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Rule 1

Rule #1

Work Deeply

Eudaimonia Machine

  • A state in which you're achieving your full human potential.
  • A space designed to enable the deepest possible deep work.
  • A work environment (and culture) designed to help us extract as much value as possible from our work.
  • This is an ideal. We can't have this in the modern world.
  • But we can try to emulate this by removing the things that are in our way.

Simply reminding yourself to concentrate more isn't enough for deep work.

  • You are constantly challenged with desire to do anything BUT work.
  • You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.
  • You have to add routines and rituals on top of your good intentions to minimize these obstacles that block you from acheiving deep work.

Strategies

Decide on Your Depth Philosophy

  • You need your own way of integrating deep work into your life.
  • There is no right answer to this, but it is worth exploring what is right for you, as a incompatible depth philosophy may be of harm.
  • Deploying deep work in an ad-hoc way is also not an effective way.
  1. The Monastic
    • Maximize deep efforts by eliminating shallow obligations.
      • No emails, no phone calls, etc...
    • Completely going dark to focus on deep work.
    • Not so compatible with most people in a modern world.
  2. The Bimodal
    • Divide and allocate a clearly defined stretch of time to deep work, and go back to normalcy when it's over.
    • Works only if you dedicate enough time to reach peak cognitive intensity.
      • Tends to be no shorter than a day.
    • For people who cannot simply be absent from their normal life to focus on their interests.
  3. The Rhythmic
    • The chain method.
      • Easiest way to start deep work is to make it in to a regular habit.
      • Create a rhythm for this work and remove the need to decide when it is best to switch to deep work.
    • By not spending energy to even think about when to go into deep work, you are removing a barrier to it.
    • In contrast to bimodal or monastic approach, this will likely not let you allocate enough time to reach your peak cognitive intensity, but it respects the reality of human nature.
      • In the long run, rhythmic workers will log more hours of deep work than bimodals.
    • A matter of self control. If nothing is pressuring you to do deep work (your life doesn't immediately depend on it), making it a habit is better.
    • In reality, your situation might not allow for long periods of deep work. In this case, you are locked into trying to make it a habit.
  4. The Journalistic
    • Fitting deep work whenever you can in your schedule.
    • There will be a lot of context switching which can quickly deplete your willpower.
    • This assumes a certain level of confidence in your ability to focus.
    • Do it if you can pull it off. It won't be easy.

Ritualize

  • People who achieve great results with their minds don't work in an ad-hoc fashion.

  • To make the most out of deep work, set up rituals like the important thinkers.

    • Mason Currey
      • 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.
    • David Brooks
      • Great creative minds think like artists but work like accountants

  • Rituals minimize friction in the transition from shallow to deep work, and it allows you to stay in deep work state longer and easier.

  • Some questions to ask yourself:

  1. Where you'll work and for how long.
    • Specify where you want to get into deep work, and set a timeframe so that you don't have to worry about it every time.
  2. How you'll work once you start to work.
    • Lay out what you should and should not be doing in every session, so that you don't have to mentally go over it again and again.
    • Failing to do so will cause you to drain your precious mental resources in deciding those things.
  3. How you'll support your work.
    • Figure out what you need / what state you need to be in during your deep work sessions beforehand so that you don't have to interrupt it to get them.
    • e.g.)
      • A cup of coffee.
      • Being sufficiently fed.
      • Exercise.
      • Body is clean, Desk is clean, had a good sleep.

Make Grand Gestures

  • A radical change from your everyday environment will give you a hightened perceived importance of the task you want to focus on.
    • J.K. Rowling finished her last book at a Luxury hotel.
      • Significant investment, new environment.
    • Bill Gates had a log cabin where he would retreat to in weekends to think about important decisions.
      • The novelty of the idea of going to a secluded location to think gave his tasks more perceived importance.
    • Michael Pollan built a cabin at their property to be used for deep work.
      • It's not the amenities of the log cabin that enabled deep work. It's the special treatment and delibrate effort that gave more importance to the task which led to a deeper concentration.
  • Not all grand gestures need to be permanent.
    • Peter Shankman booked a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo, wrote the entire time he was on the plane, grabbed an espresso in Tokyo, and hopped back on the plane. Wrote the entire time he was on the way back. Finished writing.
  • It is about committing to the task at hand seriously.

