we live in the age of information thousands of blogs and articles are produced every single day and over 500 hours are uploaded to YouTube each minute but even though knowledge is more abundant than ever people are finding it harder to learn or accomplish anything because more information comes with more distraction but there is a skill we can train that allows us to take advantage of the information ocean without getting consumed Cal Newport professor at Georgetown University and prolific author came up with the idea of deep work he believes we're in the midst of a digital
Renaissance where anyone has the potential to make a lasting impact brilliant ideas are being produced and shared all across the internet but if we're chronically distracted the ideas are meaningless if we can't act on in order to take advantage of the digital Renaissance Cal Newport States we must possess two qualities the ability to quickly acquire skills and quickly produce quality work more skills that are toolbox the more creatively we can solve problems and if the way we do that is quick and of high quality will truly separate ourselves from the pack those who can deliver
the most value are are awarded accordingly in the digital economy sounds easy in theory right but in practice it requires tremendous effort to build skills unless we follow a set of rules we've already made several videos on the science of skill acquisition if you haven't seen those then definitely check those out first but as Cal Newport points out acquiring skills alone is not enough it doesn't matter how good we are at programming or sales if you don't use it because we can't concentrate or Focus that knowledge is meaningless this is why deep work is so
powerful every top student or successful entrepreneur can tap into the scale of deep work to accomplish more and less time deep work is a super skill it's something that once we train we have seemingly improve every area of our life so Cal neoport identified that there are four rules for deep work but I prefer to simplify it to three because three is a magic number rule number one focus on only one task at a time and do it for as long as possible for most people myself included multitasking is the worst thing you can do
for productivity account Newport explains this as the concept of attention residue logically we think that multitasking means we can simultaneously work on two things at fifty percent capacity but as you've probably attempted yourself this is not true because everything we work on has an activation energy it takes time to get into the mindset warm up and get into flow when we switch between tasks we pause the previous task and have to get over another activation Hub but once we return to the previous task it's not like a video game where we can just unpause and
keep going where we were we have to reorient ourselves overcome the activation energy again and get into the mindset and headspace where we left off and as you can imagine the more tasks we switch between the more our focus is dispersed we end up wasting all of our energy and time overcoming these activation humps that we never Focus long enough to produce quality work that's the reality of task switching the quality of all tasks suffered along with our productivity my favorite way to focus on single tasking is to incorporate time pressure a lot of people
love using Pomodoro blocking out 25 to 50 minutes devoted to only one task and then taking a five minute break and then repeating that process I mean I think Pomodoro is cool if you're new to deep work it's a great starting point it got me through a lot of hard study days in college and in medical school but as I trained and improved the skill of deep work I realized several limitations I can now easily work for longer than 25 or even 50 minutes so I don't need to take a break as often I actually
prefer not to to prevent having to overcome that activation energy again so in the past year so I switched to using a stopwatch instead a more advanced approach which we'll call flomadora once we can easily work past 50 minutes we need to know how long we can go before the brain fog starts to settle in we still feel that pressure from time but instead of it being an endurance test against a timer it's an endurance test against ourself make it a challenge how long can you go for rule number two is to tolerate boredom border
mind hates more than anything else are negative emotions I like to think of the mind like a bratty child when it feels bored it throws a tantrum and does anything it can to escape that feeling which is why when boredom strikes we automatically grab our phone or daydream a complaint and let the entire world know but unfortunately that inner brat in all of us is just getting worse because of the explosion of instant gratification at our fingertips it's a lot more difficult to find enjoyment doing simple things things that objectively are incredibly satisfying like when
was the last time you had a meal by yourself without watching Netflix or tick tocks when was the last time you went to the bathroom without your phone embracing boredom means we have to stop reaching for quick dopamine if you can quit social media altogether more power to you personally I don't think quitting is necessary I think it's better to redefine a relationship with social media and set stronger boundaries we have to treat our mind the same way a parent with their fussy child we need to resist giving in to the impulses and demands of
our mind and over time our mind will realize that we aren't messing around and it'll fall in line raise the bar for tolerating boredom at first it'll be tough but once we're at a new Baseline it will just feel normal and then we can keep pushing that bar until we're in complete control I'm not gonna go too much more detail about how to desensitize our brain from instant gratification but I made a very comprehensive video discussing my protocol for it which you can check out right here and rule number three is drain the shallows we
should eliminate all the menial work errands or side projects we use to productively procrastinate with because our mind is also very clever if throwing a tantrum doesn't work it'll try a ninja to choose to move to avoid the team's work by convincing us to engage in Shallow work you know I can't even count how many times I've thought ah geez it's too hard to focus on studying right now I might as well just go to the gym instead or clean my bathroom for the fifth time today or meal prep for next month we find ways
to keep busy but let's be real and call it what it is they're excuses for not doing the important work that we need to do one of the most powerful strategies I've implemented to overcome the productive procrastination trap is to prioritize and plan before I begin my day it's not sexy at all and I'm sorry I don't have a secret hack or anything but it really is as simple as planning actually think about it the idea of searching for an easier alternative is your mind trying to convince you to productively procrastinate it's trying to play
you to not focus on building your business or studying because first you need to clean your desk and read five more books to learn more about it draining the shallows comes down to planning out ahead of time what are the most important things to work on that will move me towards my goals I've found it's important for me to prioritize and plan the night before when I'm detached from my work because my judgment will be clouded by negative emotions that I might feel while I'm working right it's so much more helpful to go into deep
work with priorities intentions planned out than it is to come up with them on the spot when we're in the trenches and emotionally compromised I won't dive too deep into how I manage my time and select the most important things to work on but definitely check out this video up here for the complete guide so keep these three rules in mind for building the skill of deep work since I've been intentionally training it I've noticed huge improvements in my productivity like stuff that once took me hours or even days to complete I realized I could
finish it in a couple hours I don't get sucked into the void of information overload or distraction work is the key to achieving more and less time and as Cal Newport puts it leveling up in the digital Renaissance but I also want to mention that deep work has limitations because regardless of how locked in and distraction-free we are our brain has a breaking point for the sake of your mental health and for the sake of your personal productivity don't forget to recharge your battery we can't stay in deep work 16 hours day after day and
expect our performance to remain sharp there's not tangible evidence to show for it but Cal Newport and others suggests we can achieve four hours of deep work a day of course we can work for longer but that's the point when our quality begins to noticeably change so don't skimp out on the Necessities like sleep for example which on the flip side has a ton of research and science behind it and if you want to learn more about how to optimize your sleep for personal productivity then peep this video right over here
