My notes from Deep Work

by Cal Newport

Rituals like important thinkers

Those who use their minds to create valuable things is that there rarely haphazard in their work habits.

Waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible plan. Anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.

To make the most out of your deep work sessions, build rituals on the same level of strictness and idiosyncrasy as the important thinkers. Success in their work depended on their ability to go deep again and again. Their rituals minimized the friction in this transition to depth.

General questions for effective ritual:

• Where you’ll work and for how long? Set a location and give yourself a specific time-frame.
• How you’ll work once you start? Create rules and processes to keep the efforts structured.
• How you’ll support your work. Your brain needs the support to keep operating at a high level of depth.

Finding a ritual that sticks might require experimentation. Provide your mind with the structure and commitment it needs to slip into the state of focus where you can begin to create things that matter.

Curious but effective strategy in the world of deep work: the grand gesture. The concept is simple: by leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task. This boost in importance reduces your mind’s instinct to procrastinate and delivers an injection of motivation and energy.