Don't Work Alone

  • Leveraging collaboration in deep work is tricky but is worth exploring.
  • Hub and Spoke architecture.
    • Hub: A place to expose yourself regularly, that encourages serendipitous encounters with others.
    • Spoke: A place you can retreat from the encounters and focus on your task at hand.
    • Even in a spoke, some tasks may be more fit to be collaborated than in isolation.
      • The whiteboard effect: back-and-forth effort between collaborators focusing on a specific idea or task.
  • Don't push the idea of collaboration to a point where it becomes more of a distraction.

Execute Like a Business

  • Division between what and how is overlooked.
  • Strategizing is easier than executing.
  • Adapt and follow The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) to deep work.
  1. Focus on the Wildly Important
    • The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.
    • Execution should be aiming for a small number of ambitious outcomes during your deep work sessions.
  2. Act on the Lead Measures
    • You need to measure your success.
      • Lag measure
        • The thing you are trying to improve.
        • You can only measure this after the fact.
        • e.g.)
          • Write 10 books this year.
      • Lead measure
        • Measures the new behaviour that will drive success on lag measures.
        • Immediately measurable.
        • e.g.)
          • Did 4 hours of deep work today.
    • Focus on lead measures.
    • In the context of deep work, the lead measure is the time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal.
  3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
    • You should have a physical artifact in your workspace that shows you the count of your lead measure.
  4. Create a Cadence of Accountability
    • Adopt a regular retrospection on your lead measure on deep work to ensure you are on the right track.

Be Lazy

  • Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets... it is, paradoxically, necessaryy to getting any work done.
  • Incorporate regular and sufficient free time into your life, between deep work sessions so that you can be idle. This will give your brain room to perform better when it needs to (during deep work).
  • At the end of your workday, shut down. Once you shut down, your mind must stay free of concern of your work.
  • Have a strict shut down ritual.
    • Ensure that all incomplete tasks / goals have been reviewed and you have plans to finish them / continue working on them when you get back.
    • Have something that demarcates the shutdown.
      • e.g.)
        • Vocally tell yourself "shutdown complete".
        • This gives you a simple cue to shut down.
  • Zeigarnik effect
    • Incomplete tasks dominate our attention.
    • however you don't need to complete your tasks to take it off your mind.
      • Just make note of how you will go about completing those tasks later, and your mind can rest.
      • Commiting to a specific plan to finish your task facilitates actually finishing that task later, and also frees your cognitive resources for other pursuits.
    • If you do not do a proper shutdown, the incomplete tasks will bog you down and not let your mind rest for tomorrow.
      • and you will always have incomplete tasks.
  • Shutting down is important because:
    1. Downtime Aids Insight
      • Some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle.
      • The unconscious thought theory
        • for decisions that require the application of strict rules, conscious mind must be involved.
        • however, for decisous that involve a lot of vague or even conflicting information and constraints, your unconscious mind is better.
      • Letting your conscious brain rest means giving control to your unconscious mind, and is thus not reducing the time spent on solving problems. It is just a different mode of working.
    2. Downtime Helps Recharge the Energy Needed to Work Deeply
      • Attention restoration theory
        • You get attention fatigue.
        • To concentrate, you require directed attention.
      • Introducing inherently fascinating stimuli lets your brain replenish the energy for directed attention.
      • Go for a walk, cook a nice dinner, listen to music, etc. Anything that will make you let go of that attention.
    3. The Work That Evening Downtime Replaces Is Usually Not That Important
      • The amount of deep work you can put in a day is limited.
      • Beyond a certain point, you are effectively not in deep work state.
      • Anything you do after that is done in a shallow state, and is not worth sacrificing your rest time.
        • They don't matter enough.
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