This week, today, is our second session of our two-part series on Deep Work.
Again, that concept is based on Cal Newport's book, Deep Work.
Brilliant, if you wouldn't mind popping that in the chat for anyone who didn't get the link last week for that book.
It's a fantastic read if you haven't read it yet.
So again, Deep Work is a superpower that will position you to be the master of your craft and your contribution to your organization.
So today's pro tip, we are going to go over some different Deep Work modalities today.
However, I am going to challenge you to stick with practicing the four-hour Deep Work slot.
Practice that and practice that because remember, we are actually rewiring our brain and working our brain out as a muscle.
So if you cannot even hit the one-hour mark, that is fine.
You're in great company.
Keep practicing it, though, because we're actually teaching our brain to think from a deeper level than we typically do.
So it's going to take practice and repetition.
So don't take the shortcut.
Have any of you taken a shortcut and you realized, that's not really a shortcut.
I think it was a shortcut, but it actually became a long cut.
Wave at me if anyone's taken a shortcut that wasn't.
Okay, so don't be tempted to jump into a new work modality when you haven't gotten comfortable in the first one as we're moving ahead today.
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and give a recap on last week's session.
I'm going to share a slide here of the three different types of work focuses.
Let me go ahead and make that full screen.
Oops. Are we sharing? Everyone can see it? Thumbs up? Are we good? Mountain Cat?
Okay, so the first type of Deep Work, let me move my zoom controls here, is the Mountain Cabin Work is how we describe it.
So that is Deep Work, the four-hour segment we were talking about.
So this is typically something that we do when we're focusing on something new.
We're creating a new system or we're optimizing a system that currently exists, but we're looking at it from a new perspective.
We're thinking really deeply about something. Maybe we're solving a problem that we've never solved before or something,
you know, that has been continuing in the organization that really requires a different lens or an innovative thought to process how to solve that.
So that typically is going to be our four-hour Mountain Cabin Mode. The other mode is the Coffee Shop Mode.
So this is where we do our focused work. These are usually shorter stints, about two hours long.
You're going to be focusing on current work. You're going to be getting a lot done, really focusing on specific projects.
You're going to theme things. You're going to batch things.
Maybe it's checking a bunch of emails or responding to customer service requests or scheduling all the social media posts out or designing all the social media posts.
You're batching tasks together that are similar that you can really just break a whole, get on a rhythm and, you know, get a whole bunch of tasks out of the way.
And then the last mode is the Storefront Mode.
So that is kind of an all-hands-on-deck general work mode where you can have incoming communications from your team.
Maybe you're checking Slack here. Maybe you're writing emails.
There's a lot of interruption. So it's going to be a really high switching cost.
So your level of productivity will be more limited in this way.
But it is a work method that we all need to do at least a few times a week.
So collaboration, serving others, catching up or unexpected work.
If you're preparing for a conference or an event and it's an all-hands-on-deck moment, we're going to be in Storefront Mode.
So let me know if you have any questions in the chat.
I'm going to give it back to Dion for some more recap from last week.
And if you need any clarification, let us know. All right, Dion, over to you.
Thank you, Dia. That's wonderful. I appreciate that.
You know, this is such a key capability. As we keep saying, this is your new superpower.
And developing this superpower really puts you in a very unique position because it gives you a unique advantage in your industry.
And this unique advantage is it gives you time to work on your career, work on your knowledge, work on the business rather than in it.
So when we work in it, we call that focused work that tend to be shorter.
So if you're just doing uninterrupted work, working on current work, that is focused work.
Deep work is when you're doing something new. You're making a contribution. You're exploring something.
You're solving something. You're writing a book. You're doing something new.
You're contributing. You're moving your career and your contribution to the organization forward.
So to do that, we have to develop new muscle memory.
So that ability to concentrate, we use the example that it's like being in a gym.
The first time you go to the gym, you don't just pick up the heaviest weights and try to work out for four hours straight.
You go and you build it up gradually. This is exactly how your mind works.
Experts say that for a newbie or a novice in deep work, typically that kind of concentrated
focused work, sorry, deep work can last for about an hour. And most people would find that pretty,
you know, stressful. So if you did an hour and said, okay, I maxed out, that's pretty normal.
