Deep Work

 Deep Work by Cal Newport is extremely focused on getting you to spend time on the important things in life.  If you have tough time scheduling or finding time to put real focus on a problem, this one is helpful. Here is what I took away from the book.

 “Thinking” is a practiced skill that gets valuable things done.

  1.       A lot of companies spend time on what should happen instead of how it should happen. If you ever got the “figure it out” response from others, be wary that the how is not considered.  Begin to pose and work towards how smaller pieces can be completed instead of what the whole project is.

2.       Don’t just look busy.  It’s not productive.  It reminds me of “American Dad!” episode don’t just chop wood in the office. I wrote about it before. A Senator enters the CIA. The main character panics and drags a large tree stump from behind his desk and started to chop wood.  IN THE OFFICE.  Sure it looks busy, but what are you doing?!

3.       Set up routine and build habits to automate smaller tedious tasks. Live simpler. Life is complex as you make it.  Would you rather focus on essential things or just stare at social media.  There are many longwinded preachy speeches on get off social media.

4.       Schedule down to the minute.  It seems like a lot. It is. But you take the day into meaning 30 minute blocks and see if your assessments are correct on time.  We say it may take an hour, but when we get distracted or lose focus the same task can take 3 hours.  Its to just test and adjust our expectations of the day

5.       Like a calendar with x for each day, try something to track your efforts and set a special mark when special things happen.  I liked this one.  The author would put a tally mark every time he would write.  He set a goal to spend 2 hours writing throughout the day.  Maybe even 30 minute windows and mark a computer-side Post-It each time.  When something big happened, like a great thought of a great sentence or the “how” was resolved, he would mark it special.  So as you look back over the week you can see an objective change in something.

6.       Unconscious mind v Conscious mind.  There is an analogy comparing these parts of our consciousness. The conscious portion is set more for finalizing the decision, and the unconscious section works like a search engine aligning all the thoughts to be reviewed.  We better serve ourselves with a “sleep on it” method to just allow the complexities a chance to reduce to core information.  Again converting “what” into “how”