Deep Work, Cal Newport
(back to books)
- Substrat: When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.
- High-Quality Work Produced = Time Spent x Intensity of Focus
- Deep work is way more powerful than most people understand.
- Deep Work: Professional activities performed in state of concentration
that push cognitive capabilities.
This creates new value, improves skill, is hard to replicate.
Typically not possible to spend more than 1-4 hours per day.
- consequence: 1) master hard things, 2) produce with quality & speed
- recommendations:
- #1, focus on importance: identify small number of ambitious outcomes
- #2, act on lead measures
- #3, keep scoreboard: have public place to track lead measures
- Principle of Least Resistance: without feedback, people will tend toward whatever is easiest.
- fixed-schedule productivity: not working past a certain time, work backward to find productivity strategies.
—> shifts you into scarcity mind-set
- Bill Gates was a serial obsessor.
- Zeigarnik effect: incomplete tasks dominate attention
(effect softened when people planned how to complete task later) —> shutdown ritual can help
- question to assess shallowness:
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?