.

Give Different Tasks Different Spaces

Your entire day doesn’t need to happen at one desk.

Use open workspace for everyday work. Move into a private setting when you need deeper concentration. Reserve a meeting room when collaboration or presentation matters.

Matching the space to the task reduces friction and helps create clearer boundaries throughout the day.

Stop Letting Logistics Dictate Your Productivity

Finding somewhere to work shouldn’t become another task on your list.

A professional workspace gives you the infrastructure to arrive, open your laptop, and begin.

Less setup. Less searching. Less negotiating with your surroundings.

More actual work.

Step 3: Take Control of Important Meetings

Your workday isn’t only defined by what you accomplish alone.

How you meet with clients, colleagues, and partners matters too.

A client meeting shouldn’t begin with you searching for a quiet corner. A presentation shouldn’t depend on whether the Wi-Fi cooperates. A confidential conversation shouldn’t happen within earshot of strangers.

Brick & Mortar’s professional meeting spaces give you a dedicated environment for the conversations that deserve one.

By utilizing professional meeting space, you gain:

Reliable Technology: Integrated AV technology and reliable, high-speed Wi-Fi keep meetings running smoothly—so you can start on time instead of troubleshooting connections.
Privacy: Dedicated meeting spaces give sensitive conversations an appropriate setting.
Professional Credibility: Your environment becomes part of the experience you create for clients, prospects, and partners.
Room to Collaborate: Choose a space that fits the meeting instead of forcing every conversation into the same setting.

Brick & Mortar offers different meeting and event spaces because a two-person conversation and a larger strategy session don’t require the same room.

Use the space that fits the work.

Step 4: Shorten the Distance Between Work and Life

A productive workday isn’t only about what happens between your first email and your last meeting.

It’s also about what work takes away from the rest of your day.

The 2026 Workplace Well-Being Report from the University of Illinois Gies College of Business found that 61% of U.S. workers surveyed were languishing at work, struggling with factors including engagement, motivation, or fulfillment. The research also identified autonomy and improved work design among the factors associated with better workplace well-being.

That makes where you work part of a larger equation.

Brick & Mortar was built around a simple idea: professional workspace shouldn’t automatically require a long commute into the city.

With locations in Park Ridge, Deerfield, Glen Ellyn, Libertyville, and Arlington Heights, professionals can access high-quality workspace closer to home.

A shorter commute gives you something even the best productivity system can’t manufacture: time back.

Time for your family. Time for yourself. Time to exercise, cook dinner, make an appointment, pick up your kids, or simply end the workday without another hour spent in traffic. That is what Work better. Live more. actually means.

Step 5: Create a Clear End to the Workday

Taking control isn’t only about starting stronger.

You also need to know when work is finished.

When home and work happen in the same environment, the workday can stretch indefinitely. You check one more email. Finish one more task. Open the laptop again after dinner because it’s sitting a few feet away.

A separate workspace creates a physical boundary. You arrive. You work. You leave.

That transition helps create a clearer distinction between professional time and personal time—and makes it easier to be intentional about both.

Control isn’t squeezing more work into every available hour.

It’s making the hours you choose to work actually count.

Stop Drifting. Fix Your Workday.

Most workdays don’t fall apart because of one major problem.

They disappear in pieces.

Ten minutes lost getting settled.

Twenty minutes recovering from an interruption.

An hour spent half-working while surrounded by distractions.

A client call taken somewhere that doesn’t reflect the level of your business.

A commute that consumes the beginning and end of your day.

Individually, those moments feel small. Together, they determine whether you control your workday or simply react to it.

The solution isn’t to work harder inside an environment that keeps working against you.

Change the environment.

Whether you need the flexibility of a coworking membership, the control of a private office, or the credibility of a professional meeting room, Brick & Mortar gives you a better place to get the work done.

Stop adapting your workday to a workspace that doesn’t work.

Explore Brick & Mortar and find the workspace that fits your day.

Drifting Through Your Workday? Here’s How to Take Control

The 2026 Deep Work Deficit