<ul><li>Quit Social Media: all those notifications hurt your ability to focus and stay focused. Social media isn’t all bad but it’s definitely a bad habit.</li><li>Practice Saying “No”: be selective when deciding what opportunities to go after. </li><li>Meditate: 10 minutes of meditation in the morning will greatly increase your ability to focus throughout the day</li></ul>

How to Get Better at Deep Work

<ul><li>Use Headphones: Coworkers will think you can’t hear them and the barrier to interrupt you is much higher</li><li>Work Remotely: start by asking for a half-day, preferably mornings</li><li>Email: treat email as a to-do and schedule it in your calendar twice per day</li><li>Disable Phone Notifications: disable all notifications. If it’s truly urgent, people will call</li><li>Schedule Internet Time: schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet and avoid it outside of those times. </li><li>Clear to Neutral: at the end of the day, close all your tabs and programs, delete or move all the files from Downloads, empty the trash, and shut off your computer. </li></ul>

Remove distractions

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The new law of productivity

<ul><li>Where: identify a location used only for depth, such as a conference room or a quiet library</li><li>How Long: set a specific time frame for each Deep Work session. </li><li>How: your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. </li><li>Support: to maximize success, you need systematized support — so you deplete willpower — your efforts to go deep. </li></ul>

Make Deep Work a Habit

<ul><li>Monastic: maximize Deep Work by minimizing or removing shallow obligations. Isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed</li><li>Bimodal: divide your time into some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leave the rest open to everything else. Reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic. You need at least one day a week</li><li>Rhythmic: involves creating a routine where you define a specific time period — ideally three to four hours every day — that you can devote to Deep Work</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>

4 philosophies to integrate Deep Work into your life

<ul><li>New Insights: as your conscious mind rests, the unconscious mind takes over and provides valuable insights or creative ideas and consolidates memories</li><li>Recharge: rest fills up the energy needed to work deeply. You restore your ability to direct your attention by giving this activity a rest</li><li>Evening Work Is Usually Not Important: work that you fit in your downtime isn’t normally high-value activities that really advance your career but rather low-value shallow tasks.</li></ul>

Why downtime is so important:

<ul><li>Deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Creates value.</li><li>Shallow work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. Doesn't create value.</li></ul>

Deep work vs. Shallow work

Some books you read, and then forget. Others change a small part of your life. Then there are the rare gems that fundamentally change the way you think, live, and work. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport is one of the later.