.

Book in 3 Sentences:

• When You work, work hard. when you are done, Be Done.
• People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy.
• Don’t take break from distractions, instead take breaks from Focus.

Notes & Quotes

.

“Deep Work”: the ability to concentrate without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s the state of flow where we produce high-quality work and push our cognitive abilities to their limits.

WHEN YOU WORK, WORK HARD. WHEN YOU ARE DONE, BE DONE.

Two core abilities for thriving in the new economy:

1. Ability to master hard things
2. Ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

To remain valuable in our economy, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this habit, you are likely to fall back, when technology advances.

Method: the batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches.

High quality work produced= time spent * focus intensity

RITUAL:

1. Where you will work and for how long
2. How you’ll work once you start to work
3. How will you support your work (eg access to coffee/ silence)

4 DISCIPLINES

• FOCUS ON THE WILDLY IMPORTANT. The more you try to do, the less you accomplish. “ If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say NO to the trivial distractions you find. Try to say instead YES to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.
• ACT ON THE LEAD MEASURES: Lag measures- describes things that u are ultimately trying to improve. When u receive them, the performance that drove them is already in the past. Lead measures- measures the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures.
• KEEP A COMPELLING SCOREBOARD: People play differently when they are keeping score. Hours spent working deeply- lead measures.
• CREATE A CADENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: A rhythm of regular and frequent meetings of any team that owns a wildly important goal.

.

The Concept of Being LAZY

PUT MORE THOUGHT INTO YOUR LEISURE TIME.

Once you shut down, your mind must be left free to encounter buttercups, stink bugs and stars.

• Reason 1. Downtime aids insight. Some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle.
• Reason 2: Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to think deeply. Validate attention restoration theory (ART), which claims that spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate. Walking through nature frees attention, as there are fewer challenges to navigate.
• Reason3: The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important. The capacity for deep work in a given day is limited.

.

STRUCTURE YOUR DEEP THINKING!

THE CRAFTSMAN APPROACH TO TOOL SELECTION: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its impact on these factors substantially outweighs the negative impacts.

The first step of this strategy will be to identify the main high-level goals in both your professional and personal life.

.

Practical Tips:

• “THINK-WEEKS”- twice a year, Jung would isolate himself to do nothing but read and think big thoughts.
• Put aside 1 day a week to stay away from network technology. Learn to have a little disconnectedness within the connected world- donot run away.
• Schedule in advance when you’ll use the internet and then avoid it altogether outside these times.
• The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you are occupied physically but not mentally- walking, jogging, driving, showering and focus your attention on a well defined professional problem. You must bring your attention back at hand, when it drifts.
• Schedule Every Minute of Your Day!