Deep Work_ Rules for focused success in a distracted world ( PDFDrive.com )

week, and then refine these decisions, as needed, at the beginning of each day (see
Rule #4 for more details on my scheduling routines). By reducing the need to make
decisions about deep work moment by moment, I can preserve more mental energy for
the deep thinking itself.
In the final accounting, the journalistic philosophy of deep work scheduling
remains difficult to pull off. But if you’re confident in the value of what you’re trying
to produce, and practiced in the skill of going deep (a skill we will continue to
develop in the strategies that follow), it can be a surprisingly robust way to squeeze
out large amounts of depth from an otherwise demanding schedule.
Ritualize
An often-overlooked observation about those who use their minds to create valuable
things is that they’re rarely haphazard in their work habits. Consider the Pulitzer
Prize–winning biographer Robert Caro. As revealed in a 2009 magazine profile,
“every inch of [Caro’s] New York office is governed by rules.” Where he places his
books, how he stacks his notebooks, what he puts on his wall, even what he wears to
the office: Everything is specified by a routine that has varied little over Caro’s long
career. “I trained myself to be organized,” he explained.
Charles Darwin had a similarly strict structure for his working life during the
period when he was perfecting On the Origin of Species. As his son Francis later
remembered, he would rise promptly at seven to take a short walk. He would then eat
breakfast alone and retire to his study from eight to nine thirty. The next hour was
dedicated to reading his letters from the day before, after which he would return to his
study from ten thirty until noon. After this session, he would mull over challenging
ideas while walking on a proscribed route that started at his greenhouse and then
circled a path on his property. He would walk until satisfied with his thinking then
declare his workday done.
The journalist Mason Currey, who spent half a decade cataloging the habits of
famous thinkers and writers (and from whom I learned the previous two examples),
summarized this tendency toward systematization as follows:
There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration—that there is
some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where…
but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a
terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can
offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.