Deep Work

Introduction

As tech advances it’s more and more important to adapt skills quickly or else you’ll fall behind

Deep Work is Valuable

Low-skill workers are falling behind while high-skill workers are doing better than ever because of remote software.

2 Accessible Groups of Success

1. Be intellectually advanced in tech

2. Be superstars in your field

You need 2 skills to join these groups

1. The ability to quickly master hard things: tech is changing rapidly and you need to change with it

2. The ability to produce elite content at a good rate

Only Deep Work can unlock these skills.

High Quality Work Produced = Time Spent * Intensity

• personal: apply to studying, hw, and everything else

• Batch all web-surfing, productive or otherwise into one time period

Busyness != productivity

• Spending a lot of time doing work means nothing if you can’t do it well

• It’s easy to fall into shallow work because it’s hard to measure the value of deep work

• Try to find a way to measure your work intensity

Reasons to do Deep Work

• Leads to a more fulfilling life: happiness comes from growth, accomplishment, getting better at what you love

• Checking email doesn’t make you happy

4 Type of Deep Work

1. Monastic

2. Bimodal: stretches of days of full monastic and days of more shallow

3. Rhythmic: scheduling in deep work blocks into daily routine

4. Journalistic: ability to work deep in any pocket of time. Requires long training in being able to go deep at any minute.

Strictly Ritualize Your Deep Work

1. Where

2. Rules and habits to follow i.e no internet while deep work

3. Support your needs: go on walks, clear out your space, food → make sure your mind and environment is clear and perfect for deep work

4. Optional: Make a big gesture that solidifies the importance. I.e make a big announcement that you’ll release your book on X day, get a hotel room so you can work undistracted by other ppl

The 4 Disciplines of Execution

1. Focus on the wildly important: Distraction becomes trivial when what you are doing is deeply important to you

2. Act on the things that are controllable i.e how many videos produced vs how many views

3. Keep a scoreboard: Track your deep work

4. Do a weekly review: Using your scoreboard

Shutdown

• The best way to work deep when you’re on is to be fully relaxed when you’re off. This makes you have to close any loops by planning out your next day and sorting all of your incomplete tasks in a way that you trust will get them done

Schedule Distraction

• only let yourself be distracted in specific blocks.

• Resist the urge to check your phone every time you’re bored.

• Not doing this will reinforce the idea that you have a way out whenever you’re bored, which you will be often if you work deep

• When working use the function F-11 shortcut to put on full screen mode and avoid internet distraction (attribute to James Clear)

• Schedule what to do in your free time so you don’t default to the standard

Work Like Theodore Roosevelt

• Work with blistering intensity by setting a timer with a time that forces you to work at full focus without over-increasing stress.

Productive Meditation: Use walks, drives, showers to think about stuff

• think about USACO, Medium, a strategy for THLI, podcast ideas etc

• Way to do this is to collect all variables and think of a next-step question

Flex Your Concentration Muscles

• Productive Meditation

• Intensely reading

• Memorizing a deck of cards

Steps to Determine the Benefit of a Social Media Tool: in dope detox article + 30 days trial: stop using for 30 days without telling anyone

1. Would my last 30 days have been notable better with the network tool?

2. Did people care that I was gone?

Dealing with e-mail

1. Differentiate the different types of emails by using a sender filter and make it clear you’re hard to reach

2. Identify what the project inherent in the email is and reply in a way that most efficiently concludes the email chain