How do I get 2–3 hours of deep work daily with a normal job?

Inside a normal company you don't find deep work time — you annex it, defend it, and make it politically legible. What actually works: 1. Claim the pre-meeting hours: most orgs' meetings cluster 11–5. Block 8:30–10:30 daily as a recurring 'meeting' in your calendar, named something real ('Focus: project X'). Recurring blocks placed early survive; floating intentions die by 10am. 2. Batch the reactive layer: Slack/email at 10:30, 1:30, 4:30 — announced, in your status: 'On focus block till 10:30, ping me [urgent channel] if it can't wait.' The magic isn't checking less; it's that colleagues stop expecting instant replies within a week, and the interruption stream itself shrinks. 3. Make the output visible: when focus blocks produce the thing everyone needed, say so — 'knocked out the migration during my morning block.' Deep work survives politically when it's associated with delivery, not absence. 4. Negotiate one meeting-free morning team-wide if you have any influence; a shared quiet block beats five individual ones. 5. Protect the hours from yourself too: phone away, one document open. An interruption-free block you fritter is just quieter shallow work. Honest floor: some roles/weeks give you one block, not three. One real 90-minute block daily, compounded, still outperforms most of your org.