Exercise Deep Work

Let’s do a fun exercise and we’re gonna do an exercise using deep pork.

Now what does that mean.

Well.

D pork is actually a book written by Cal Newport and it takes some of the ideas that we’ve been discussing

up until now and through this exercise we’re going to learn more D pork is about using the techniques

that we’ve learned up until now.

So I want you to pause the video and think about a skill or something that you want to learn.

Pause the video and then write down all the strategies that you’re going to implement to work on this

skill.

Don’t go back to the videos don’t look at the titles of the videos.

Just try to come up with a system in your head for you to learn the specific skill.

Just write it down once you’re ready.

You can hit play and then I’m going to talk about deep work and some of the strategies that I would

implement if I wanted to learn a specific task.

Now before you actually pause I want to define quickly what deep pork is.

D pork is a period of intense focus.

It’s that hard and important intellectual work that we do during long uninterrupted periods of time.

It’s a period where you have no distractions you’re concentrated on a task and you push your cognitive

abilities to their limit.

It’s the opposite of shallow work.

According to Cal Newport shallow work is something that is not very demanding on our brains.

It’s the type of task that you can do in a semi distracted state maybe organizing books or cleaning

your room doing errands or going grocery shopping.

That’s the type of shallow work.

It’s less engaged work.

So how can you be more engaged in work and do deep work based on what we’ve learned.

Up until now pause the video and then I’m going to go over some of the steps that I would use.

All right let’s get started one well I would make sure that I have a dedicated workspace.

I use the power of the census to make sure that where I’m about to focus and study and learn has all

my senses engaged.

It’s exciting.

It makes me excited to learn.

Next I would set an exact end time.

What time is my focused deep work going to end.

Make it long enough that maybe I’ll say that I’ll use the Pomodoro Technique and I’ll do three Pomodoro.

So three cycles of twenty five minutes on five minutes off and then that’s it.

That’s my end date.

Next I make sure that all my power ups that we’ve learned up until now are there.

Did I sleep well the previous night.

Is my brain well rested.

Did I exercise.

Am I happy with other parts of my life.

Those are things that obviously take time but I want to make sure that my power ups because life’s again

all my power ups and levels are at optimum point for me to learn.

Next I want to avoid any procrastination so I want to have an easy starting sequence and use the power

of habit to form that habit of me learning.

So maybe instead of wearing my pajamas I get into clothes that make me feel good so that I can focus

on working.

Or maybe I go into my office and that office is a trigger a cue that I formed over time to form that

habit of hey when I’m in my office I’m going to focus and work so the idea of deep work now is when

I’m ready to start.

It’s this intense period of focus and we learned about this how there’s this myelin in areas of the

brain that surround the neurons that actually help them signal to one another efficiently.

I’ve created this ritual where I have this schedule that are same over time I can repeat this process

every single day.

This process of deep work and creating that habit I maybe say that this is going to happen every single

day between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. because these are my optimum efficient learning times.

And I also know that there’s an end date I’m going to stop at 10 p.m. maybe do other shallow deep work

later on and then also decide that at 5 p.m. I’m going to do no work whatsoever and just relax.

I also know this idea of deliberate practice right.

This idea that we need to be at the edge of our abilities.

I make sure that when I focus I’m really pushing myself to that edge and I also make sure that I get

immediate feedback whether it’s coaching mentoring or making sure that what I did in that focused period

I get immediate feedback of whether I did it well or I could have improved as Anders Ericsson says which

again we’ve talked about him for quite some time now.

Deliberate practice develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which

effective training techniques have been established that is other people have already done it Anders

continues the practice regimen should be designed and overseen by a teacher or coach who is familiar

with the abilities of expert performance and how those abilities can best be developed.

Even Anders Ericsson suggests that you want to use what other people already know so that you don’t

have to relearned something that others already know.

Use experts use mentors as coaching and that doesn’t have to be physical person.

It can just be a book.

It could be a video tutorial.

It could be an online community like 0 2 mastery.

Now why do we care about deep work.

We kind of already know these strategies but a big thing that Cal Newport mentions in deep war is that

a lot of the time this work that requires a semi distracted state.

This shallow work of restocking shelves are working at a factory are usually tasks that in the future

are going to be automated with things like machine learning and A.I.

A lot of software programs are gonna be run more and more for things that are easy things that don’t

require a lot of thinking on our brain.

A lot of things that are not hard problem solving are going to be automated by machines or it’s a task

that anybody can do.

And there’s a lot of competition for it.

So the more shallow work you do the less rare and valuable the skill becomes.

So the idea with deep work is to work hard go over those obstacles and get through those difficult skills

that take hard work and efficiency to learn so that you become valuable to society.

And when you become valuable to society while passion doesn’t matter.

Passion evolves because you become so good that they can’t ignore you.