Table of contents
- π§ β¨ Small habits, big impact! Try "reciprocal meeting blocks" to protect your deep work time. π π #LifeHack
- ποΈπ‘ Block Monday for all meetings; free up the rest of your week for deep work! πβ¨
- π§ π» Use a working memory file as your brain's digital extension for seamless flow! πβ¨
- π«πΈ Skip the post, embrace the moment, and build discipline instead! πͺπ§ββοΈ
- Deep work isn't just about productivity; it's about crafting a life you truly want. πͺβ¨
- Time blocking is your secret weapon to balance big goals and small tasks, making every day count! π π
π§ β¨ Small habits, big impact! Try "reciprocal meeting blocks" to protect your deep work time. π π #LifeHack
Today, I thought it might be fun to talk about some of the small things that can make a surprisingly big impact on the quality of your life, both personally and professionally. I've identified eight such small habits and tactics to suggest to you; four of these will be related to the world of work, and the other four will be related to your life outside of work. All of them are oriented towards our core goal here of trying to cultivate a deep life in a world that's increasingly drowning in digital distractions. These are small, unusual, or interesting habitsβnot the major, classic pieces of advice that I talk about on this show and in my book. This is not a comprehensive list, just a bunch of things I thought were interesting. There's a lot I'm probably missing that are important, and it's also not mandatory; you don't have to do everything on this list to enjoy the benefits of a deeper life. Pick and choose as you see fit.
Let's transition to the work-related habits. Here's my first idea: reciprocal meeting blocks. Every time someone says, "Hey, let's have a meeting," that you have to schedule, I want you to schedule a corresponding block of time for the same week that you will then protect for undistracted or deep work. When you schedule a meeting on your calendar, add 20 minutes to the endβnow I call this the recovery block. My second small idea is work quotas for common types of work tasks that you are asked to do regularly and that are important to your job. You can say yes to these things until the quota is full. Once the quota is full, you have to start saying no because your quota is full, but now you have a good reason for saying no.
Here's my third small idea: coordination Mondays and summer Fridays. Coordination Mondays is the concept where I think about Mondays as the day for organizing my work and collaboration. It's where I get a handle on what's going on, check in with people, learn more about things that need to be done, organize and make sense of the work that has been done, and get a better sense of what's still coming.
ποΈπ‘ Block Monday for all meetings; free up the rest of your week for deep work! πβ¨
You can predictively turn things down based on your assumption that better things for your quota are going to come in the future. With Coordination Mondays, the idea is to think about Mondays as the day where it's all about organizing my work and collaboration. My default is to say, "Hey, let's find some time on Monday," because that's when I do this coordination. Transitioning to the idea of office hours on Mondays, I set aside a big two-hour block where instead of scheduling individual meetings, I tell people to just call me or stop by my office during that time. What happens on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday is that they become much clearer, allowing me to make real progress on work and focus on something for a long amount of time. I push everything to Monday, handling all incoming and outgoing requests to chat or collaborate by deferring them to that day.
Now, let's talk about Summer Fridays. This concept is a reference to how the publishing industry schedules their work during the summer, ending work early on Fridays. I don't offer up Friday afternoons for meetings; if someone asks, I simply say, "I'm busy then, but how about Monday or another day?" This allows me to have a good shutdown at around 1:00 or 2:00 PM on Fridays and then move on to something else without making a big deal of it.
Lastly, I want to mention the working memory.txt file. Throughout the day, I use it as an extension of my brain when working on a particular project. I can type as fast as I'm thinking or as fast as people are saying things, without worrying about formatting. This way, if I have an interruption, I can come back later that day or the next day and know exactly what was going on by seeing the notes left in the working memory.txt file.
π§ π» Use a working memory file as your brain's digital extension for seamless flow! πβ¨
Because I can type so fast, I use the working memory.txt file to capture thoughts as quickly as they come to me or as fast as people are saying things. This way, if I have an interruption, I can come back later that day or the next day and know exactly what was going on by seeing the notes I left in the file. It's critical when you work at a computer to use a working memory.txt file as a literal digital extension of your brain. For solving complicated problems, I dedicate a single small notebook to each issue, and I recommend using a Field Notes notebook. By having this notebook with me wherever I go, I have a ready-made place to put thoughts or insights as they arrive, effectively boosting my brain power by about five times.
Additionally, I take thinking walks, where I go outside and think about myself, my life, or something that's on my mind. This practice helps me grow, make sense of life's messiness, and find meaning and resilience amidst the challenges I face. Regarding social media, I don't post unless I really, really have to because posting can deeply entrench the addictive and mind-warping aspects of social media into your brain. Lastly, the more I practice discipline, the more comfortable I become with doing hard things that don't offer immediate rewards. This practice builds my resilience and ability to tackle challenging tasks.
π«πΈ Skip the post, embrace the moment, and build discipline instead! πͺπ§ββοΈ
I don't post on social media unless I'm in a situation where it's really notable that I'm not posting, and even then, I consider not posting. Somehow, I still manage to get by without it. Discipline is crucial, and it's not a character trait but more of a threshold you cross through practice. The more you practice discipline, the more comfortable you become with doing hard things that don't offer immediate rewards. Start modestly; physical challenges work well as a starting point, like committing to not drinking for three months or doing a 15-minute workout every day. As your discipline grows, your identity as a disciplined person will solidify, fueling almost anything else you want to achieve in your quest to cultivate a deeper life in a distracted world.
For practical discipline tips, I recommend using reciprocal meeting blocks and work quotas, implementing coordination Mondays and summer Fridays, and always having your working memory.txt file open. Outside of work, use single-purpose notebooks for big challenges, take daily thinking walks, avoid posting on social media if you can, and consistently do hard things. I miss my Cozy Earth sheets and comforter cover; they don't have them up here. If you go to CozyEarth.com and use the discount code Cal, you'll get 30% off, plus free socks if you complete the survey and mention you heard about Cozy Earth from the Deep Questions podcast.