If you're going past the one hour, you're hitting the two hour, the objective is over a period of
months, even over a period of a year, keep practicing, and you'll find that your mind
will get better and better. And you'll be able to do longer and longer deep work sessions. And we
want, we keep giving you the four hour target, because at that point, you're starting to master
the deep work, you've developed new muscle memory or working memory. You know, your brain has a way
of mapping the way you work, even the way you answer an email, the way you call it up, the way
you start an email, your brain has a map for all the different tasks you have. Our job is to disrupt
that map and give you a new map so that you can do deep work. So this is really important. We've
talked also a lot about the switching costs, why you feel tired at the end of the day is because
there's been a cognitive drain, a drain on your brain, in which you have constantly switched,
because it takes 20 to 40 minutes to switch between, you know, doing something on a focused
basis. And it also weakens your ability to focus. So it's not, it takes 20 to 40 minutes to switch
in the beginning of the day, by the end of the day, I don't know if you ever got there that
you're sitting staring at the screen at the end of the day, and your brain literally will not switch
into that mode. Anybody had that experience? Like, have I just gone dumb or what? You know, that feeling
is, yeah, that feeling is you, you've reached your, you've drained your brain from so much
cognitive switching. And so you've, so you've got this mental fatigue. And that mental fatigue,
literally, your brain just says, enough already timeout, I'm not switching to another task.
And so the best thing is just to finish what you were doing. Go back to your last task, your brain
is probably a little more cooperative. So we talked also a lot about aligning your highest
energy level of the day to the things that matter most. So if you're freshest in the morning, that's
not the time to do email. As a rule of thumb, all the top experts will tell you, do not do your email
when you wake up, don't do the first thing you do, don't let that be your first task of the day,
all of that, because what will happen is you'll read something in your email, and it will send
you down a pathway. And that will often destroy your plan that you had for the day. So if you plan
to do a deep work session, you know, reading your email is a sure way of getting that deep way,
deep session canceled, because it'll take, you know, there'll be 10 things, and your mind will
connect into those things. And now the switching costs will be so much higher. So the email,
Slack, all those sort of communication technologies, which are all great,
but as a first order of the day, they're terrible for switching costs, because you're literally
switching between so many ideas and concepts. So it puts you into general mode, before you
even have a chance to do focused or even deep work. So be very aware of the switching costs,
and be kind to your mind and try to minimize switching costs. And if you do do general work,
batch similar tasks together to minimize switching costs, your brain doesn't switch when the things
are very similar. So if you're answering a lot of customer service on the same product,
that typically has a very low switching cost between the customers, if they're all asking
roughly the same questions. But to go from customer service to accounting, to, you know,
ordering stuff that you need for your office to you're trying to write a chapter of your book,
there will be four very brutal switching costs. And we talked a lot about for you to become a
deep work professional, really is this an ability to learn hard things quickly, and what it's going
to take for you to do that. And it really is a new lifestyle. It's a new way of thinking about
yourself. It's a new way of thinking about your career. And it's a power tool, it's the
it's the anchor tenant, if you like, you know, when when you build a strip mall, one of the first
thing a real estate developer does, if they go to strip mall, the first thing is they find an
anchor tenant. So they say, hey, we have a Publix or a Kroger, I don't know which big, you know,
supermarket type people, you know, wherever it is, Walmart, we have a anchor tenant. And then around
that we get the nail salon and all the other little things. It's a little like that deep work needs to
be the anchor tenant of your career needs to be the thing that really moves you forward. So if
you're going to commit to anything in the things we're talking about over the next few months,
focus on this, that this is your anchor tenant.
So with all that said, I wanted to take a minute
and soften the edges a little bit around the idea
that it has to be four hours deep work.
Ultimately, we'd like you to be able to pull that off.
But what you'll find for many of you
is that there are actually different types
or different modes or modalities.
These different modes all have, you know,
a little more of a fancy name
and I'll try to make them simple as we go through them.
But actually different leaders over time
have demonstrated, you know,
different types of these deep work.
So for instance, I'm gonna share with you
four different modalities and I'm giving each one
a nickname so they're easier to remember.
And these are a little bit internal to Brilliant.
So I think you'll follow them all, the nicknames.
So the first one, the first mode
is called the monastic mode.
And it's, think of seclusion.
The mountain cabin idea is a good example of this.
So this is like, think of a monastery, right?
