Most knowledge workers avoid the uncomfortable strain of deliberate practice like the plague, a reality emphasized by the typical cubicle dweller’s obsessive e-mail–checking habit—for what is this beh...
Junior faculty members used to come up to me and say, ‘Wow, you got tenure early; what’s your secret?’ I said, ‘It’s pretty simple, call me any Friday night in my office at ten o’clock and I’ll tell y...
If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE co...
I get an extra 20 IQ points from being in that office,
Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance
Gallagher’s writing emphasizes that the content of what we focus on matters. If we give rapt attention to important things, and therefore also ignore shallow negative things, we’ll experience our work...
Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.
When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially t...
What deliberate practice actually requires. Its core components are usually identified as follows: (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re...
This finding pushed back against conventional wisdom. Most people assumed (and still do) that relaxation makes them happy. We want to work less and spend more time in the hammock. But the results from...
The rhythmic philosophy. This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate...
The individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count.
In most types of work—that is, work that doesn’t have a clear training philosophy—most people are stuck. This generates an exciting implication. Let’s assume you’re a knowledge worker, which is a fiel...
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.
If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better. This
He would spend two hours of undistracted writing time in his private office.
Deep work. If you haven’t mastered this foundational skill, you’ll struggle to learn hard things or produce at an elite level.
You have to get good before you can expect good work. As
When an entire cohort unintentionally eliminated time alone with their thoughts from their lives, their mental health suffered dramatically. On reflection, this makes sense. These teenagers have lost...
What struck me about Pardis’s story is how remarkably late it was in her training before she identified the mission that now defines her career. This lateness is best represented by her decision to st...