This is how J. Robert Oppenheimer described the working style at Princeton, where he was the director from 1947 to 1966, and during which time, many luminaries like Einstein and Kurt Gödel were invited:
There are no telephones ringing and you don’t have to go to committee meetings and you don’t have to meet classes […]
Most people depend on being interrupted in order to live, but work is so hard and failure is, of course, I guess, an inevitable condition of success. So we’re used to having to attend to other people’s business.
When they get here, there’s nothing of that and they can’t run away. It’s to help men who are creative and deep and active and struggling scholars and scientists, to get the job done that it is their destiny to do.
What Oppenheimer described in these many words is what forms the basis for Deep Work. And from the guy who made the atom bomb to Henry David Thoreau and J.K. Rowling, if there is one quality that is a guarantee of success, it’s doing Deep Work.
This term was coined by Cal Newport and refers to work done in a focused manner, on the things that move the needle in your field.
Now look, there are infinite ways to fool yourself that you worked hard during the day, while knowing that all you did was fiddle with apps, get distracted every 5 minutes and watch TikTok for 2 hours. It sucks. Getting into a Deep Work session will change all that.
So, how do you get into a Deep Work session?
While it’s different strokes for different folks, there are some things that are guaranteed to help:
Step 1: A task in front of you
Step 2: Some ways to eliminate distractions
Step 3: Something to keep you focused
Step 1: The task
Alright, the main thing you need is clarity on the task: What to do, and how long will it take to do it?
Fuck the pomodoro timers. If you are in the zone, why leave it?
Just because your 25-minute timer started beeping?
No, the goal is to maximize each session that you start going deep. If it means sitting on your ass for 2 hours, so be it.
For this step, all you need is to know exactly what you will be working on, so you won’t get distracted by other shiny things and have an approximate timeline of how long it will take, because you don’t want to spend endless time without reaching anywhere.
Specific task: Write down the 1–3 things you’ll finish in the Deep Work session. Also, keep a diary aside to note down any distractions coming in your mind.
Step 2: Staying focused
This is easy: take your choice of drink that gets you focused. I prefer caffeine and have a mug of coffee on my desk. For me, this acts as a subconscious trigger, and just the smell and the taste of that coffee primes my mind to get activated for a deep work session.
Sometimes I take green tea too.
Oh, also, keep a bottle of water near you. You don’t want to break your focus just because you got thirsty and the water was 10 steps away.
Step 3: Keep distractions out
This is the part where you can nerd over however much you can, but the basics are simple — find something to block out the distracting stuff near you.
Basics are to keep your phone away from you, on silent mode or the bare minimum, keep notifications off on both the phone and laptop(in case you are going to work on the laptop).
What has worked for me the best is to plug in my earphones, start a focus music video on YouTube like this or this, and just get to work.
Many people prefer to play lo-fi music and have noise-cancelling headphones too, and you can tweak these all to your liking.
Conclusion
As Arnold Benett says:
One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change — not rest, except in sleep.
It’s your work. It’s your Deep Work.
Do however way you like but just do it.
Because in a world that is becoming increasingly distracted, the only way to get ahead is to work deeply.
