The Work that Evening Downtime Replaces is Probably not that Important

The 4 Disciplines of Execution:

#1 Focus on the Wildly Important:

The more you try to do, the less you accomplish.

Have an aimed focus of your deep work session.

Identify the goal that is most important to accomplish in each session.

Do this by writing out 5 goals you want to get done in a session of deep work. Circle the one that if you could get done right away you would choose in a second. This is the goal your focus should aim towards.

#2 Act on the Lead Measures 

Measure your success through a cause-and-effect-based system.

Lag Measures: describe the thing you are trying to improve

This can be from point #1 the wildly important part of your deep work.

For example, if you want to focus on improving your customer service.

Your lag measure is your customer service.

Lead measures: are the new measures that drive success to the lag measures.

In this example, a lead measure would be creating a system for your employees to use.

Such as the greet, thank, and name system. Using this your employees will greet the customer upon walking in, thank them throughout the transaction, and use their name.

This lead measure will ultimately result in your lag measure improving, which in this case is customer service.

Lead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control shortly which will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals.

Ask yourself these questions when applying to your work:

What do I specifically want to improve?

What small steps can I take towards improving this lag measure?

If I do not know how to improve my lag measure, have I researched this area of expertise?

Have I consistently applied this new lead measure and allowed a grand margin of time to analyze before changing my approach?

#3 Keep a Compelling Scoreboard:

Form a strategy that works for you to track your lag and lead measures from discipline #2.

For example, take a calendar, and mark a number on the day that you did deep work. This number is in correspondence to how many tasks/hours of work ( whichever is more relevant in your case ) for the day. On the day you reach your result, circle it. This helps put in perspective how much you worked and is an improvement to the rhythmic pattern talked about in my last article.

Instead of a red X, you now have a number corresponding to a “score” or hours/tasks of deep work, and a circle for if you completed all of your goals. This helps measure out the specifics and gives you more insight when you look back on your weekly/monthly progress.

This also allows for a measure of hours/tasks done over a period it takes to reach your specific goals.

Let’s say you see a pattern that if you conduct 2 hours of deep work a day, you tend to draw a circle after 5 days. This tells you that 2 hours of work ( Depending on the goal at hand ) you will see an average of 5 days to reach that result. Up the volume, and the goals, and I promise you will see a tremendous output.

#4 Create a Cadence of Accountability:

Schedule Reviews of the Week where you analyze this data from #3.

These disciplinary steps to execution all tie in together.

Take the data you collected by keeping a compelling scoreboard and learn where you went wrong, and what went right.

This is the time to analyze the trends between time spent in deep work to tasks or goals completed. Whether you are challenging yourself and what you can do better.

This is the area to learn and game plan. Turn this data into a system to gradually increase your productivity. It is a repeatable system that when followed, makes sure that you will execute.

Example:

The Benefits of working at a minimum:

This section does not justify any reasons not to work hard, or only to work a little bit, rather it delves into the dangers of being a workaholic and creating a healthy relationship between you and your work.

This is necessary as Deep Work takes high intensity and a grand portion of your brain power. The goal is not to increase the volume of work you do in a day, but the value you get out of your work. If you can work for 4 hours on intensive deep work, it will provide more than working shallowly for 12 hours of the same work.

To increase the intensity and output ( aka productivity levels ) from your work, you need to disconnect after you finish.

You should shut down once you complete work, don’t think about it, and don’t check emails, if you want to do more work, then work longer. Do not however end work and then be checking emails and filling your mind with uncompleted tasks.

Shutdowns are profitable to your ability to output valuable work.

Here are some reasons why:

Downtime aids insights:

A study led by the Dutch psychologist AP Dijksterhuis set out to prove decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. Dijksterhuis and his team gave the subjects the info needed for complex decision-making regarding purchasing a car, the other half was distracted easily by puzzles.

Checkout the Article: http://www2.psych.purdue.edu/~gfrancis/Classes/PSY392/Dijksterhuisetal.pdf

After reading the observations led to the UTT ( Unconscious Thought Theory ) it proposed that for decisions that require the application of strict rules, the conscious mind must be involved. This is because your brain has more neuronal bandwidth available. When you take time to rest your brain it opens up like a Google system filled with ideas flowing in a network. If it is busy it is similar to getting a buffer circle that will give you a limited output.

