One of the best books of our generation might be Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Stealing from Samuel Thomas Davies, the book can be summarized in three sentences:
- Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
- Shallow work is non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style work, often performed while distracted.
- Deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy.
Deep work means dedicating a significant chunk of your day to a single task, project, or focus area. In a world full of tweets, Reels/TikToks, instant notifications you cannot get meaningful work completed by being distracted from the task at hand. It minimizes your ability to keep the mental threads in order, and you may be missing on highly insightful discoveries.
But in order to spend a significant amount of time on a single task, you need the ability to minimize what is on your plate at any given time.
You could do 10 things in a shallow way OR you can do 2 things in a very deep way. Cal Newport argues that the latter creates much more value in the world.
It's something I've been following for a few years now. I spend a large chunk of my mornings (3-4 hours) on a single focus area, where I've intentionally made sure that my meetings are dispersed in such a manner that allow me the freedom to do this.
This is not just important for YOU to understand, but it's vitally important for organizations to allow such behavior to exist. Paul Graham has a very famous essay on this titled "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule". I definitely don't see myself as a Manager, so I strictly like the follow the Maker's schedule.
I've got a few rules that help me produce what I consider good work without losing my sanity:
1. No work notifications. Emails, Slack notifications are completely turned off from my mobile. Inform your team that if something is urgent they can call you.
2. Try as hard as possible to find 3-4 "free" hours during your most creative time. For me, it's the first thing in the morning.
3. If you can't avoid meetings during your "peak creative time". Then try to bunch as much of them possible into a single day. If you are to be disrupted, let it happen all at once to save you the rest of the week. This is normal, it will happen, don't sulk, find ways to save the rest of your time.
4. Be ruthless on focus. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Identify what moves the needle, shut up and go do that. Let the unimportant, less urgent slip.
5. Write it down before you sleep. I got this one from Marc Andreeson, write down what you want to accomplish tomorrow before going to sleep. By the time you wake up you will know exactly where your energy needs to go for a quality day.
6. Rest. The same way your body only has a certain number of physical calories to expend before replenishing, so does your mind. "Mental calories" is something that needs management, your best work will happen when your mind feels it's best.
Ofcourse, this is simply what works for me and has had made significant strides in my ability to create meaningful output. It also helps me stay consistent with a routine, and a way to avoid being burnt out.