Three weeks ago, my colleague [Oleksii Fedorov](http://www.tddfellow.com) mentioned that "adults are able to _deeply work_ for about 4 hours per day." Something clicked in my brain. Deeply working? Deep work? I hadn't heard the use of deep and work in the same sentence in years. I was curious. What is this deep work? And why are there only 4 hours of it per day? I've felt so distracted and confused and frustrated for so years. Even before I moved to Berlin I would, after work, just go home and do nothing. A vicious cycle of depleted willpower and bad habits developed. Sure, I longed for an exciting, creative life with every cell of my body. But I ended up on my couch surfing the web, Facebook, Instagram, Hacker News and Reddit for hours. I would continue to do so until I was tired. My life had slowly emptied itself from meaning and wonder. I felt exhausted and deeply distracted. I felt like I was stuck. Trapped in a cycle of sleep, work, couch. I felt hopeless. Cal Newport's book [Deep Work](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692) had the answer to the question I was too distracted to even ask: > "How can I be happy again and feel a depth and appreciation of my creative and professional life?" With Cal Newport's book I have re-created space and time for Deep Work. It has helped me regain a sense of focus, growth and creativity that I have missed for years. ## What is Deep Work? 1. Deep Work is the ability to quickly learn and master hard things and then produce tangible results that others value at an elite quality and speed. 2. The ability to do Deep Work is rare and valuable in today's economy. In a default state where everyone is distracted with "shallow" (low-value, high-stimuli tasks that are easily replicated) tasks, the missing link is to focus on "deep" (high-value, low-stimuli) tasks. To thrive, Deep Work is a competitive advantage that a knowledge worker like myself must develop. 3. Deep Work means to apply a craftsman's approach to your work. It doesn't matter what the work is but how one approaches it. I felt stuck in my work and complained that "This isn't my passion" while at the same time I could not point you to what my passion was otherwise. As it turns out, focusing on turning your profession into a craft, appreciating it and improving your skill over time through active, deliberate practice, will create a sense of wonder and happiness that the quest for the "job of passion", if it exists, will not produce. The key to happiness at work isn't to work a rare and special job but to bring a rarified approach to one's work whatever it may be. Side note: Newport has an excellent book on this that I am currently devouring: "So good they can't ignore you." 4. Deep Work can be incorporated in my daily life. I realized that my feeble attempts to "do stuff after work" never took roots because at that point in the day my resources for willpower were depleted. Instead, I have decided to front-load a daily session of working deeply in the morning just before heading out for work. 5. Having supporting structure and a plan (even if it changes) for my deep work is crucial. Willpower and focus is limited and distractions, the lack of structure and ambiguity siphon off precious glucose molecules (the raw material of focus) from the work itself. ## What have I worked on deeply? The first (meta) skill that I wanted to deeply learn and master has been to learn how to focus again and to learn how to learn hard things quickly. For this I intensely studied, practiced and rehearsed 1. Everything there is to know about **"Deep Work"** itself 2. The craftsmanship approach through **"So Good They Can't Ignore You"**, also by Cal Newport 3. How to approach new scientific concepts and ideas with **"A Mind For Numbers"** by Barbara Oakley, Ph.D. ## How did I incorporate Deep Work into my day? In the past 2 weeks I created myself a simple structure where I worked right in the morning for 2 hours with full attention and focus. I already had a daily ritual to write 2-3 handwritten pages after breakfast for the past (!) 26 weeks. This made it easy to introduce deep work right after the existing writing routine. This meant, after I finished writing my "morningpages", I launched into a 1.5-2h deep work session. Monday through Friday. Then I followed the book and implemented the following changes: 1. I decided on a deep work schedule strategy: The "Rhythmic Scheduling Strategy" where I allocate time every day to work deeply. I have found that I am the sharpest in the morning and so I have scheduled my deep work time in the hours before heading to work. 2. I created myself an environment, a clean table, a good desk lamp, a comfortable chair and snacks to support me during the work. 3. I used a kitchen-timer to keep track of the 25-minute focus sprints and short breaks in between. This was particularly important for me because my attention has been so shot that knowing that the intense focus will eventually end helps. 4. I rewarded myself for every 25 minutes of focus with a quick _attaboy_ such as "You're doing great!" 