Tell me how familiar this sounds to you. You've got some work to do,
so you pack up your backpack. You find the perfect study space, perfect amount of sunlight,
plenty of space to work in, a little bit of nature thrown in, a fatherly picture of Nick
Offerman staring down at you. You brew yourself a fresh cup of coffee. On go the noise-canceling headphones, and you find yourself an
excellently tailored study playlist to accompany your impending
deep dive into the practical uses of l'hopital's rule rule
for Monday's calc assignment. Everything is set up
perfectly for you to start doing some good old fashioned
deep work, and then... - [Friend] Oh hey Tom, productivity guru, is that, uh, is that the
IKEA cabinet planner? - No uh, it's for research. - [Friend] You're disgusting. - Now I know what you're thinking. - It's too real Roy, it's too real! - It's the same thing
that I think all the time, how can I make sure
that when I sit down to do my work, I actually
do my work instead of falling into a distracted rut? After all, just sitting down
at my desk isn't gonna result in really anything getting done. One of my favorite lines
in Cal Newport's book Deep Work is his productivity equation. Time times intensity of focus equals quality of work produced. One of his case studies in
the book, Peter Roosevelt, though at this time a freshman
at Harvard University, knew this rule really really well. His biographer Edmund Morris
wrote that every single day Roosevelt would look at his
schedule between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30 and block off everything that was already scheduled. Things like classes, recitations, lunch, and his athletic training. Anything leftover was
time spent for studying. And Morris noted that these
fragments didn't usually add up to a large number
of total hours but he would get the most out
of them by working only on schoolwork during these periods and doing so with a blistering intensity. So the question that we
wanna answer today is how do you achieve that
ability to work with that blistering intensity like Roosevelt did? And hopefully the following
seven tips that I have compiled will help you get started. (electronic music) First off, when you go
into a work session, have a single target of focus. One of my biggest pitfalls
in my professional life is that I'll wake up in the morning and I'll create a list of
things I need to do but then when I sit down, I don't
choose one to work on. I get confused and I don't
really know which one that I wanna start with which
leads to me just getting distracted and looking at
car specs on the internet. So, one piece of advice
that I'm really trying to apply in my own life and
that you should too is that before you earnestly start a work session, decide on the one task that
you're going to work on, this creates limitations
for yourself which can be very, very helpful as is emphasized by one of my favorite quotes from all time which comes from the I Ching "Unlimited possibilities
are not suited to man, if they existed his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a mans
life needs limitation ordained by duty and
voluntarily accepted." Now there is a lot more that could be said about this passage as
it applies to many, many areas of life but in
this particular context, just remember that one
particular single focus creates limitation that
narrows and strengthens your level of focus. (electronic music) Tip number two is to keep
the work session sacred and what I mean by this
is that when you sit down to do you work and you've
chosen your one task, only work on that task. Don't do anything before
even if it's light, even if its checking
your email, even if its watching a little video on
YouTube or even if it's eating. So this comes from a common
pitfall that I've noticed in my own work. I will get it into my
head that I need to go to a coffee shop because that's
my favorite place to focus so I will go to Starbucks and
then sometimes I'm a little hungry so I'll get like a
little breakfast sandwich, one of those little
protein packs and a coffee, and of course I don't wanna
do real work while I'm eating so I'll look at Reddit or
I'll look at YouTube or I'll do something really
really light while I eat that sandwich. The problem is, now I've gotten
myself into a distracted rut and it's very hard for
me to transition myself into the real work that I
actually went to Starbucks to do. So the change for me is eat
breakfast at home or eat whatever meal it is at
home and then only go to the coffee shop to get
coffee and to do work, no food. (electronic music) A third way to keep your level
of focus high is to ensure that you're using the right
tools and maintaining them. I love to cook, it's one
of my favorite things to do at night when I'm done working. But one of the things that
can make me really not want to cook is a dull chef's knife. If you've ever tried to
cut an onion or an eggplant or really anything with a
dull knife it is not fun to do at all and actually it's
pretty dangerous as well. Now on occasions in the
past, I've let my knife get dull and a lot of
times when that happens, I'll start using it and
I'll start cooking a meal but then I'll get frustrated
and then we'll just end up ordering take out. So I've learned that if I wanna be cooking on a consistent basis, which
I do because it's healthy and it's fun to do, I
need to sharpen my knife on a consistent basis as well. Every couple weeks or every
month at the very least. Now this doesn't mean that
you need to wait around to have the perfect tools
to start doing your work because that is a road
you don't wanna go down. But just like a knife's
edge dulls a little bit every single time you use
it, something like say your computer's file
system, gets unorganized every time you use it. So build a little time in
your schedule to maintain the tools that you already
have and if an opportunity presents itself to acquire a
better tool that's not gonna take a ton of time or resources, take it. (electronic music) Now for the fourth and
least fun tip on this list. If you want to work with that
blistering level of intensity, if you wanna be like Teddy
Roosevelt, you need to practice. An intense work ethic is
something that is built over time just like the calluses on
the hands of a lumberjack. When you start out you might
be able to focus intensely for say 20 minutes, but day after
day after you keep doing it again and again, that ability is going to grow and strengthen. A couple of years ago I
realized that I wasn't reading as many books as I wanted
to, so I bet my friend Martin 100 dollars that I would read
25 pages every single day for three months. When that challenge started,
I found it really hard to read 25 pages a day especially if
the book that I had selected was really technical or
detail oriented but something interesting happened
as the months went on. Later in the challenge I
found it really easy to intensely focus on those
25 pages even if they took a full hour to read until I was done. So if your initial attempts
to work with that intense level of focus seem difficult,
just remember that over time it's going to get easier
and your ability to do it is going to improve. (electronic music) Tip number five is to use
timers to guide your work but leave some buffer room at
the end of those timers in your schedule. Now I talk a lot on the channel about the Pomodoro technique,
setting a timer for 25 minutes and working on that single
task you selected and nothing else until the timer goes off. But a lot of people seem to
think that they're obligated to take a break at the end
of that Pomodoro session and I don't do this. For me, the Pomodoro session
is just a way to get started, to overcome that initial
resistance to doing the work. But once I get into it, I
often work for an hour or more. I ignore the timer when it goes off. The thing is, it can really
take some time to get into that state of mind where you're really intensely focused on your task. You can't do it within five
or ten minutes so again, the Pomodoro technique is just a way to get yourself started. Let yourself work past
the end of that timer. That being said don't give
yourself too much time either. Because time pressure can be
a very powerful motivator. As the author Adriana Trigiani once said, "There's nothing an artist needs more, even more than excellent
tools and stamina, than a deadline." (electronic music) Our sixth principle was
best expressed by the artist Pablo Picasso, "Without great solitude, no
serious work is possible." If you want to be able to
focus on your work intensely and get really good creative
work done, for the most part you need to be doing it alone. Now there are obviously caveats to this, a lot of good collaborative
work is done in teams. But often the best way the
teams work is by coming together for short little bursts,
communicating, collaborating and then having everyone
go off to work in solitude to really focus on their
assigned part of the project. And there are even some
times when working together with a partner for a full
work session does work well. When I took statistics
back in my sophomore year, I did have a partner who
would come to my dorm every single time we had an
assignment, we would do it together but what I concluded
about that experience is number one, I wasn't good
friends with this person at all, she would show up, we would
do our work, and that was basically the extent of our relationship. And secondly, statistics is
a particular kind of subject where you can kind of come
to the answer very logically. Math works that way. But if you were writing
something or doing something that requires more of a creative mindset, it's better to do it alone. And to reiterate, that
statistics partner was somebody I didn't really know well. A lot of times, working
with study partners means that you're working
with friends which means the conversation inevitably
drifts into other things besides your assignment. (electronic music) And finally tip number seven, give yourself time for recovery. Nobody can work intensely all
the time and if you try to you're eventually going to burn out. So take advantage of the flip side of that productivity equation. If you wanna have intense
focus, you use a little bit of time on your studies and
the time left over you can use to relax, you can use
to play video games or pursue something that's
really interesting to you or hang out with friends. All that time spent relaxing
may not seem productive in the moment but it's gonna
leave you refreshed and able to focus with that all
important blistering intensity the next time that you do need to work. Now in addition to all the
practices that we've gone over in this video, another essential
ingredient in the formula for intense focus is interest. Without some amount of
interest in your subject, your brain is gonna resist
all of your attempts to focus on it. And one of the best ways to
spark that interest is to give yourself a challenge,
something to actively work on. That's why you should check out Brilliant. Especially if you're at all interested in improving your mastery
and anything related to math, science, or computer science. Brilliant is a learning
platform built around the principle of active learning
and throughout the courses on calculus, machine learning,
logic, astronomy, algorithms, and many many more, you'll
find yourself immediately presented with challenges
that build interest and encourage the intense
focus that's crucial for efficient learning. For example, in the first
ten minutes of their into to probability course I
found myself having to learn how to multiply probabilities. In a normal classroom I probably
would've had to start out by introducing myself to the class, telling everyone my favorite
dog is and then passively sitting through a
lecture for quite a while before actively being challenged. And while this active approach
to learning will help you more quickly reach mastery of the specific concepts you're studying, it
all serves as crucial practice for building a mental framework
that will allow you to apply your critical reasoning
skills to any problem you face in the future. It makes you a flexible thinker. So if you wanna start
learning more effectively I highly recommend giving Brilliant a try. You can use the link down
in the description below to start learning for free
and the first 83 people who sign up using that link also get %20 off of their subscription. I wanna give a huge thanks
to Brilliant for sponsoring this video and helping to
support this channel and as always thank you guys
so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video
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