Imagine going away to a monastery for days on end
to get some work done.
Some of you might've done this, you know,
to go, you know, just to get your head clear
or you've gone away for a while.
So this seclusion mode is you just get away from the office,
you get away from any ability to be contacted.
And so we have, you know,
somebody in our own organization who you may know,
Graham Cook, who is the founder of Brilliant.
And this is his mode.
He loves this monastic mode of thinking and of working.
And so the nickname of this mode is the Graham mode.
This is a Graham mode.
You just separate yourself out.
You have teams,
you have people who run the organization for you,
and you set up your whole working methodology
to free you up.
So Graham can be an author, a researcher.
So it allows him.
So this is typical for authors and researchers to do this,
to have a team that separates them.
So I'm not just talking about going away for a while
and coming back to your business.
I'm meaning you're organizing your whole business
so that you can permanently be in this monastic mode.
So that's kind of an extreme that's very rare,
I suspect on this call for anyone.
The next mode is called bimodal, B-I-M-O-D-A-L, bimodal.
Think of it as periodic.
So periodic is every now and again, I take time off.
So you dedicate some amount of stretch of time,
maybe a week or three or four days.
Maybe you go, you know, once a month,
you go away for three days.
Bill Gates used this methodology for two weeks every year.
Bill Gates just went away and all he did was think,
worked on the business, not in it.
And he either wrote or he thought,
or he came up with new ideas.
Steve Jobs did this.
So this typically are, you know, high powered leaders,
thought leaders, academics, consultants do a lot of this.
So I nicknamed this Bill mode as in Bill Gates.
So we've got Graham mode, we've got Bill mode.
So Bill mode is go away, you know, for two weeks, once a year,
or go away for two days, you know, once a quarter,
or that kind of thing where you just do concentrated deep work.
I can tell you though,
if you haven't learned to do deep work as a way of,
as a natural habit, going away won't make any difference.
You'll just go away and get distracted
and get really good at your latest game score.
So you'll get your high points and break your record.
That's about what will happen.
And you'll find yourself being very distracted
with shallow work, if shallow work's all you know.
But I'm going to give you for completeness all four.
The third one, which is the one we'd really, you know,
periodic can work for some of you.
Hey, one morning a week, I want to do this.
That's still bimodal mode.
Number three, the rhythmic or daily mode.
So this is an everyday thing.
So maybe you want to put two hours aside every day
to do deep work.
And you don't, you know, you don't break the chain.
Jerry Seinfeld used this method.
It was very, very popular for him.
So for instance, my wife, Bridget,
wanted to write her book on parenting.
And so she got up every morning
and from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m.,
she just wrote every single day.
And she did it for, I think, four months
and the book was written.
So, you know, that would be a perfect example.
So we'll call that the Jerry mode,
as in Jerry Seinfeld mode.
And so in the Jerry mode,
that is where you are doing something every single day.
And the last method,
which I'm almost hesitant to tell you about
because a lot of people...
want to try it. And it is by far the hardest and most advanced of the methods.
And it's called the ad hoc or journalistic method.
And this is you fitting in deep work on the fly, super flexible.
We're going to, you know, we're going to trip. I fit in an hour there,
half an hour there, two hours there.
You can pull this off.
If you've got your ability to get into deep work in under 10 minutes,
for most people,
that's a 40 minute process to get into that very deep work state.
But if you can get into that deep work state in 10 minutes or less,
and you know,
one of the board members at Brilliant called Glenn Hobbs is the best guy I know
does this and he can switch and he runs a very large team and he can,
he can get down into that deep work session quickly and he steals half an hour
there and two hours there and all the rest.
So I would strongly suggest you don't try this method
unless you, you know, you,
if you can do a four hour deep work session and you can make that work on a
fairly regular basis, then maybe you can try this.
But this is typical of people who are on the fly,
who are traveling a lot or who don't have a regular schedule and need
maximum flexibility to make it work.
So those are the four methods. So just again, they are,
so the seclusion method where you really organize your entire
organization around your ability to have minimal impact on the business side of
what you're doing.
The periodic method where you're setting it up once a week or once a year,
once a month,
the daily method where you're setting up daily time aside and the ad hoc as you
find time method.
And you can see very quickly which ones are those.
