Deep Work

🎯 The Book in 3 Sentences

Talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.

The type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work.

Deep work is hard and shallow work is easier, but depth is where the real value lies.

A deep life is a good life, any way you look at it.

Two core abilities for thriving in the new economy:
1. The ability to quickly master hard things.
2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

Choose a few big objectives that inspire you. This focus turns abstract aspirations into concrete plans.
Track the time you spend in deep, focused work sessions. This metric directly influences your big goals.
Create a physical or digital board to record your deep work hours. Seeing progress encourages further effort.
Weekly review your deep work achievements and set plans for improvement. This keeps your efforts aligned with your goals.
Decide on a specific time to end work each day. This boundary helps preserve time for rest.
Develop a routine to formally end your workday, ensuring all tasks are accounted for and planning for the next day. This signals your brain to relax.
Schedule enjoyable, relaxing activities after work<.mark>. These help your mind recover and improve concentration for future deep work sessions.
Understand that stepping away from work and allowing for rest not only is essential for health but also increases the quality and quantity of output when you do work deeply.

Embed focused learning into your daily routine to enhance cognitive capabilities and ability to do deep work.
Dedicate time to concentration exercises, strengthening attention span and deep work capacity.
Allocate specific internet use times to reduce distraction and maintain focus during work periods.
Apply short bursts of concentrated effort to high-priority tasks, increasing productivity and deep work skills.
Use physical activity periods for productive meditation on work problems, training the mind for deep focus.
Engage in memory exercises like card memorization to improve focus, concentration, and memory.
Establish a clear end to the workday, allowing the mind to recover and ensuring readiness for deep focus.
Resist filling every moment with digital content; embracing boredom strengthens mental discipline for deep work.

Temporarily cut off from online distractions to enhance focus and deep work skills; aim for significant personal and professional growth.
Critically assess the utility of digital tools in your life; retain only those offering substantial, tangible benefits to your goals.
Undertake a 30-day experiment by abstaining from social media to evaluate its real impact and importance in your daily life and overall happiness.
Substitute aimless internet surfing with well-planned, enriching leisure activities that contribute to personal fulfillment and mental strength.
Strategically plan your downtime activities in advance to prevent the allure of digital distractions from undermining your relaxation and productivity.
Cultivate engaging hobbies or immerse yourself in a reading list as rewarding alternatives to consuming online entertainment, enriching your intellectual and emotional well-being.
Dedicate evenings and weekends to pursuing activities that are meaningful and aligned with your personal values and interests, enhancing your sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Recognize that your mental capabilities thrive on diverse and challenging engagements, not passive rest, to foster a state of fulfillment and readiness for the demands of the following day.

Implement sender filters to reduce email volume by requiring more effort from those who wish to contact you, setting clear expectations about responses.
Adopt a process-centric approach to emails, detailing comprehensive steps for project completion in your responses to minimize back-and-forth messages.
Exercise the option to not respond to emails that don’t meet specific criteria, reducing unnecessary communication and focusing on important tasks.
Establish a fixed-schedule productivity system, setting strict work hours to enhance focus on deep work and limit shallow tasks.
Discuss and agree on a shallow work budget with your employer to ensure a balanced distribution of deep and shallow work responsibilities.
Prioritize tasks and use strategic refusal to minimize commitments that don't contribute significantly to your professional goals.
Schedule every minute of your day to ensure a deliberate approach to work, emphasizing deep work and minimizing time spent on shallow activities.
Quantify the depth of every activity to differentiate between shallow and deep work, allocating more time to tasks that significantly contribute to your goals.