Deep Work has had a great influence on my personal life be it while preparing for cut-throat entrance exams or trying to understand integral concepts of Business or Computer Science.
After a few dozen post-it notes and lot of pondering on each of the lessons, here are the key takeaways:
1. Focus on wildly important: The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.
2. Lead vs Lag measures: For instance, Lag measure could be to publish 10 journal articles in a year whereas Lead measure would be to measure amount of time spent in Deep Work each day. Focus on later.
3. Attention Residue: When you switch from Task A to B, some attention still resides with A. Minimize AR to increase focus.
4. Zeigarnik effect: How to detach from work after 5? Jot down pending tasks, so you off load brain power from remembering everything. Sounds simple, but works!
I’ll end with an interesting quote:
“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
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