Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

The twenty-five-to thirty-four-year-olds who thought they watched fifteen hours a week, it turns out, watch more like twenty-eight hours.

Another study found that people who claimed to work sixty to sixty-four hours per week were actually averaging more like forty-four hours per week, while those claiming to work more than seventy-five hours were actually working less than fifty-five.

The notebook method feels antiquated to me. I do not doubt it works, but I am against paper generally. It is clutter to me. My equivalent of this will be to schedule more dedicated time for tasks instead of just leaving it up to chance. This can help me take more command and certainty.

The third tactic I suggest is to be liberal with your use of task blocks.

Without structure, it’s easy to allow your time to devolve into the shallow—e-mail, social media, Web surfing.

Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your workday.

you must overcome this distrust of structure if you want to approach your true potential as someone who creates things that matter.

If our hypothetical college graduate requires many months of training to replicate a task, then this indicates that the task leverages hard-won expertise.

I call this commitment fixed-schedule productivity, as I fix the firm goal of not working past a certain time, then work backward to find productivity strategies that allow me to satisfy this declaration.

I, too, am incredibly cautious about my use of the most dangerous word in one’s productivity vocabulary: “yes.”

“Sounds interesting, but I can’t make it due to schedule conflicts.”

A clean break is best.

The notion that all messages, regardless of purpose or sender, arrive in the same undifferentiated inbox, and that there’s an expectation that every message deserves a (timely) response, is absurdly unproductive.

“Productivity land mines.” I love that!!

Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.

“Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.”