Deep work isn't just about productivity; it's about crafting a life you truly want. πͺβ¨
Practicing discipline by doing hard things helps you get used to this type of satisfaction, making it more attractive. To deprogram dopamine-driven pleasures, you need to get comfortable with discomfort. For instance, if your brain urges you to watch TV, resist because it's not part of your plan, and accept the resulting discomfort. Over time, this gets easier, and you'll become okay with feeling bored or bad. As for deep work, the ideal number of sessions varies depending on your job. Mike says on a weekly basis, what is a good number of deep work sessions to strive for assuming my typical work week is Monday through Friday? This depends on your job. You should identify for your particular job in a typical week what is the ideal ratio of deep work hours to non-deep work hours for being as useful as possible to your employer. Talk to your boss or supervisor about this. Well, now you have something to aim for, and if you're hitting much less than that number, you now have the impetus to improve.
When measuring your deep to shallow work hours, you need a full hour dedicated to deep work for it to count as a deep work hour. You can't have like 20 minutes here, 40 minutes there, and say, okay, that's two hours of deep work. You need to count up deep work sessions that last at least an hour to add their minutes to your total deep work count. Sam says he just read the section in "Deep Work" about the four disciplines of execution, the first being to focus on the wildly important. I would suggest spending some time with each but consecutively, not concurrently. We're talking three to six weeks per each. I'm going to spend this month just thinking about this area of my life and clean it up, then move on to the next bucket.
Adon says he is currently rereading my latest book, "Slow Productivity." In the section "Limit Daily Goals," I emphasize focusing on one task per workday. If possible, just have one major initiative you're making progress on. There'll be lots of other small tasks and obligations that have to go on. This is why you need time blocking. Time blocking is going to help you make sense of where you're going to work on your major things and where the other things in the day are, how you're going to get other small things done in the most optimal way possible. I want to share how my podcast helped remind me to build my career around my desired lifestyle.
Time blocking is your secret weapon to balance big goals and small tasks, making every day count! π π
I keep my digital weekly plan in a simple text file, often within working memory.txt, where I place it at the top and build a big border with equal sign lines. Some people prefer to keep it in a dedicated file and even print it out to have a physical copy at their desk. When it comes to deep work, there's a unique pleasure derived from tackling hard tasks, like working on a challenging book chapter. This deeper pleasure isn't immediate but comes from our future prediction system, which rewards us when plans are executed. It's a quiet satisfaction, a sense of fulfillment from making an intention concrete in the world. There's a sort of deeper satisfaction that comes from executing a hard but worthwhile, well-planned task. It's very different from dopamine-driven satisfactions, and it's the type of satisfaction you want to reorient your life around.
Practicing discipline by doing hard things helps you get used to this type of satisfaction, making it more attractive. To deprogram dopamine-driven pleasures, you need to get comfortable with discomfort. For instance, if your brain urges you to watch TV, resist because it's not part of your plan, and accept the resulting discomfort. Over time, this gets easier, and you'll become okay with feeling bored or bad. As for deep work, the ideal number of sessions varies depending on your job. Mike says on a weekly basis, what is a good number of deep work sessions to strive for assuming my typical work week is Monday through Friday? This depends on your job. You should identify for your particular job in a typical week what is the ideal ratio of deep work hours to non-deep work hours for being as useful as possible to your employer. Talk to your boss or supervisor about this. Well, now you have something to aim for, and if you're hitting much less than that number, you now have the impetus to improve.
When measuring your deep to shallow work hours, you need a full hour dedicated to deep work for it to count as a deep work hour. You can't have like 20 minutes here, 40 minutes there, and say, okay, that's two hours of deep work. You need to count up deep work sessions that last at least an hour to add their minutes to your total deep work count. Sam says he just read the section in "Deep Work" about the four disciplines of execution, the first being to focus on the wildly important. I would suggest spending some time with each but consecutively, not concurrently. We're talking three to six weeks per each. I'm going to spend this month just thinking about this area of my life and clean it up, then move on to the next bucket.
Adon says he is currently rereading my latest book, "Slow Productivity." In the section "Limit Daily Goals," I emphasize focusing on one task per workday. If possible, just have one major initiative you're making progress on. There'll be lots of other small tasks and obligations that have to go on. This is why you need time blocking. Time blocking is going to help you make sense of where you're going to work on your major things and where the other things in the day are, how you're going to get other small things done in the most optimal way possible. I'm working on prepping this new hard class and trying to make progress on a chapter from my book, and I try to keep that the one thing. The time blocking is going to help you make sense of where am I going to work on my major things and where are the other things in the day, how am I going to get other small things that need to get done in the most optimal way possible.
That is this week's slow productivity corner. Case studies are where you, my listeners, send in examples of you using my advice in your actual lives so we can see what it looks like in practice. I felt desperate to land an orchestra job as fast as possible, but the contrast to leaving New York for suburbia also made it incredibly important to me how much I wanted to get back to living in a dense, walkable city with good public transportation. I'm now living the dream in San Francisco as a freelancer and no longer feel like my entire life hinges on landing a big high-status orchestra job.
When trying to cultivate a deep life, a trap to avoid is the hope that the singular grand goal will change everything for the better. Singular grand goals tend to just focus on one part of your life, and in making one part of your life better, they can have unexpected consequences on the other parts of your life. Because, as the author of this case study recognized, location really mattered. He did not go or accept the high-status job in a city in which location would be really bad. When you work backwards from a broad lifestyle narrative, these are the types of subtle plans that come up that better play on all the different aspects of your life that matter.
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