Our the ability to focus without distraction is becoming increasingly rare and valuable in our ever-connected world. Cal Newport calls this Deep Work and he contrasts it with shallow work:<ul><li>Deep work means those professional tasks that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit done in concentration mode (no distractions)</li><li>Shallow work relates to the tasks that do not require much cognitive work (logistical-style tasks) performed while distracted most of the time. They don't bring much new value in the world and are easy to duplicate.</li></ul>

Deep Work And Shallow Work

<ul><li>Monastic: isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed</li><li>Bimodal: reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic (you need at least one day a week)</li><li>Rhythmic: take 3-4 hours every day to perform deep work on your project</li><li>Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work as it fits your blocks of time (not recommended to try out first).</li></ul>

The 4 Deep Work Philosophies

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)The New Law of Productivity states that the amount of knowledge you can create is limited by your ability to focus without distraction. This means that if you want to be productive, you need to be able to focus on one task at a time and avoid distractions.This is in contrast to the traditional view of productivity, which is that productivity is about multitasking and getting as much done as possible in a short amount of time. An approach is not sustainable and that it actually leads to lower productivity in the long run.

The New Law of Productivity

Our ability to focus deeply is a skill that can be learned and improved with practice.There are some things we can do:<ol><li>Set up a routine for work</li><li>Value Downtime</li><li>Eliminate Distractions, mainly social media</li></ol>

How to Engage with Deep Work

<ul><li>Downtime aids insights</li><li>It helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply</li><li>The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important</li></ul>It's important to have a shutdown ritual, to ensure that every incomplete activity has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either you have a plan you will follow for its completion, or it’s wirrten down and saved in a place where it will be revisited.

Why Downtime Is Crucial

Knowledge workers usually lack explicit indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable at work, so they turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing multiple tasks in a visible manner.But doing lots of tasks is shallow work. Productivity for knowledge workers is about effectiveness not efficiency. Lots of corporate workers have become experts in effectively doing the wrong things.

Busyness Is Not An Indicator Of Productivity

“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.”

<ul><li>Sending too much time on Social Media breaks up our time and reduces our ability to concentrate.</li><li>Social Media take away time you could be spending on higher-impact activities. It’s a zero-sum game.</li><li>If you want to eliminate the addictive pull of entertainment sites on your time and attention, give your brain a quality alternative.</li></ul>

Social Media Hinders Our Ability To Focus

In order to have a deep work routine, you have to decide the following:<ul><li>Where you’ll work and for how long.</li><li>How you’ll work once you start to work.</li><li>How you’ll support your work.</li></ul>

Setting Up A Deep Work Routine

This collection will help you make easy routine changes and take back control of your time.

books

Books

teamwork

Teamwork

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

timemanagement

Time Management

Managing Time Like a Pro

Very important book, especially when we are bombarded with distractions.

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

problemsolving

Problem Solving

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."

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