Rule #1: Work Deeply - A General Guide

Definitions

• Deep Work - Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limi. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
• 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.

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Philosophy

• Monastic - Devote long stretches of time (many months or years at a time) purely to deep work.
• Bimodal - Devote medium to long stretches of time seasonally to deep work, and other seasons for shallow work. (E.g. Carl Jung writing/developing his theory vs teaching students and his clincal practice
• Rythmic - Fit in blocks of time throughout the day, no less than 90 minutes, to work deeply.
• Journalistic - Work deeply in your unscheduled free time, spontaneously.

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Ritual

Create a ritual for yourself when engaging in deep work to habituate your body and mind

• Location & Duration (e.g. local library from 12:00 to 2:00 pm)
• Structure, Rules, Limitations (e.g. no internet use, phone turned off)
• Support (e.g. food, coffee, music, environment)

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Execute Like a Business

1. Focus on the wildly important
2. Act on the Lead Measures
3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
4. Create Cadence of Accountability

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Be Lazy

Idleness is not just a vacation, it's necessary because...

1. Downtime aids insight
   • Some decisions are better left for your unconscious to work out.
2. Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply
   • Concentration is a finite resource
3. The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important
   • Experts can squeeze in 4 hours of deep work daily, while novices only have 1 hour

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Shutdown Ritual

A shutdown ritual fulfills the responsibility of keeping track of work not yet completed & notifications (email & text) not yet seen. These concerns are addressed once or twice everyday instead of constantly distracting the mind. For example...

1. Check emails
2. Review every task. Update as needed, add subtasks as needed.
3. Check calendar for any deadlines that may be sneaking up on you.
4. Make a rough plan for the next day
5. Cue shutdown (e.g. say "Shutdown complete", take a shower, workout, watch your favorite tv show)

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References

Newport, Cal. Deep Work. New York, Hachette Book Group Inc, 2016.

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