What is deep work? Deep work is cognitively demanding, hard to do and to replicate. It requires intense concentration. Deep work is required to thrive in modern economy because there is more global competition (“superstars”, eg DHH) and more dominance of difficult fields like software (“high-skill workers”, eg Nate Silver). Deep work is applicable to almost all jobs. To thrive you must be able to learn hard things quickly (eg programming), and to produce high quality work consistently and quickly.
Deep work is rare, because many trends lead to shallow work: open plan seating, IMs/real time collab software, social media presence. Deep work is not necessarily obvious in metrics.
Four disciplines of execution for deep work: 1. Focus on wildly important. 2. Act on lead measures not just lag measures (eg track deep work hours). 3. Keep a visible scoreboard. 4. Create cadence of accountability (eg weekly review).
When thinking about network tools (eg Twitter): take a craftsman approach where you only use them if benefits actually outweigh costs, not just “any benefit”.
Give some deliberate thought to your leisure time so you use it in less distracting ways than just hanging around on social media / infotainment.
p26 An increasing number of individuals in our economy are now competing with the rock stars of their sectors.
Note:Not sure that this is due to better comms or remote work. DHH is not a contract developer. But competition with elites because elite companies with few employees have global platform reach.
p29 Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. p77 Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to. If you focus on a cancer diagnosis, you and your life become unhappy and dark, but if you focus instead on an evening martini, you and your life become more pleasant—even though the circumstances in both scenarios are the same. As Gallagher summarizes: “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.” p84 When measured empirically, people were happier at work and less happy relaxing than they suspected. And as the ESM studies confirmed, the more such flow experiences that occur in a given week, the higher the subject’s life satisfaction. Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging. p86 To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction. p87 In this appreciation for the “subtle virtues” of his medium, they note, the craftsman has stumbled onto something crucial in a post-Enlightenment world: a source of meaning sited outside the individual. p88 The look of satisfaction on Furrer’s face as he works to extract artistry from crude metals, these philosophers would argue, is a look expressing appreciation for something elusive and valuable in modernity: a glimpse of the sacred. p91 The meaning uncovered by such efforts is due to the skill and appreciation inherent in craftsmanship—not the outcomes of their work. Put another way, a wooden wheel is not noble, but its shaping can be. The same applies to knowledge work. You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work. p100 You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. p100 The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. p136 Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important p137 “If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.” p137 Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures p138 lead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals. p139 Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard p140 Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability p141 During my experiments with 4DX, I used a weekly review to look over my scoreboard to celebrate good weeks, help understand what led to bad weeks, and most important, figure out how to ensure a good score for the days ahead. p144 the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning—no p146 providing your conscious brain time to rest enables your unconscious mind to take a shift sorting through your most complex professional challenges. p150 you should hit your daily deep work capacity during your workday. It follows, therefore, that by evening, you’re beyond the point where you can continue to effectively work deeply. p161 Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times. I suggest that you keep a notepad near your computer at work. On this pad, record the next time you’re allowed to use the Internet. Until you arrive at that time, absolutely no network connectivity is allowed—no matter how tempting. p167 This strategy asks you to inject the occasional dash of Rooseveltian intensity into your own workday. In particular, identify a deep task (that is, something that requires deep work to complete) that’s high on your priority list. Estimate how long you’d normally put aside for an obligation of this type, then give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces this time. p170a The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. p173 Once the relevant variables are identified, define the specific next-step question you need to answer using these variables. p190 Notice the complexity of Pritchard’s tool decision. This complexity underscores an important reality: The notion that identifying some benefit is sufficient to invest money, time, and attention in a tool is near laughable to people in his trade. Of course a hay baler offers benefits—every tool at the farm supply store has something useful to offer. At the same time, of course it offers negatives as well. Pritchard expected this decision to be nuanced. He began with a clear baseline—in his case, that soil health is of fundamental importance to his professional success—and then built off this foundation toward a final call on whether to use a particular tool. p191 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. p229 How long would it take (in months) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training in my field to complete this task? p236 I call this commitment fixed-schedule productivity, as I fix the firm goal of not working past a certain time, then work backward to find productivity strategies that allow me to satisfy this declaration. p249 interrogative e-mails like these generate an initial instinct to dash off the quickest possible response that will clear the message—temporarily—out of your inbox. p249 What is the project represented by this message, and what is the most efficient (in terms of messages generated) process for bringing this project to a successful conclusion?