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

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People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand… they’re pretty much mental wrecks. At this point Flatow asks Nass whether the chronically distracted recognize this rewiring of their brain: The people we talk with continually said, “look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused.” And unfortunately, they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laserfocused. They’re suckers for irrelevancy. They just can’t keep on task. [emphasis mine] Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration. Rule #1 taught you how to integrate deep work into your schedule and support it with routines and rituals designed to help you consistently reach the current limit of your concentration ability. Rule #2 will help you significantly improve this limit. The strategies that follow are motivated by the key idea that getting the most out of your deep work habit requires training, and as clarified previously, this training must address two goals: improving your ability to concentrate intensely and overcoming your desire for distraction. These strategies cover a variety of approaches, from quarantining distraction to mastering a special form of meditation, that combine to provide a practical road map for your journey from a mind wrecked by constant distraction and unfamiliar with concentration, to an instrument that truly does deliver laser-like focus. Don’t Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus. Many assume that they can switch between a state of distraction and one of concentration as needed, but as I just argued, this assumption is optimistic: Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it. Motivated by this reality, this strategy is designed to help you rewire your brain to a configuration better suited to staying on
task. Before diving into the details, let’s start by considering a popular suggestion for distraction addiction that doesn’t quite solve our problem: the Internet Sabbath (sometimes called a digital detox). In its basic form, this ritual asks you to put aside regular time—typically, one day a week—where you refrain from network technology. In the same way that the Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible induces a period of quiet and reflection well suited to appreciate God and his works, the Internet Sabbath is meant to remind you of what you miss when you are glued to a screen. It’s unclear who first introduced the Internet Sabbath concept, but credit for popularizing the idea often goes to the journalist William Powers, who promoted the practice in his 2010 reflection on technology and human happiness, Hamlet’s BlackBerry. As Powers later summarizes in an interview: “Do what Thoreau did, which is learn to have a little disconnectedness within the connected world—don’t run away.” A lot of advice for the problem of distraction follows this general template of finding occasional time to get away from the clatter. Some put aside one or two months a year to escape these tethers, others follow Powers’s one-day-a-week advice, while others put aside an hour or two every day for the same purpose. All forms of this advice provide some benefit, but once we see the distraction problem in terms of brain wiring, it becomes clear that an Internet Sabbath cannot by itself cure a distracted brain. If you eat healthy just one day a week, you’re unlikely to lose weight, as the majority of your time is still spent gorging. Similarly, if you spend just one day a week resisting distraction, you’re unlikely to diminish your brain’s craving for these stimuli, as most of your time is still spent giving in to it. I propose an alternative to the Internet Sabbath. Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction. To make this suggestion more concrete, let’s make the simplifying assumption that Internet use is synonymous with seeking distracting stimuli. (You can, of course, use the Internet in a way that’s focused and deep, but for a distraction addict, this is a difficult task.) Similarly, let’s consider working in the absence of the Internet to be synonymous with more focused work. (You can, of course, find ways to be distracted without a network connection, but these tend to be easier to resist.) With these rough categorizations established, the strategy works as follows: Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times. I suggest that you keep a notepad near your computer at work. On this pad,
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Begin Reading Table of Contents New
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Carl Jung went on to become one of
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workers are not loafing. In fact, t
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had a plan, but they weren’t happ
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your situation has become similar t
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wife and two sons in the evenings,
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Chapter One Deep Work Is Valuable A
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workers. Advances such as robotics
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employing only thirteen people. Whe
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And because these technologies chan
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how easy this is for me!?” Matt D
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Soon after meeting Grant, my own ac
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subjects working on a set of word p
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company (two companies, in fact). I
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Chapter Two Deep Work Is Rare In 20
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in the frothy back-and-forth of onl
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nevertheless flourish in our busine
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one of many examples of business be
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concrete sense of accomplishment he
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cultivate important sources, pull t
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Page 45 and 46: At one point about halfway through
Page 47 and 48: experience. This concept upends the
Page 49 and 50: • Re: Fwd: Study Hacks. This e-ma
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Page 55 and 56: The second key observation about th
Page 57 and 58: Rule #1 Work Deeply Soon after I me
Page 59 and 60: distractions.) Before proceeding to
Page 61 and 62: his website: “What I do takes lon
Page 63 and 64: here succinctly: All of my time and
Page 65 and 66: At the same time, the bimodal philo
Page 67 and 68: Chappell began by attempting a vagu
Page 69 and 70: Isaacson was methodic: Any time he
Page 71 and 72: In a New York Times column on the t
Page 73 and 74: tower. It’s also located only a c
Page 75 and 76: Don’t Work Alone The relationship
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Page 81 and 82: Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly
Page 83 and 84: tangible results. Second, it helped
Page 85 and 86: This strategy argues that you shoul
Page 87 and 88: This study, it turns out, is one of
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Page 91 and 92: Shutdown rituals can become annoyin
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Page 97 and 98: Point #2: Regardless of how you sch
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Page 107 and 108: Rule #3 Quit Social Media In 2013,
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Page 119 and 120: impact activities, therefore, you
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Page 125 and 126: quick click away. Fortunately, Arno
Page 127 and 128: Rule #4 Drain the Shallows In the s
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Page 131 and 132: stubbornly remain. In a Wall Street
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Page 135 and 136: decisions about where given work ta
Page 137 and 138: and this is the important part—tr
Page 139 and 140: with few exceptions, I don’t send
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Herbert’s filters still enable hi
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“Sometime in the next week e-mail
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the famous names at the Institute:
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Conclusion The story of Microsoft
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fall of 2011, my obligations did in
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Also by Cal Newport So Good They Ca
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Chapter 1 Information about Nate Si
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“He is a disrupter on a massive s
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“undoubtedly true”: Manzi, Jim.
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Chapter 3 “I do all my work by ha
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Lifehacker.com: http://lifehacker.c
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name: http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-wi
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The reference to Thurston’s Twitt
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The issue of Science where Radhika
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* After Malcolm Gladwell popularize
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* Lexical decision games flash stri
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* I’m being somewhat loose in my
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* You can see a snapshot of my “h
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* The specific article by White fro
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* It was exactly this type of analy
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* The studies I cite are looking at
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Contents Cover Title Page Welcome I
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Deep Work_ Rules for focused success in a distracted world ( PDFDrive.com )

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