Trying to squeeze in a little more work out of your evenings will reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead shut down.

The Work that Evening Downtime Replaces is Probably not that Important:

Zeigarnik Effect: the ability of incomplete tasks to dominate our attention

This happens when you let work stay on your mind. When you notice that you have incomplete tasks your brain will keep it open like a tab on a web browser. This will slow down the processes in your brain which may even continue into the next day.

To eliminate this behavior from ruining your productivity output, try this:

Shutdown Ritual: 

• After work write down all the tasks, emails to reply to, and events scheduled out for the next day in a journal or on your phone.

• Look at your calendar and make a rough schedule for tomorrow, you are now finished.

It is that simple and improves your mental for both productivity and relaxation.

It will feel like a weight lifted off of you and you now have your work problems and the next day’s schedule on paper so that it doesn’t have to sit on your mind.

Effective Tasks:

Set a task with a public deadline. Preferably the person waiting for the result and when they will get it.

This requires you to work intensely to produce for that person and that deadline.

Why is this beneficial? It helps you practice the volume of intensity needed for engaging in daily deep work.

This will eliminate distractions, and prove you can work intensely for longer and longer periods.

Brain Exercise:

Memory is a great skill to strengthen your brain and helps with focus and deep work more than you think.

Here is a memory exercise that will help you focus more on your deep work after some time of practice:

• Walk throughout your home and memorize 5 different rooms.

• Memorize 5-10 items in each room and repeat looking, trying to memorize, until you can list off the items in each room without having to look anymore.

• Then try and memorize a deck of cards

How does this relate?

Now that you have the house memorized in your brain, link an item to each card, and memorize it as you are walking through the house.

This sounds difficult but when you try it and find out that using the house method can connect to this deck of cards, you now have a cool party trick and a stronger neuron system.

This exercise teaches focus, strengthening your mind, and proving you can do something challenging.

As random as it seems, it is super valuable to your deep work.

Why:

This brain exercise proves that you are capable of more than you think. Before the exercise, it seems impossible to memorize at such volume. After the exercise, you realize it is possible, and it forms creativity which is essential to all forms of work.

Drain the Shallows:

Capitalize on your time available in a day. For example, if you work 9-5 that is a good portion of your day, but you still have plenty of extra time.

It is wisely put, that you have a day within a day. 3 hours before work, and 5 after work. That is an extra 8 hours that can be used for deep work, and building personally.

To use this time wisely we must learn to “Drain the Shallows”. This can be divided into a structured plan.

Form a schedule: 

this schedule should be separated into time blocks that consist of high-priority work that needs to be accomplished. Whether it is work or deep work-related, it is important to set up a rough schedule.

A schedule of this sort can be misconstrued to be useless if something spontaneous appears, yet this schedule encourages it.

Let’s say for example a pop-up meeting or high-priority item becomes a task, this schedule should allow for some spontaneous time in between high-priority tasks.

This will allow productivity to occur while allowing the spur moment of the day not to ruin your plans, yet adjust accordingly.

Here is the link to Cal Newport’s actual Time-Block Planner so you can put this step into action: https://www.timeblockplanner.com/

Let’s reintroduce “Shallow Work”

Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

This is important to reconsider as it can define the shallow work in your daily life.

The goal is to eliminate the majority of shallow work that distracts us from our deep efforts.

To identify the majority of shallow efforts ask yourself these questions.

How long would it take ( in months ) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training in my field to complete this task?

This is work specialized, but for at-home shallow tasks that improperly direct us from our important deep time, you can ask yourself this question.

Will this have a positive impact on my goals?

Is this something that can wait for later?

Will this task provide value for my brain?

The Law of the Vital Few:

in many settings, 80% of a given effect is due to just 20% of the possible causes

This rule applies to you and your work specifically. Analyze your work over 6 months. Take note of what has worked, and what has not.

Study your failures, and execute on your wins.

This means finding trends in your work and using them to grow. If you have not made anything work yet, you should try the opposite of what you are doing now.

You don’t need to study more books, you need to study your actions.

Anyone successful can show you exactly how they got rich and try and help you, but you will fail to become as rich as they are. This is because you can only become richer by creating a path, studying YOUR failures, and executing on YOUR strengths.

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