5. After each 25 minute session I got up, streched, ate some fruit. To embed a new habit, especially a low-stimuli one like concentrated work, it is crucial to be generous with rewards even if they feel silly at first. I've made myself a sticky note right in front of my workspace that reads "CELEBRATE EVERYTHING." It's doing a good job. 6. I shut off any internet notifications and noises. Sometimes a classical playlist from Spotify plays in the background. 7. I set myself a "wildly important goal" – Which is to learn how work deeply in order to apply it to the topics that I am professionally interested in (Customer Development, Software Craftsmanship). While the last 2 weeks were sort of "meta" in that I focused on the skill of deep work in order to do deep work on other things, I believe it was absolutely the right way to start. 8. I put up a scoreboard. I kept track of every minute that I worked with full focus. In week 1 I scored 10 hours and in the past week I scored 9 hours of uninterrupted focused work. 9. I created a schedule for the coming day every night in order to create structure and not waste willpower on having to figure that out every day anew. 10. To quickly learn and master this skill of deep work and focused attention, I learned to use Anki and spaced repetition to capture, rehearse and ultimately remember facts and ideas from several non-fiction books. 11. I recapped each week's work on Saturday. I evaluated what worked and what didn't work. How my flow was and where I lost concentration. I then planned small changes that would support me better in the coming week. For example, I learned that by the 4th "Pomodoro" (25-minute session), I struggled to concentrate. I realized that eating a piece of fruit, like an apple, just before helped give me focus again. ## What was challenging? Following Newport's Rule #2 "Embrace Boredom" has been incredibly challenging for me. "Embrace Boredom" means to fight the urges to give in to low-value, high-stimuli indulgences like "The Internet". The problem aren't sites like Facebook or Instagram themselves (although they have sucked more hours from life than TV at this point). It's the constant switching of attention that costs focus. Needless to say, before I started Deep Work, I was switching HARD. The problem is: You can deeply work as much as you want but it's not going to work if you feed your brain junk. High-stimuli, low-value tasks like checking the internet compulsively or watching YouTube videos or the news have been hard to quit. Really hard. To mitigate this risk, I installed a website blocker on my phone to fight my trained routine response to boredom. I am however still struggling with scheduling internet access at home. To help myself with weaning off from the the urge to distract myself, I also bought a really cool toy, an "Addict-a-ball" that I propped on my couch. Now, whenever I sit on my couch now and usually would have picked up my phone to check any and all internet (and lose an hour and not realizing) I now pick up the "Addict-a-ball" and play with it. Since it's a high-stimuli game, I feel quiet entertained by it. It definitely has helped me deal with the withdrawal. ## What's next? Next up is the challenge to continue my deep work before work (and at work) with a regular 40 hour full time job. I am confident I can do it because I study the topics I teach at work: Make something people want! I expect there will be significant synergies but there is also the reality of working before work. I also started to be absent from any social media for the month of January and believe this will be a challenge to the habit of "just checking Facebook and Instagram to brighten up boring moments in my life." Deep Work has been an immensely rewarding journey so far. I have learned so much about myself, my life, my habits and my creativity. It hasn't always been easy but I feel confident it has already changed me for the better. Finally. If you are curious or would like to learn more about Deep Work, I highly recommend you get the _print copy_ of "DEEP WORK – Cal Newport" and "A Mind For Numbers" by Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., like, today. **I am also happy to help you if you get stuck with implementing the structure in your life. It isn't easy but it isn't as hard as it may first seem.** ## Thanks I would not have stumbled across "Deep Work" unless my awesome colleague [Olekssi Fedorov](http://tddfellow.com) had mentioned it. Clearly, I thank [Cal Newport](http://calnewport.com/about/) for writing the book and making it so clear and easy how to create Deep Work in my own life. I want to thank [Chris Castiglione](http://castig.org) for giving me a good idea of what the tangible results of Deep Work can look like. He has consistently created great work with his podcast "On Books" and his classes at OneMonth that have led him to great places and people. My friend Marc Petri who recently showed me [Sun Ra's businesscards](http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/a-collection-of-sun-ras-business-cards-from-the-1950s.html) from the 50's. To come up with a punch-line such as "Beta Music for Beta People", you have to deeply love your work. Thank you.