Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.
Stephenson wrote an essay titled Why I Am a Bad Correspondent. At the core of his explanation for his inaccessibility is the following decision: The productivity equation is a non-linear one, in other...
THREE DISQUALIFIERS FOR APPLYING THE CRAFTSMAN MINDSET The job presents few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable. The job focuses on something...
TRAITS THAT DEFINE GREAT WORK Creativity: Ira Glass, for example, is pushing the boundaries of radio, and winning armfuls of awards in the process. Impact: From the Apple II to the iPhone, Steve Jobs...
Take book writing: If I published a book of solid advice for helping recent graduates transition to the job market, you might find this a useful contribution, but probably wouldn’t find yourself whipp...
If you’re not careful to keep pushing forward, your improvement can taper off to what the performance scientist Anders Ericsson called an acceptable level, where you then remain stuck.
Returned to this paper regularly over a period of two weeks. When I was done, I had probably experienced fifteen hours total of deliberate practice–style strain, but due to its intensity it felt like...
The whiteboard effect. For some types of problems, working with someone else at the proverbial shared whiteboard can push you deeper than if you were working alone. The presence of the other party wai...
He would spend two hours of undistracted writing time in his private office.
The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined profes...
The goal of the machine, David explained, is to create a setting where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that’s at the absolute extent of their personal abilities....
The insights of Rule #2 fundamentally changed the way I approach my work. If I had to describe my previous way of thinking, I would probably use the phrase productivity-centric. Getting things done wa...
The more I studied the issue, the more I noticed that the passion hypothesis convinces people that somewhere there’s a magic right job waiting for them, and that if they find it, they’ll immediately r...
The more you try to force it, I learned, the less likely you are to succeed. True missions, it turns out, require two things. First you need career capital, which requires patience. Second, you need t...
The passion hypothesis is not just wrong, it’s also dangerous. Telling someone to follow their passion is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled with...
More detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion,...
The second reason that a culture of connectivity makes life easier is that it creates an environment where it becomes acceptable to run your day out of your inbox—responding to the latest missive with...
He came to realize a simple truth: Working right trumps finding the right work. He didn’t need to have a perfect job to find occupational happiness—he needed instead a better approach to the work alre...
Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee,
To do real good physics work, you do need absolute solid lengths of time … it needs a lot of concentration … if you have a job administrating anything, you don’t have the time. So I have invented anot...
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