Focus on what matters

 

Newport’s four rules for making deep work a significant part of your working life are:

1. Do deep work.

Prioritise this through one of his 4 philosophies (we are doing Rhythmic Scheduling).

2. Embrace boredom.

Practice the art of waiting in line without checking your phone. Sit on the bus just looking out of the window. Stop with the multi-tasking which actually produces sub-quality work, and instead when you have the chance to do nothing, take it. Just see how hard that is, when you are used to constant stimulation. This is the muscle we are trying to revive - the need to accept difficult and sometimes boring tasks will enable you to do deep work.

3. Quit social media.

I’m just going to leave that here. We all know this is a useless time suck, and we can justify why we are addicted to it until the cows come home. How it is useful, and keeps us updated with our field when used correctly. Great for networking. Still. You could use that time better. Although I maintain a social media presence through Linkdin, twitter, facebook, and instagram, I have no notifications at all on my phone, or my computer. Instead, I allocate a small amount of time at the end of each working day to check all social media platforms and post what I need to. Similarly, I have no idea if an email has dropped in unless I open the programme to check it at my scheduled time for checking email. Same for all other internet related notifications. Turn them off please. What are you afraid of? And when you answer that question, do you sound like a whiny thirteen year old? Is it FOMO? Really? Think on this.

4. Drain the shallows.

This is my favourite rule.

Shallow time is inevitable in any occupation and the PhD is no different - emails, meetings, classes and travel are inevitable. But the amount of them, and how we schedule dealing with them is not inevitable. If you are teaching, or attending classes as part of your PhD (or working part-time off campus) this part of your week is fixed for you but you do have dominion over how the rest of your time is divided. 

Work backwards. According to Newport, the maximum amount of deep work in any given day is 4 hours (and this is for hardened deep work professionals - you are yet novices!). I concur. I use a time tracking software to track my work patterns (myhours.com). You may or may not find this useful. Because of this, I know exactly how long I can concentrate for on deep work in a day, even if the whole day is free of any other obligation and my email is turned off. I can manage about 4- 5 hours maximum - over the whole day, not in one session - and there is no more in me. And I have a lot of practice having been an academic for 17 years. It varies, because of course not all writing related tasks are deep work. There are some relatively shallow tasks (small scale editing for instance). But no matter how I schedule it, 4-5 hours deep concentration is my max. This is why sitting down for 8 hours solid to research is a nonsense. Not even the super, heroically productive Newport can manage it.

TODAY I WILL…

  • Audit how much of my time is spent on shallow time (Newport estimates around 30 is standard). If its more than 50%, you need to re-evaluate how you are spending your time and what commitments you can drop out of;

  • Consider using a time time app or programme to actually measure how you really spend your time. There are plenty of free apps out there such as myhours.com.

  • Write for 2 hours minimum, working down my task list.