The first part of the book has a really good description of the "modern" work environment and its defects, and how it valorizes superficial work over deep work. I was actually surprised by how identical this description was to my last work environment.<p>- Open space to promote communication and knowledge sharing (and controlling what people are doing), but at the end you are interrupted every 5 minutes by people walking and talking/screaming/laughing about anything but work.<p>- People expect you to have Gmail and Slack open all day and to reply in the 5 minutes.<p>- You are encouraged to go on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/whatever to like and share the latest news/video/open position/whatever posted by the company. Then you start reading/watching something else that looks interesting and you lose easily 30 min / 1 hour.<p>- At the end, what matter is how many hours you spend in the office. Nobody cares if you spend a full week on a task because you can't never focus on what you do.
I've found this combination works well for me:<p>- The "Emergent Task Planner" is my daily piece of paper that I physically write out what I want to accomplish. At the end of the day I know what I've done and haven't done. (<a href="http://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/" rel="nofollow">http://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/</a>)<p>- I break my sessions of work into 2 or 4 hour blocks, and shut off all the distractions.<p>- If I'm struggling to stay focussed, I use a Pomodoro timer (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique</a>)<p>- If I'm struggling to stay off social media, I fire up Self Control (<a href="http://selfcontrolapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://selfcontrolapp.com/</a>)<p>- If I'm really having a garbage day for productivity, I find stuff to do off my OmniFocus List that involves physical activity (cleaning the house, fixing things, going for a walk). I work from home now, but when I used to have an office cubicle I would just walk around the building.
Hard work is hard, but I wonder if it truly requires an anti-social approach.<p>The nice thing if you are working in isolation is that everyone involved in your work environment is probably aligned towards a goal. Or at least we hope you yourself are aligned – and yet even that is hard to manage, as we all know from our own ability to distract ourselves.<p>An open office, messaging, all those distractions aren't just distractions, they are external influences that aren't designed to help you get YOUR work done. Someone else has a question to help them get THEIR work done. Someone else is monitoring your productivity to help them alleviate their own anxiousness.<p>I'm not a big fan of pair programming, but I do like how it can lead to better focus. It's like you are focus accountability partners. I also like ad hoc meetings setup for a specific purpose, if the purpose really is important for the participants I think it's productive. And if the problem is really important, I like a meeting where we talk things through and then get quiet for a long time. We don't give up. We don't defer the problem, leave and go our separate ways. Part of doing hard work, in my experience, is loading up the tensions, piling up everything that makes it hard, and then finding the way out. It's not always easiest to do that alone.
As the poster child for this stuff from a few years back, I've lit on the simple intent on being present for a small amount of time each day. There are hundreds of ways to meditate - find one that works well for you and practice it. Work toward sitting and observing without judgement. Work toward quieting the conversations in your head.<p>I would also recommend not over thinking about any of this too much. Thinking about thinking has the same lowered efficiency as being distracted by gadgets/media.
If you want to get deep on this subject, I highly recommend "The Organized Mind" and "The Power of Habit".<p>The Organized Mind really breaks down the cost of "task switching" and explores the brain's strengths, quirks, and weaknesses, and how strategies of highly effective people exploit those traits.<p>The Power of Habit is good for developing a less naive approach to behavior change. It's eye opening.
i've never seen anyone actually use a pomodoro in real life, and the occasional day i've given it s a shot, I end up thinking "this is silly, I'll just focus on my work".<p>I guess my protest is that it seems silly, especially when I'm focused on something and the timer goes off and I'm supposed to stop. It seems like its adding structure only for the sake of structure. Has anyone actually started using pomo, and stuck with it, and seen positive results?
>Extending the length of the 25 minute pomodoro. If I’m in the deep work flow, I’ll continue past the 25 minute alarm.<p>Someone told me that its 25 minutes because it prevents you from building too much context in your head that prevents you from taking a break at 25 min mark. You can't do creative work if your brain is filled with lot of context. eg: TDD goes really well with pomodoro because you are only thinking about the next test and you can break on failing test so you can pick up right back. Is this a reason for 25 min for Pomodoro?
>Yes, even after work, he makes the case for structuring your leisure activities in a similar fashion.<p>I find that this attitude makes it hard for me to relax. I've always been like this, and while I do derive a certain amount of comfort from it, I find it hard to schedule time to sit and do "whatever", and therefore it's hard to relax during that time.<p>To put it another way: A day at the beach sounds horrifyingly boring to me, but a day at a waterpark sounds awesome. I feel the need to be <i>doing</i> things during my relaxation time, even if I might be more relaxed doing "nothing".
I agree that social media and internet is a great distraction. But co-workers can be a source of good distractions. However for the distractions to be good. Everyone must be on track, around the same knowledge levels and focused on what problems needs to be solved. If you don't have these kind of colleagues, you might as well stay at home. When you are at work you will have to answer questions from those who didn't get the memo...
I made a macOS app [1] after reading this book that helps keep track of deep focus sessions.<p>[1] (free) <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zen-time/id1089216789?mt=12" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zen-time/id1089216789?mt=12</a>
How does this work if you're on a "manager schedule" and 50% or more of your job is <i>supposed</i> to be dealing with interruptions, having ad-hoc conversations, and the like?
> Even worse, if we continue doing it this way, we’ll start losing our ability to focus.<p>Is that true? Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I'd say it is, but I'm a sample size of 1...
Heard a lot of good things about this book, but the writing is just atrocious, and after a couple of chapters I didn't actually learn anything new... don't get the hype.