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...
Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences—wherever you happen to
Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences—wherever you happen to be.
Ric Furrer is a master craftsman whose work requires him to spend most of his day in a state of depth—even a small slip in concentration can ruin dozens of hours of effort. He’s also someone who clear...
Phones have become woven into a fraught sense of obligation in friendship. . . . Being a friend means being on call—tethered to your phone, ready to be attentive, online.
People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task, and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance.
Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to. If you focus on a cancer diagnosis, you and your life become unhappy and dark, but if you focus instead on an evening mart...
Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it.
Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of pot...
On the other hand, if you’re inside this pool—someone whose contribution to the world is discrete, clear, and individualized*—then you should give this philosophy serious consideration, as it might be...
No one owes you a great career, it argues; you
Motivated by my research and examples such as Feynman, I decided that focusing my attention on a bottom-up understanding of my own field’s most difficult results would be a good first step toward revi...
Many of the participants in my mass declutter experiment, however, reported that these feelings of discomfort faded after a week or two. Brooke described this experience as follows: The first few days...
Lincoln’s time alone with his thoughts played a crucial role in his ability to navigate a demanding wartime presidency. We can therefore say, with only mild hyperbole, that in a certain sense, solitud...
I’ll call this output-centric approach to work the craftsman mindset. My
It’s worth taking the time to untangle, however, because properly leveraging collaboration can increase the quality of deep work in your professional life. It’s helpful to start our discussion of this...
It’s here that some might respond that their knowledge work job cannot possibly become such a source of meaning because their job’s subject is much too mundane. But this is flawed thinking that our co...
In which I argue that a mission chosen before you have relevant career capital is not likely to be sustainable. Mission
In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to c...
In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment.