Are You Doing Deep Work? (Sunday Best Reads Series)

 

While searching online, I have stumbled upon a book called ‘Deep Work’. The book sheds light on working style for maximum productivity. There are two types of style; deep work and swallow work. Deep work is something you do without any external interruptions while shallow work is done while multitasking. Suppose you are writing something while listening to a song or doing office jobs while answering phone calls. Deep work is considered to be high-quality work and shallow is low quality as the name itself suggests.

With time, deep work has become rare. A few successful people use this technique for high productivity, such as Bill Gates and J.K Rowling. Bill Gates goes to hermit’s life for a few days in a year for reading and thinking new ideas. J.K. Rowling writes her novels in hotels away from interruptions. In this digital age, our attention span has shortened due to various mobile notification distractions and bad habits of checking social media accounts. When you are working with full concentration and your attention breaks due to some interruptions, you come back to the previous state after 20-30% loss in attention which is known as attention residue. You cannot concentrate wholeheartedly. You work low quality. As per the author, the low-quality swallow work is replaceable. In future, the swallow work will be taken over by robots or artificial intelligence or lowly paid individuals due to overpopulation. Cal Neport says that the coming world will be for extra rich who knows where to invest, people who work with technology and the people who are experts in their field. Now, coming to the third category, one need to do deep work to be an expert in his field. There are a few techniques to do deep work.

(1) Monastic deep work like sages in the Himalayas. This is not possible for all. You have to cut off from social integrations for a period.

(2) Bimodal deep work like J.K. Rowling. She works in the hotel during the day away from any interruptions and comes back in the evening to social life.

(3) Rhythmic deep work is for the people who can keep aside a slot daily for deep work.

(4) Journalistic deep work is for those people who do not follow any routine. If they find the time, they switch off mobile and engage in deep work. 

 

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50 Golden Habits for Productivity (Series)

I read the Book “50 Positive Habits to Transform Your Life” by Micheal Chapman. He has given 50 habits in his book. I’ll try to bring some of the points to your attention which is very much required for us as students and professionals.

Physical Fitness

Now a day, we have a very busy schedule. We have either forgotten or reluctant to work out. It is taking a toll on our health. To stay away from obesity and consequent lethargy, we can walk, and workout in various ways. A simple walk can repel lethargy and fill your body with endorphins which make you more active. Work out immediately improves your mood. Besides, one should stay active at workplaces by various means such a little bit of body movement after some time. Furthermore, parking your vehicle a little bit away can do wonders by burning your calories. If you hate to work out alone, you can always team up with a motivated friend. Apart from that, we need to add variety in our life by nourishing some hobby. Otherwise, life is dull and one-way traffic. 

Mental fitness or health

Mental fitness or health is very much key to your happiness. There are some ways to strengthen your mental fitness such as looking at negativity minutely, thinking about success, contemplation, noting positivity, detailing positives, challenging assumptions, failure review, and mind games.

Without knowing, negative thoughts seep into our mind. It starts to run back in our heads. We will do wonders by taking some time to see how pessimistic we are during the day. You become conscious of your mentality. If you can identify the problem in your mindset, you can change it too.

In his book ‘The Power of Subconscious Mind’ Dr Joseph Murphy says one should think and dream about his potential success. It gets graved into your subconscious mind if you do it continuously. You slowly shift your mind toward achieving your goal.

There is an old saying “Look before you leap”. The relation of contemplation signifies the same as the saying goes. We need to think about the action before we consider it. It helps to eliminate the wrong choices in your life or make mistakes. One should include this practice in everyday life.

It is crucial to remember the positivity. One should take note of their lifetime achievements. Bearing in mind the successes fills the mind with positivity. Further, it inspires hard work. Each day we should do this exercise in the early morning for five minutes to bring meaningful change to life.

We encounter problems daily. They come in various forms; simple and complex. Whenever there is a problem, we become sad and start lamenting. It is the root cause of eternal pain. We should concentrate on solving the problem rather than procrastinating. This swap in thinking will work wonders in us. It is a daily practice until we develop a habit out of it. The activity emboldens us to find the solution easily.

Many a time, we have preconceived assumption for a specific situation. We need to challenge these assumptions or ideas and try to look differently. The author tells you to be less fixated to a specific view. Experimenting with a preconceived notion will make us adaptable to change. It helps us to accept the difference in opinion and examine the other side too.

One should always acknowledge his achievements.  Most of the time, we shelved it as the luck or act of god. But, we need to note it down and allow it to be a good positive memory. Otherwise, we will focus more on failure thereby making us less confidant day by day. Therefore, we need to be aware of successes and it is very healthy.

Like successes, we need to review our failures too. Failures give us a lesson not to repeat the same mistakes. The author suggests that we should list out the reason for failures and try to improve upon those points in future. We pick up the important lessons from the failures. It should be done whenever we fail.

The mind games are excellent for the brain. These little games keep your brains sharp and healthy. One should play mind games like learning words, reciting poems, words of wisdom etc. to keep the brain in fit shape by enhancing knowledge and memory skills.

Force of attraction is a powerful technique. When you think and dream of about your goal, you are focusing your attention to subconsciously achieving that goal. The author suggests this practice at least a few minutes a day. It helps one to be focused.

Updated on 23 Aug 2020

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