{"id":65172,"date":"2019-06-05T03:05:34","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T02:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusme.com\/?p=65172"},"modified":"2025-02-11T12:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T12:09:59","slug":"work-deep-with-a-vengeance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusme.com\/blog\/work-deep-with-a-vengeance\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Work, part 3 \u2014 Work Deep with A Vengeance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previously, on FocusMe\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

You were doing silly, random things that lacked value. <\/a>You scorned deep, intellectual work and preferred checking your inbox fifty times a day. You fooled yourself and told yourself that you were being \u00fcber productive.<\/p>\n

But no more!<\/p>\n

Thanks to our golden, magical advice, you were able to turn the tide.<\/a> The last couple of weeks, you\u2019ve been killing it and now you\u2019re able to do lots of valuable, intense work. Suddenly you\u2019re the star of the office, and your boss has even been contemplating promoting you. At this rate, you\u2019ll be CEO in five years.<\/p>\n

Or maybe not.<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t given you all the details yet. There are still a few more strategies to implement, that allow you to work deep…with a vengeance<\/strong>. So here goes.<\/p>\n

Strategy #3 \u2014 Start loving boredom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be real. Deep Work is boring work. It\u2019s not exciting and it doesn\u2019t provide the quick dopamine rushes that YouTube cat videos, video games and social media updates give you. In food terms, shallow work is ice cream, cookies and candy, whereas deep work is nothing but boiled, unsalted potatoes. Extremely bland and boring.<\/p>\n

Like healthy food, deep work cannot be enjoyed at its fullest if you\u2019re still on junk food all the time, and it is only by getting rid of your sugar addiction that you\u2019ll truly learn to appreciate deep work for what it is.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s hard. At this moment, it\u2019s very likely that you\u2019ve trained your mind to become distracted. Being able to do deep work doesn\u2019t come overnight. It is a learned skill, and it has to be trained.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been proven that constant attention switching has lasting <\/strong>negative effects on your brain. People who keep switching tasks and try to multitask develop an inability to focus and become unable to filter out irrelevant things. They become chronically distracted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want to reverse this, it\u2019s key that you change your outlook on how you work and live.<\/p>\n

For starters, you have to completely change your point of view. Instead of taking breaks from distraction<\/strong>, you have to start taking breaks from focus<\/strong>. Instead of being chronically distracted, you have to become chronically focused. You have to force yourself to focus the majority of the day, and make distractions only a fraction of this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Shallow work is candy and cookies. Tasty and addictive, but ultimately not very good for you.<\/em><\/p>\n

To illustrate this point, let\u2019s take the so-called internet-free day. At one point, some people are going to acknowledge that they\u2019re spending too much time behind a screen. And they decide they\u2019re going to reduce that time. One day of the week, they go completely cold turkey and don\u2019t use internet, computers or anything else that involves a screen.<\/p>\n

In itself, it\u2019s not a bad idea. But we\u2019d like to argue that this is still not the right approach to tackle distraction addiction.<\/p>\n

This is why: imagine if you wanted to lose weight. Which would be the best diet?<\/p>\n

A. Six days of the week you can eat pizza and ice cream and fast food, on Saturday you eat fish, vegetables and fruit. So six cheat days and one day of healthy eating.<\/p>\n

B. Six days of the week, you can only eat fish, fruit and vegetables and other whole foods. Saturday is cheat day, anything goes.<\/p>\n

Anyone with some common sense would know that diet A, while probably being a tiny bit <\/em>healthier than your previous one, would still not be very effective in getting rid of your excess pounds.<\/p>\n

Diet B is by far the way to go. Even then, a lot of health experts scoff at the idea of a cheat day, because it doesn\u2019t teach you good long term dietary habits and just increases the risk of falling back into your fast food addiction once you quit.<\/p>\n

We can even take it a step further and replace fast food with drugs. Any sane person would know snorting cocaine six days a week with a one-day break isn\u2019t really \u2018cutting down\u2019 on your usage and even just doing a gram on Saturday is usually frowned upon in most circles.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Embrace Deep Work by learning to love potatoes.<\/em><\/p>\n

So why should we have the same attitude towards screen time? Sure, you can argue that daily screen time is not nearly as harmful as daily cocaine use, and Facebook doesn\u2019t clog your arteries like fried foods do.<\/p>\n

Yet as we\u2019ve said before, constant distraction and multitasking has lasting negative effects on your brain, and destroys your ability to focus. There is no way just taking one day a week off will do much to reverse these negative effects, just as dieting only one day a week won\u2019t have a very noticeable impact on your health.<\/p>\n

Rest assured, just one day off per week will not rewire your brain and rekindle your ability to focus. Distraction should be the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n

So, instead of giving yourself carte blanche and distract yourself whenever you feel like it, with a few exceptions, instead you should beforehand create limited time slots during which you\u2019re allowed to use the internet. Write this down in advance. Don\u2019t just go \u2018okay I\u2019m just going to check internet for five minutes\u2019. Set your time slots beforehand and keep \u2018em limited.<\/p>\n

If your job requires a lot of e-mail and internet use, this method still works – you\u2019ll just have to set a few more time slots. But outside of these allocated time slots, there can absolutely be no internet use.<\/p>\n

Strategy #4 \u2014 Get off Facebook completely<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our final strategy is probably the most invasive one. It\u2019s the one most people are going to be unwilling to implement, but it might be the most effective one, by far.<\/p>\n

You have to quit social media. Completely.<\/p>\n

The first reason, as being stated in the previous strategy, that these social networks promote constant distraction and multitasking, and this derails your brain and your ability to focus.<\/p>\n

But people like to be on social media, because it allows us to be \u2018social\u2019, right? And that\u2019s not a bad thing at all! Right…?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s pick those arguments apart.<\/p>\n

First of all, why are people on Facebook? What is so important about it that makes it necessary for you to have a presence there?<\/p>\n

The most common reasons people are present there are usually one of the following:<\/p>\n