3 types of people that succeed in information economy:
– Superstars: Best at job (eg. programmers for hire)
– Highly-skilled workers: Extremely good at handling intelligent machines (eg. Nate Silver)
– Owners: people that own companies, esp. venture capitalists
2 things one must do to thrive in new economy:
– Learn hard things quickly (eg. Nate Silver learns SQL and Stata)
– Produce things at elite level (eg. Hansson is a programmer that produced
Batching: put one task for long period of time UNINTERRUPTED (eg. professor at Wharton that spent 3 days just writing papers, or a whole semester JUST teaching)
Metric black hole: no metric to decide whether something leads to tangible benefit to company
Problems with using deep work in companies:
– Busyness as proxy for productivity
– Shallower work is easier than deep work (sending emails vs. writing papers and reports)
– Anything Internet-related is better than all alternatives
Value of deep work
– Focus on the positives rather than negatives → secret of happiness for elderly
– Will feel that work is important if you were to give full attention to it rather than petty issues
4 philosopies of deep work:
– Monastic: Completely cut out all distractions. No email, no social media. Best for people that are unbounded by obligations to an interconnected network (i.e. ideal for independent researchers, not ideal for office workers). Ex. Knuth
– Bimodal: Basically batching. For example, spend 5 days working and all weekends in deep work mode. Must be doing this for at least 1 day. Impractical for people responding to emails daily. Eg. Jung
– Rhythmical: Spend same time every day in 90 minute deep work sessions. Ideal for people in office job
– Journalistic: Do deep work whenever you want. Takes mastery of deep work skill, but can squeeze out time during busy schedule
Ritualize deep work: start with where you want to work, how long you want to work, what metrics you will follow to succeed, how you will support work (walking, drinking coffee)
Grand gestures: In dire need of deep work, go somewhere afar (often require $). Will be more motivated to work (eg. JK Rowling booked out a hotel room to finish up Harry Potter book)
Collaboration: Can collaborate if both in deep work. Needs to be isolated environment with only 2/3 people. Hub-and-spoke model: deep work in one room, but open office interaction outside
4DX discplines:
1. Focus on a few important and ambitious goals. 80/20
2. Act on lead measures: Lead measures measure new behaviours that will lead to success on lag measures. In this case, time spent in deep work
3. Keep a scoreboard: Keep it somewhere where you will see it every day. For more motivation, circle the hour where you accomplished something great
4. Cadence of accountability: regularly review scoreboard every week. Celebrate good weeks, understand why a week was bad and how you can improve next week
Be lazy: shut down everything once you are done work
– Will help activate unconcious thought that can be better in solving problems
– Recharges attention, esp. walking in nature, listening to music, anything that doesn’t require directed attention
– Capacity for deep work is limited
Try instituting following shut down ritual:
– Final look at email inbox
– Put tasks into task lists and skim over all tasks
– Look at calendar and see if there are any deadlines coming up
– Make a rough plan for tomorrow
Embrace boredom: must take yourself away from high-stimuli distractions
– Take breaks from focus: Schedule blocks where you will use Internet, but cannot be right after focus sesh. Must be 5 minutes after. Schedule longer blocks if need be, but it can only be these times where you access work
– Roosevelt sprints: schedule less time than usual on a task → will do better
– Productive meditating: Occupy yourself physically but not mentally and dedicate time to thinking of one task. Must be ritualized
– Be wary of distractions and looping. Structure deep thinking: variables in problem, next-step questions, summarize
Social media: people use network tools due to any-benefit mindset. Have to weigh both benefits and negatives
– Take 2/3 most important goals and write 2/3 most important activities to reach goal. Known as Law of Vital Few (80% of effect from 20% of cause
Quit social media for a month and answer questions for each social media:
– Was my month worse off because of this?
– Did people care that I was off this service
Spend free time after work doing thinking. Just don’t do anything that require distracting websites/Internet
Make schedules for every minute of day. If fall behind, reschedule. If you come across an insight, stop everything and pursue that insight
Quantify depth of every activity by asking if activity requires significant time to train a college graduate. If so, it is deep work task and requires lots of time. If not, it is shallow work and doesn’t require much time
Ask superior how much time should be spent on shallow work, provided that you are NOT ENTRY-LEVEL
Fixed-scheduling productivity: prioritize time for deep work, ruthlessly cut out shallow (eg. limiting travelling to 5 trips instead of 20). Keep in mind that any task not deep work is going to be bad for distraction
Emails: become harder to reach
– Put sender filters so people have to go through more work to send email (eg. tickboxes before sending message, message that you will not respond if it doesn’t make life more interesting
– Process-centric emails: when replying, give detailed steps with a process. Think what project are you trying to accomplish and how your reply can be the best to ensure success
– Don’t respond to emails that are ambiguous, hard to respond or dont provide any benefits if you do reply or any cons if you dont reply