My good friend Scott was asking me about Deep Work by Cal Newport the other day, and so I looked out the book to re-read it.
I'm about 150 pages into the book and it still feels so incredibly important for the work I do today.
There's no question I've slipped with my Deep Work practices, and I want to get back to it.
I've got a lot of writing to do at the moment (personal stuff, my weekly email for work, and I've got a few essays to write for my masters), and I want to really enjoy it and feel good about it, and I know what this means...
...setting up my environment to allow myself to get deep into it.
If I want to love it, I have to focus on it.
It's 9:07am. I've already completed my morning triage on incoming messages, which took 8 minutes - no fires, no crises.
To ease myself into it I'm going to do two 90-minutes chunks of deep work with a short break in the middle (pop out into town and get a coffee and something for lunch).
Here are the rules for the deep work sessions:
I'm about 150 pages into the book and it still feels so incredibly important for the work I do today.
There's no question I've slipped with my Deep Work practices, and I want to get back to it.
I've got a lot of writing to do at the moment (personal stuff, my weekly email for work, and I've got a few essays to write for my masters), and I want to really enjoy it and feel good about it, and I know what this means...
...setting up my environment to allow myself to get deep into it.
If I want to love it, I have to focus on it.
It's 9:07am. I've already completed my morning triage on incoming messages, which took 8 minutes - no fires, no crises.
To ease myself into it I'm going to do two 90-minutes chunks of deep work with a short break in the middle (pop out into town and get a coffee and something for lunch).
Here are the rules for the deep work sessions:
- Internet toggled off
- Phone charging at the other side of the room out of easy reach
- Playlist on
- Only Notion app open on the screen - no app/browser switching (I don't need to do any research for this writing this morning, and if I do, I can take a note of it and do it later)
- Water bottle filled and ready to go
- I have a banana for a snack
What's really driving me today is to prove to myself that I can do it - that I can sit and do one thing...something meaningful - without allowing myself to be distracted (it's really me that's in control of this...).
It's 9:15am, time to set up my space and get to (deep) work.
Chris.