Deep Work

The New Economy’s Winners

In today’s rapidly changing technological landscape, three groups have massive advantages:

High-skilled workers who can work creatively with intelligent machines
Superstars who are the best at what they do
Owners who have access to capital

Two Abilities for Thriving

To succeed in this winner-takes-all economy, you need:

The ability to quickly master hard things
The ability to produce at an elite level in both quality and speed

These two abilities are greatly enhanced by maximizing deep work time and its intensity.

Definitions

Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Shallow Work

Non-cognitively demanding logistical tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts create little new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Recognizing Deep vs Shallow Work

Ask yourself: How long would it take in months to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training to complete this task?

Anything less than 3 months is definitely shallow work.

The Rules

Choose Your Deep Work Schedule

Pick one schedule type and stick with it:

Consecutive days in a week or month dedicated fully to deep work
Fixed hours every day for deep work, typically in the morning
Flexible hours every day where you can switch focus at will

Build the Habit

Ritualize it. Use triggers. Enforce a fixed number of hours. Then completely stop work for the rest of the day.
Protect downtime. At the end of each workday, shut down all work thoughts and actions. Say “Shutdown complete” as a trigger.
Embrace boredom. Train your brain not to act on your first desire for novelty.
Quit social media. Or limit it to once per day.
Drain the shallow. Work a fixed eight hours per day. This forces you to prioritize deep work.