Deep work
Summary
Introduction
Carl Jung’s retreat to the “tower” was a good example of deep work.
Deep work: work performed in distraction-free state that push the cognitive capacities to their limit.
Neal Stephenson said “if I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. What replaces it? Instead of a novel that will be around for a long time… there is a bunch of email messages that I have sent out to individual persons.”
Deep work is valuable
With the changing economy those who thrive should be able to learn hard skills quickly and produce high quality work quickly. For both, deep work is essential.
Adam Grant batches his work and creates long stretches of times to work on a single project.
High-quality work produced = time spent x intensity of focus
Focus on one thing is important due to the “Attention residue” which describes the phenomenon where the attention does not immediately switch with task switching.
Deep work is rare
Deep work is meaningful
Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” idea that “the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Rule 1: work deeply
David Dewane’s Eudaimonia machine. The name comes from the Ancient Greek concept, a state in which you’re archiving the full human potential. It’s a design of a building that facilitate the deep work.
Donald Knuth has a note: “I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer has an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.”
Knuth takes the “monastic” approach. Jung didn’t. He took bimodal approach, switching between two modes. Another approach is “rhythmic” one; for instance doing deep work every morning at the same time.
Whatever it is, rituals are helpful.
Journalist Mason Currey studied the habits of famous thinkers. He said that “perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.” David Brooks summarizes “think like artists but work like accountants.”
“Grand gestures” JK Rowling checked in a five star hotel when she was finishing deathly hollows.