Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

To be great at something is to be well myelinated.

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to, so consider for a moment the type of mental world constructed when you dedicate significant time to deep endeavors.

advantage of cultivating “concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.”)

‘the idle mind is the devil’s workshop’ … when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what’s right.”

I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.”

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time,

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.

To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.

“oh, that’s well written code.” It’s much like as if you were writing a poem.

One hundred years from now, our engineering may seem as archaic

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

Where you’ll work and for how long.

How you’ll work once you start to work.

How you’ll support your work.

the grand gesture. The concept is simple: By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task.

Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters, but the novelty of his weeklong retreat helped him achieve the desired levels of concentration.

For some types of problems, working with someone else at the proverbial shared whiteboard can push you deeper than if you were working alone.

By working side by side with someone on a problem, you can push each other toward deeper levels of depth,

consider the use of collaboration when appropriate, as it can push your results to a new level.

Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important

should be aimed at a small number of “wildly important goals.”

Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures

“measure the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures.”

Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

weekly review to look over my scoreboard to celebrate good weeks, help understand what led to bad weeks,