I hope that's helpful to what we're trying to tell you is not that we don't want
to make it so rigid that if you can't pull off four hours of deep work,
there's something wrong with you. That's not, or you, if you're,
if your job just doesn't allow that, then we,
we understand there's a broad range of, of,
of people who are on the call who are listening to this.
So here's what I want to say about deep work.
So inspiration is not a deep work mode.
And I say that because, you know, the typical like authors, I just didn't feel it.
I wasn't inspired to write and it turns out you don't have to be inspired to
write. There is no such thing as writer's block.
It's just, you've developed a bad work mode. That's all that is. And,
and there's a whole category of stuff I could say about all this.
There is no writer's block. It's just that, you know what,
what we say is, you know, great. You must have,
you must think like a great creative thinker like an artist,
but you must work like an accountant.
So you have to have discipline and structure and count.
And so when you develop a rhythm to your week, a rhythm to your work,
you'll find that the writer's block thing is just that you didn't prepare for
the session. Well, so that's what I'm getting to. And the last part of this is,
so we talked before about developing your,
you know, developing a priming ritual,
which is just fancy talk for saying you should prepare well.
So priming ritual means you develop a ritual and by ritual,
we mean like a habit. Like, you know, when I sit down, I cleared all the papers,
anything that can distract me.
You don't want to see bills lying face up on your desk that you could glance at
and get distracted by. So you pack it, package everything away.
You clear your desk. So your brain has place to think.
You're switching off your email. You've got your flask of coffee ready.
You've got your snacks ready. You've thought about, you know,
on the hour or every hour and a half, I want to take a walk in the neighborhood.
I want to keep thinking about this. I don't want to meet anyone.
So I'm going this route. This is the way I'm going to go. So, and so on.
So as part of thinking about developing this priming
ritual, here's the key guys though. If you get the priming ritual, right,
you'll always do deep work. If you don't get the priming ritual, right,
you'll never do deep work or rarely because you'll see an email,
you'll see a text and your brain will switch into that mode and off it will go.
So if you can do a priming ritual either before, you know,
your half an hour before you start,
or if you're going to do one first thing in the morning,
do the priming ritual the day before, go to your desk, set it up,
have the coffee pot ready, have your snacks ready,
have everything you could possibly have to be comfortable,
to be kind to your mind,
get rid of every distraction that you think will happen.
If you've got a lot of stuff written on your whiteboard, clear the whiteboard,
you know, I'm a whiteboard person. Anyone who knows, or, you know,
my office has always got scribbles and we're taking photos of my whiteboard
because I love, I love to visually see what I'm doing.
So if you're that kind of person, or if you don't want to, you know,
get rid of what's on your whiteboard, put a curtain or put a sheet over it,
clear.
all the distractions. Develop this priming ritual. So I want to give you four questions
you can ask yourself to help you develop a very powerful priming ritual. So question number one,
where will I work and for how long? That's one question. Where will I work and for how long?
Be really specific. No open-ended sessions, right? So here you want to be really clear
about where you want to work. I'm going to work on Tuesday mornings from 7 until 11,
every Tuesday morning. And if I can't do it on Tuesday, I'm doing it on Saturday morning
from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., whatever. So you have not just your plan, but your fallback plan if
against your own, because sometimes, you know, your boss calls or you need something or something
happens in the business. The idea is to be super flexible with where you put your deep work
sessions, but at the same time, trying to keep to the rhythm as much as possible. Number two,
how will I work? So we're going to give you in the work session in just a bit. We're going to go
through, give me a second while I call that up. I just want to bring up my own notes for what's
going to be in your work session. And in that work session, what I want you to do is look through in
that worksheet, look through the whole idea around how you can, as an individual, develop this
priming method. So things like how will I work? Let me give you some examples of this. I will
have no internet connection, even turn off your internet connection if you can, or text messages,
no phone calls, no social media, none of that will be active. And I will turn them off 10 minutes
before I start. Notice how very precise I'm being. I'm training my new working memory. So my brain
gets ready to engage, right? Since we know if the moment we start is going to take up to 40 minutes
to get into that deep work state. So what I'm doing is I'm priming my brain ahead of time.
