Shallow work→ ⬇️ value and easy to replicate, for example powerpoints presentation, reports etc…
Deep work→ ⬆️ value and hard to replicate
There is a new economy knowledge workers
high skilled workers→ fast learners
superstar→ people who master a single skill → specialists
owners→ 💰
To master or learn fast, you need to focus.
Attention residue: when switching tasks → how much your mind is still thinking in the old task → We should minimize it
Different ways to practices deep work
Monastic: get a long chunk of time (say 1 week or 1 month) and divide it in two, the first half you do your normal shallow work, the second half you just disappears and you do the best possible work during this time frame
Rhythmic: you try to make an habit of deep work with daily goals, for example every day write 100 words of your novel.
Journalist: Try to use any idle time to do deep work… be prepared for it.
Ritualize it
If you want to make an habit you have to think when and what are you going to do. if not, you are basicly just day-dreaming.
Where and When you will work?
How you’ll work
What are you going to do?
Execute like a business
Focus on the wildly important: know what is the outcome of your work
Act on lead measures: for tracking of your progress, use leading metrics → they gonna affect the goal → you can control them
Keep a compelling scorecard: keep track of the hours in focus on the full year, day by day. find patterns etc…
Create a cadence of accountability: create like a “retro” for yourself, where every x amount of time you review your goal and how are you doing
Take care of you 🧠
don’t get addicted to distractions, be like an athlete → don’t eat chocolate cause there is a bigger goal.
if you are waiting for the bus, don’t use your phone. → be with your thoughts → will help with your concentration
get a deep piece of work, estimate it → commit to a much less time → this way you will have to cut some shallow work to do it.
Quit social media
choose your tools carefully, as a craftsmanship would do… → balance pros and cons of each social network
put more thought in your leisure time → plan what to do with your free time → if you don’t do that, then you will do whatever is easier and entertain you → social network etc..
Drain the shallow
37 signal, did an experiment of 30 hours of work time. most of the work was still done
How? people trait time more carefully , meetings not really important were canceled
restrictions of time → will remove shallow work]
Threat shallow work as suspicious
is understimated the damage?
or the importance is overstimated
Schedule every minute of your day
try to estimate how much time will take every task in your day
understand your biases about time taken by shallow work
treat time with respect
Quantify How deep is need for a task?
most tasks seems important, but if you look closer, most of them are shallow work
rule of thumb. How much time will take for a new person to be able to do that task?
Ask your boss for shallow work budget
Have a conversation about how much shallow work you are doing
You boss should be inclined to let you do more deep work