Rule #4: Drain Out the Shallows
Shallow vs. Deep Work
To distinguish between shallow and deep work, ask yourself: How much time (in months) would it take for a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training in my field to complete this task? For example, if a task requires your expertise, (4 years of education) it is always deep work.
Shallow Work Budget
Determine what percentage of your daily, average, work is shallow. Work to reduce that percentage by allocating less time to shallow work or finding more time for deep work. To help do this, consider: Fixed-schedule productivity - The practice of adding productive contraints to your schedule that you are forced to work around. For example... * Can't work past 5:30 pm * Must work 50 hours a week
This puts you in a scarcity mindset with-respect-to your time, thereby making better use of it & gaining the ability to say "no" more easily.
Tips For Becoming Hard to Reach
- Make people who send you email do more work via sender filters, for example...
- "Replies are not guarenteed" note
- Secretaries, refer to FAQ, payment fee
- Do more work when you send or reply to emails
- Formulate process-centric responses that have the goal of concluding the "project" in the shortest number of email echanges as possible.
- Don't Respond
- It's the sender's responsibility to communicate why the email they are writing is important and to convince the receiver to respond. It is also their responsibility to write the email as unambiguously as possible to make it as easy as possible for the receiver to respond.