And the other thing I might say, how I might work, if you're writing, for instance, a book,
I will maintain X number of words per minute, as an example. So what these habits do is they set a
rhythm for your work. I'm not just going to be saying, oh, I'm doing research and then aimlessly
click around the internet for four hours. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being very
precise. And as we build up these sessions, and we get to show you how to do innovation
sessions later on, innovation sessions are literally going to say this new project is
going to take three deep work sessions. So we're going to tell you what to do with the deep work
sessions later on, or you can do whatever you want. But right now, we just want you to develop
the new working memory of a deep work session. So how will I work is really important. Number three,
how will I support my work session? So your ritual needs to ensure that your brain gets
the support it needs to keep operating at that depth of capability. So coffee, food, walks,
raw materials. If you are going to be on a whiteboard writing stuff, you've got pens that
work, the board's clean, you're ready to go. So an example is I have my coffee, my snacks,
always ready 10 minutes before I start. I have my whiteboard markers ready. And I'll do a short
walk every hour, five minute or 10 minute walk. So getting up and walking away from your desk
isn't a distraction. It's just you feeding your brain, getting some exercise, getting some oxygen
in your system or your water, whatever it is you need. Number four is the most fun of them all.
And that is, do I need to make a grand gesture? Do I need to make a grand gesture? What do we mean
by that? Do I need to book into a hotel? So this is what we were talking about going away for a
week, a grand gesture will tell your brain, this is really important. So, you know, sometimes to
go deep, first, you have to go big, you have to do something bold that lets your brain know this is
important. So I've done this. Some examples of this are in my own life, I needed to get my book
Acuity out the door, which was a book based on my PhD. But I wanted to get rid of all the PhD
fluffy academic things. And I wanted to get down to really practical book. So I wrote Acuity as
and to get it done, I took a one week time sharing we had done in Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.
And I went down there for a week. And I wrote and I literally wrote, you know, I think it was eight
or nine hours a day. And I ate, I took walks, very short walks, and I worked and but the grand
gesture told my brain, this is super important, pay attention. You know, I think that JK
Rawlings, when she wrote the Deathly Hallows, that was written in a hotel.
The, I think it was Balmoral, known as one of Scotland's most luxurious
hotels, is a classic Victorian building.
And it has such ornate stonework and just absolutely beautiful, you know,
got elements of that Renaissance architecture and sounds beautiful.
It's got a very tall clock tower.
Anybody recognize what I'm describing?
Yeah, exactly.
A whole lot of parts in the Harry Potter was inspired by that building,
was inspired by what that hotel looks like, the clock tower and all that stuff.
But what she found is that's how she got a lot of her books.
Those of you writing books, those of you do that kind of authors
and you want to get away, this can really, can really help.
Simple, practical example, since I live in Atlanta, Georgia,
and the office is in Santa Barbara, California,
I travel once a month, typically, and there's no direct flight.
So I have to do a three and a half hour flight to to Denver.
And then there's a hour layover.
And then I got a two and a half hour flight to Santa Barbara.
And so what I've done is I've turned them into two deep work sessions.
I've reframed in my head, this isn't travel.
This is me doing deep work
while I'm sitting in a seat.
And to me, it doesn't matter that I'm in a plane.
And I can't tell you how quickly the day goes.
So I've got seven hours or so, two deep work sessions going on on Monday
and two deep work sessions coming back on Friday.
And so I get four deep work sessions.
Now, notice they weren't all four hours long.
But the point is that I reframe something that already exists.
I know people who do international travel.
Somebody who travels from California to Japan a lot
just made that their deep work session.
I know people who authors who rely on travel
as their primary deep work methodology.
So I hope that was really practical for you as we go through these.
So you can ask yourself, I want to build this, this my own ritual.
So where am I going to work and for how long?
Question number one.
Number two, how will I work?
Get as specific as you can.
And every time you do it, try to increase it slightly.
Try to make it a little more specific, a little more detailed.
Number three, how will I work?
How will I support my sessions, walks, water, coffee, etc.?
And four, do I need a grand gesture?
Do I just like need to kickstart this whole deep work thing
and go away, do something or reframe flight or travel?
It's amazing how creative you can get when you think in those terms.
So that's our that's our session for today.
And I know that the team want to share.
I know you may have questions.
I haven't been tracking the chat, obviously, as I've been talking.
So, Dia, over to you.
All right.
So our piece that at the beginning of the call that he was already preparing
the night before for deep work. So I love that.
