﻿“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.”

The idea here is to use any downtime, such as when you are walking the dog or riding the subway or driving to work to do some deep thinking. You might try to use the time to solve a complex problem--Try to see sub-problems and break it down so you can solve it.You can ask yourself action questions like "What do I need to do to get to my goals?"The key is to be mindful with how you spend your time and give your brain a mental workout. This is stimulating your brain and allows you to focus on something demanding.

Productive meditation can help us stay focused

There are four strategies for achieving deep work:<ol><li>Monastic approach- this is eliminating all sources of distraction and secluding yourself like a monk.</li><li>Bimodal approach- this is setting a clearly defined, long period of seclusion for work and leaving the rest of our time open for anything else.</li><li>Rhythmic approach- this approach is about forming a habit of doing deep work for blocks of  ~90 minutes and using a calendar to track your accomplishments.</li><li> Journalistic strategy- this one has you doing deep work in any unexpected free time in your daily routine.</li></ol>

Achieving deep work requires intention

Despite the strategy you choose the important part to remember is the the key is consistency with that routine.The difference between being in the zone and deep work is being in the zone happens by chance and after hours of procrastination but deep work is intentional and desired. One ritual you could have is to define your workspace. Placing a "do not disturb" sign on your door or going to a coffee shop or library Another way is to define specific boundaries. For example, you could completely disconnect from the internet or turn your phone on silent. You just need it to be a sustainable routine

Having a ritual is essential for deep work

We should track our habits to separate productive from unproductive time so we can spot patterns. Adding routines and rituals to our day allows us to need our limited willpower less in order to maintain a state on unbroken concentration

Know how you spend your time

Cal Newport says that our brains need space to wind down every night. Newport quits work every day at 5:30pm, no work, no email, no to-do lists. It's important to set limits. When you know you have to quit work at a specific time, it allows you to focus more intensely during your working hours.

Quit work at the same time every day and leave work at work

When we are task switching some of our attention is still thinking about the first task so we are only half-focused on the new task.  Having social media and email tabs open on your browser allows their notifications to pop up on the screen, which is enough to derail our focus Todays workers feel like they are being more productive however they are merely moving information and completing small tasks which makes them feel busy--not productive though. Task switching and distractions are preventing us from truely focusing.

Multitasking and distraction are killing our productivity

Deep work is an important con ept to use to maximize productivity.

Read the Wall Street Journal Bestseller for "cultivating intense focus" for fast, powerful performance results for achieving success and true meaning in one's professional life (Adam Grant, author of Give and Take). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world. An Amazon Best Book of 2016 Pick in Business & Leadership Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller A Business Book of the Week at 800-CEO-READ

productivity

Productivity

habits

Habits

books

Books

Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world. An Amazon Best Book of 2016 Pick in Business & Leadership Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller A Business Book of the Week at 800-CEO-READ

Cal Newport is Provost’s Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, and the author of seven books. His ideas and writing are frequently featured in major publications and on TV and radio.From his website: "I write about the intersection of digital technology and culture. I’m particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives."