To ask a CEO to spend four hours thinking deeply about a single problem is a waste of what makes him or her valuable. It’s better to hire three smart subordinates to think deeply about the problem and...
Three crucial benefits provided by solitude: new ideas; an understanding of the self; and closeness to others.
Musicians, athletes, and chess players, among others, know all about deliberate practice, but knowledge workers do not. Most knowledge workers avoid the uncomfortable strain of deliberate practice lik...
In hindsight, these observations are obvious. If life-transforming missions could be found with just a little navel-gazing and an optimistic attitude, changing the world would be commonplace. But it’s...
Working right trumps finding the right work.
Skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.
This study, it turns out, is one of many that validate attention restoration theory (ART), which claims that spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate.
Very few people work even 8 hours a day. You’re lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeate the typi...
Stephenson summarizes his communication policy as follows: Persons who wish to interfere with my concentration are politely requested not to do so, and warned that I don’t answer e-mail… lest [my comm...
Using money as a neutral indicator of value—a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit. I called this the law of financial viability, and concluded th...
Here’s a case where someone successfully followed their passion, they say, therefore ‘follow your passion’ must be good advice. This is faulty logic. Observing a few instances of a strategy working do...
The individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count.
The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offer...
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 presence of the other party waiting for your next insight—be it someone physically in the same room or collaborating with you virtually—can short-circuit the natural instinct to avoid depth.
To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work.
Stephenson sees two mutually exclusive options: He can write good novels at a regular rate, or he can answer a lot of individual e-mails and attend conferences, and as a result produce lower-quality n...
We have an information economy that’s dependent on complex systems that change rapidly.
Most knowledge workers, however, as I argued earlier in this introduction, have lost their ability to perform deep work.
Showing 161 to 180 of 643 results