He's already starting with the priming rituals
that the night before is a great time to prepare for that.
And Amy said she's been loving the challenge of diving into deep work
and expanding her capacity to do that.
So congratulations, Amy.
And then Deon Bruce on the call said he wasn't allowed to watch Harry Potter
and he was a kid.
I wonder who his parents were.
For anyone who doesn't know, Bruce is Deon's child.
But anyway, he's got miserable parents.
It's not his fault.
So, yes, I would love we have a couple of teams present
who I know have been doing deep work for at least a year,
some of us three years.
So I would love to open it up to hearing some of your strategies
for your priming rituals.
Also, what how deep work has changed the way that you work?
We'd love to hear those things as well.
I'll get started with some of my rituals for me.
It always involves coffee and chocolate.
That is a must for any priming, priming ritual.
And my team always teases me about that.
They know I need it.
It is definitely a need.
And then I also if I'm working at the home office instead of the actual office,
I'll even do an Alexa announcement to my whole my family and the kids
so they know, oh, deep work is about to start.
Do not distract mommy, but she's focusing.
And my husband as well.
He's a big culprit of interruptions, too.
So I do that.
And then I also turn off my notifications on my phone
and I make sure that I have my pen and my pen is working
and I have my paper, my journal, and then I close all other browsers.
I make sure, again, I am just focused on the task at hand.
And I'll try to think to myself, what if I was my own assistant
and I'm preparing for myself in the future?
What would I like to have done for me?
How would I have liked my assistant to prepare my deep work session for me?
So I'll go through, get all the links I might need.
Sometimes I'll do a pre run on my planning document
just to make sure that I'm well served and well set up for my session.
And the times that I don't go.
extra mile there. It is harder to get into deep work because inevitably you're trying to track
down something. You're trying to figure it out. So go ahead. The other teams who would love to
share. I would love to hear from Brilliant. If anyone would like to share, go ahead and
raise your hand and we'll come to you in turn. I'll also be watching the comments for any questions
too. All right, Jenny, go ahead. Yes. So I love deep work because it's like Dion said,
it is a superpower and it makes you a master of your craft. And the reason that it does this
is because anything that I have done deep work on is ingrained in my memory. And it makes me feel
like I am the master and I'm driving my own contribution. So a lot of you will know,
I know far more about sales tax than I ever wanted to, and it won't leave my brain.
And I can, I'm very confident about the things that I know because I spent the time researching
it, which is what deep work really allowed. It gave me room and space to research a topic
completely uninterrupted. Whereas I might've just taken bits and moments and half of that time
would have been refreshing myself from the research time before. So I really got to just
take time and space to research a topic and the priming rituals will change your life.
For me, it's really important to have a clean space to work. So my desk is clean. My computer
screen is completely clean. Like Dia, I will close down anything. I will turn off notifications,
close down any apps or browsers I don't need for whatever it is that I'm doing.
And then one of the most important tools is I put on music to set the mood and it just really
sends me into that place of deep work. And I'm just laser focused at that time.
Thank you, Jenny. Jaylynn, I know you're like a deep work whiz. Are you here today? Would you
be able to share? Yeah, sure thing. Deep work is so much fun. I think I would say, first of all,
I love the permission that's built into it because I have permission to tune out everything else and
permission to zone in on that one thing. And at least for me, maybe some of you have related to
this, but in other jobs you feel kind of bad doing that or you feel like it's going to reflect poorly
on you if you're not immediately responding to messages. So I would just say with that permission
and the freedom, it's also helped me just practice being the person who really gets done what I say
I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it. And then I think it's a big signal to me if I'm not
getting things done or if I'm constantly putting that one thing to the back burner, the signal is,
oh, I haven't been sticking to my deep work buckets or focused work buckets. So I think
it's just a really good indicator and a signal if I'm not getting things done that I can just
step back into deep work. And inevitably, it makes my day fly by so fast. So, yeah.
Thank you. Teresa, I know you have a game changer that really changed things for me as well to share.
You want to go ahead? Oh, I muted you. I'm sorry. Try again.
