Deep Work

Journalist Mason Curry spent "two hours of undistracted writing time in his private office. His afternoons would often consist of meditation or long walks in the surrounding countryside" (1)

Bill Gates would spend "Think Weeks" twice a year where he would isolate for a week reading and thinking about big problems facing Microsoft (5)

Example of Winifred Gallagher, a science write r suffering from cancer: "This disease wanted to monopolize my attention, but as much as possible, I would focus on my life instead...in the corner of her brain honed by a career in nonfiction writing, that her commitment to focus on what was good in her life—'movies, walks, and a 6:30 martini'" (76)

A plea for mindfulness over time: "Carstensen hypothesizes that the elderly subjects had trained the prefrontal cortex to inhibit the amygdala in the presence of negative stimuli. These elderly subjects were not happier because their life circumstances were better than those of the young subjects; they were instead happier because they had rewired their brains to ignore the negative and savor the positive." (78)

Evaluate your success based on the process not on outcomes (138)

A modern problem: "you'll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom." (157)

"Internet sabbatical is not the same as the Internet Sabbath...the latter asks that you regularly take small breaks from the Internet...while the former describes a substantial and long break from an online life" (183)

"It requires hard work and drastic changes to your habits. For many, there's a comfort in the artificial busyness of rapid e-mail messaging and social media posturing" (263)

Build something that aggregates over time: many people just spend their time perpetually getting interrupted → they end up with a bunch of sent emails instead of a novel

Flow: "The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile" (84)

"massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth" (8)

"more and more of our population are knowledge workers, and deep work is becoming a key currency" (14)

"close to 30 percent of a worker's time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone." (6)

Shallow work: "efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate" (6)

"the habit of frequently checking inboxes ensures that these issues remain at the forefront of their attention, Gallagher teaches us that this is a foolhardy way to go about your day, as it ensures that your mind will construct an understanding of your working life that's dominated by stress, irritation, frustration, and triviality." (81)

"In a post-Enlightenment world we have tasked ourselves to identify what's meaningful and what's not, an exercise that can seem arbitrary and induce a creeping nihilism" (87)

"If you can't learn, you can't thrive." (31)

Neurons that wire together, fire together: "you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively." (36) → "isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination" → easier and easier to slip into doing this habit going forwards (37)

"put an out-of-office auto-responder on his e-mail so correspondents will know not to expect a response...enforce strict isolation until he completes the task at hand" (40)

Reduce cognitive load, anxiety, etc. and instead prioritize focus: "the common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to your performance." (43)

Some people don't have this luxury (executives, salesmen, lobbyists, etc.) (46-47)

"Feynman was adamant in avoiding administrative duties because he knew they would only decrease his ability to do the one thing that mattered most in his professional life" (62)

"spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times—at which point your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day" (97)

"You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it" (100); "attempting to schedule your deep work in an ad hoc fashion is not an effective way to manage your limited willpower" (102)

"Shallow work, therefore, doesn't become dangerous until after you add enough to begin to crowd out your bounded deep efforts for the day" (220)

Donald Knuth "deploys what I call the monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling...maximize deep efforts be eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations" (103)

Build a chain of deep work where you visually track progress day over day; "Who's to say I can't be that prolific? ...Why not me?" (113)

"it's not just the change of environment or seeking of quiet that enables more depth. The dominant force is the psychology of committing so seriously to the task at hand." (125)

At the end of the day, make an actionable plan for blocking out the next day → can enjoy your night knowing that your work for the day is done and that there is nothing you need to keep in your head (152)

Principle of least resistance: people do what is easiest, but "easier" is rarely "better" when it comes to building things (58)

Moving away from the open office: "combination of soundproofed offices connected to large common areas yields a hub-and-spoke architecture of innovation in which both serendipitous encounter and isolated deep thinking are supported" (131)

Self-impose deadlines instead of letting your work be dictated by deadlines placed on you

From Jason Fried of Basecamp: "Fewer official working hours helps squeeze the fat out of the typical workweek. Once everyone has less time to get their stuff done, they respect that time even more. People become stingy with their time and that's a good thing" (216); "The shallow stuff that can seem so urgent in the moment turned out to be unexpectedly dispensable." (217)

Avoid emails which put asymmetric load on you (either as sender or receiver)

Communicate expectations: "people appreciate clarity. Most are okay to not receive a response if they don't expect one" (245)

"created filters that put the onus on the person asking for help"

Process-centric approach: with each email clarify, predict, and remove as much uncertainty in the loop as possible (make things easy, actionable, expected)