“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

个人笔记

Part 1: Deep work is Valuable, Rare, and Meaningful
Deep VS Shallow
        Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.
        
        Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate

The Deep Work Hypothesis:
        the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare and increasingly valuable in our economy. The few who cultivate this skill will thrive



Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy
        1. quickly master hard things.
        2. produce at an elite level in both quality and speed


Neurological basis
        Complex new skill needs isolation of groups of neurons,
        FBing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly .
        Winifred Gallagher: “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”
        When you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what’s right.
        
Psychological
        Csikszentmihalyi on 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.”
        Deep work generate flow state
 
Philosophical
        Craftsmanship. a source of meaning sited outside the individual.
        cultivating craftsmanship => deep task => requires a commitment to deep work
        
        
Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: especially for knowledge workers
        doing lots of stuff in a visible manner =/= productive

deliberate practice actually requires:
        (1) focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master;
        (2) receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.





Part 2: Suggestions on how to improve the skill of Deep Work
Work Deeply
 
Willpower is limited
Solution:
        • Rituals & routine to remove stimuli of interesting things
        • Put on autopilot instead of using willpower
        
4 types scheduling
        • Monastic: radically minimize shallow work in your life
        • Bimodal: Schedule long stretches of time for isolation and deep work (days or weeks)
        • Rhythmic: Schedule time every day to do deep work (make it habitual) (can’t get as deep)
        • Journalistic: Whenever you can switch into deep work (very hard to switch like this)
        

 
Things to consider as you build your deep work ritual:
        • need to specify a location to work
        • how you’ll work once you start
        • how you’ll support your work (brain needs support to keep operating at a high level – food, exercise, etc.)

4DX framework (from the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution):
        1. Focus on the wildly important (author set goal on 5 published high quality papers)
        2. Act on lead measures (lag measures, such as papers published per year.. when author shifted to tracking deep work hours – lead measures – instead, it improved lag measures)
        3. Keep a compelling score card (kept a calendar with a tally of hours worked)
        4. Accountability (weekly review to understand what led to good and bad weeks)

 
Shutdown ritual:
        When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.
        
        Why? Purpose of shutdown ritual is to clear your mind from professional issues. If there’s obligations left unresolved, you’re mind will continue thinking about them in the evening. Committing to specific plan for a task helps free cognitive resources for other pursuits.
        
        When the shutdown ritual is done, Mind then knows it’s safe to release work-related thoughts for the day.

Habit Tips:
X chain of Seinfeld
        X’ing off calendar every day he wrote jokes example
Make grand gestures:
        JK Rowling finishing last Harry Potter in expensive hotel
        
        
Quotes:
        David Brooks: “[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”

 

Embrace Boredom
 

 
Alternative internet sabbath Strategy:
Take breaks from focus.
schedule your internet time, avoid it completely all other times. Practice to detox addiction to novel stimuli.

Tips: Write on pad: when next time use internet
  
 
Productive meditation:
        Focus on specific problems when walking/jogging/showering.
        Like mindfulness meditation with focus on problem instead of breath.
        Get full attention. Notice wondering and pullback attention
        Improvement in 1-2 months
          
How to spend life on non-work hours
        Harness the hours intentionally
        Attention to intellectually stimulating activities can be more energizing.
 

Quit Social Media
Fear of Missing Out is often irrational

Social media 吐槽:
        They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell your personal information and attention to advertisers. They can be fun, but in the scheme of your life and what you want to accomplish, they’re a lightweight whimsy, one unimportant distraction among many threatening to derail you from something deeper.
Attention economy, attention engineering.

On switching activities
distracting service itself =/= reduce ability to focus
it’s the constant switching from deep/shallow work.
Switching from low-stimuli/high-value to high-stimuli/low-value activities, makes hard tolerate absence of novelty.
Slightest hint of boredom + switching task => weakens the mental muscles for staying on task.
Also
Attention residue theory
        When switching, a residue of attention remains stuck thinking about the original task
        Reduced cognitive capacity after switching

Solution:
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 positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.
 


 
Drain the Shallows
 
schedule
=/= force behavior into a rigid plan
== about thoughtfulness, to control shallow behavior.

Steps
        1. Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your work day.
        2. Divide your day into blocks.
        3. If something important comes in, or an idea pops up, that can override the schedule.

Fixed-schedule productivity:
fix firm goal of finishing the day at a certain time, then work backward to find productivity strategies that help you meet that goal.
Example: 4 day work week at Basecamp, actually get more done in less time because the constraint forces them to minimize shallow work.


Become hard to reach
        • Make people who contact you do more work
        • Do more work when you send or reply to emails


DW is a skill you have to practice.