We keep going back and forth, mute and unmute. Okay, so my big takeaway, not takeaway, but what I need
for deep work is I have earplugs. Same ones you sleep with. I have them in my work bag. I carry
them in my purse and I have them at my desk and I have them at my house where I do most of my
deep thinking. And I don't know about you guys, but when I sit to be still and be quiet, my ears
listen for every little thing. And for me, what it does is it literally just drowns out all of that
backup noise so that I can literally focus and get in the zone right away. For an extrovert who loves
activity, it has been so helpful. I can get in the zone in 10 minutes. I am like,
I don't have any distractions at all and I'm not listening for them. And then of course,
at work, I think Dion showed you all yesterday that we have a sign on the door.
And like Jenny, I need to have clean space. I don't need chocolate. I just need my earplugs.
But the other thing that I've noticed when I do deep work is that there's two different
types of deep work. So if I'm working on scripts for an upcoming project where I don't need my
computer for research, I just need to be listening to what's in my heart and my spirit.
I tend to work at home in my chair.
And that's because then even the computer can be a distraction.
If I'm creating something, then it's usually in my office and it took me
probably five or six deep works to realize the preference between the two.
I don't know if that works for anybody else, if you had different places, but I
do find that for what sort of a project I'm working on, I have two different
space requirements for that.
I love that.
It's kind of like a mini grand gesture, right?
It just brings your brain out of the rut that you might be in.
I know a lot of people are saying in the comments as well, that they use
earbuds, that they use different sounds or different songs for me.
So some days we might have a great brain day where we're firing.
We're ready to go.
And there might be days when you have a bad brain day and you
need a little extra support.
So be aware of that too.
For me, those are the days I might do thunder and rain sounds because it
masks sounds, but I can't focus if I hear music or something else like that.
So everybody has a different strategy.
So try something to give you an extra level of support.
If you are struggling or having a day when you just cannot get into deep work,
or maybe try walking around your office for a moment and that might help too.
Okay, go ahead, Kimberly.
And then after that, we're heading to breakout rooms.
I just have a quick word for anyone who might be thinking like, well, I
have ADHD or ADD or something, and it's going to be super hard for me.
So maybe that's not many people on the call, but it's definitely
been a journey for myself.
But what I found is that it's not that you're averse to deep work.
You can actually, your deep work is really more of a superpower.
I think then, then I don't know if it's okay for me to say, but the rest of
the world, because I can, I can get into a deep work session and go eight
hours and not realize that I haven't eaten or had anything to drink or
gone to the bathroom or anything.
Um, but so just going back to what Dion said, like, if that, if that is you
and you are kind of like working through how do I do deep work when I clearly
have, you know, like some, some stuff going on, um, it's that priming ritual
because in the past I would just like flounce around and like get into
something and then just be into it for like, you know, six to eight hours.
And then be like, why are you little people so hungry?
What is going on?
I think it's been 30 minutes.
It's been like hours upon hours.
And, um, so, and before Rainmakers, I was an artist and I would
do a lot of artwork that way.
I would just like go in.
And so, um, my husband, we got to a jam where he would like take him to Chuck E.
Cheese, which is like an hour and a half away.
And I could just like get, so the priming ritual, if you are like, maybe
you might work better in like the whole day to do deep work and the priming
ritual be, you know, childcare and maybe you don't need snacks or anything.
Maybe you just need to be hydrated.
And the biggest priming ritual for someone in that space is
to know what your deep work is.
So in our team, we have rocks.
So if I know that I have like three rocks this quarter, and I'm going to
block off a whole day to do this and make sure my team knows that I'm out of office,
I'll make sure that, you know, I have everything ready to go for that thing
because I'm about to spend an entire day on it.
So if you do kind of like deal with that ADD, ADHD stuff, use that leverage,
that superpower and go into a deep mode that fits your style.
And you'll be really surprised at what you can do.
I love that.
Kimberly, thank you for sharing that.
We have three, we have a lot of neurodivergency in our home as well.
And we have a three with ADHD and it is a superpower.
And the support, the priming ritual is such a help in able to really
unleash that genius and prepare yourself in a way that works really well.
I know we have three homeschooled kids and one of them, she has to just
focus on one subject for the entire day.
And so the deep work actually blocks out for her.
So she doesn't have to have any switching costs because that's what derails her.
So again, we're also unique and there's all kinds of really amazing
strategies to put in place, but I'm going to go ahead and
send us to our breakout rooms.
I hope that this conversation.