So, in this next module, we're going to be talking about the whole concept of deep work
and how deep work is your superpower.
In the previous module, we talked about cognitive control.
How do we gain cognitive control?
One of the things we're going to talk about now, and this is part of our first step in
our innovation part of the training, is when you look at how you become an expert, how
you become the superstar, one of the most powerful ways you do that is through deep
work.
So, deep work is your superpower to help you become the superstar, or deep work is your
superpower to become the master of your craft.
I don't know how you get there without this.
If there is a way to get there without deep work, I don't know what that might be.
And I haven't seen anyone else do it.
Because here's what happens with deep work, so let's first talk about what's the definition
of deep work.
What do we mean by deep work?
We're talking about deep, focused work that's undistracted, on a task that pushes your cognitive
abilities to the limit.
It's like going to the gym.
If you just do light weights all the time, and you're just changing exercises, you become
a light weight.
You don't grow in a gym.
It's the same idea of if I go to the gym, and I stare and watch all the people doing
exercises, nothing happens to me.
And why?
Well, I learned about leadership, I didn't become a leader.
This goes back to the idea of we're constantly enrolling our team into developing and investing
in their own leadership.
And so this idea of deep work isn't just I'm going to work for a bunch of hours and not
be interrupted.
That's called focused work, and we're going to make a distinction between three types
of work.
Number one, deep work, and we'll describe that in depth here in a second.
Two, focused work is in maybe a two-hour block of time, and it's to do existing work without
interruption.
That's why we go to the coffee shop or somewhere else to not have any distractions, and the
idea here is that we do focused work for a set period of time on the existing work we
already have.
And the final one is general work.
General work or teamwork is when we do the general stuff, right?
We do the emails, we're available for the team, we're in collaboration, we're responding
to customer service requests, all that general work.
So deep work is very different because deep work is pushing you to your limits.
So I want to bring two analogies which really help me in understanding deep work.
The first analogy is the analogy of sleep.
If you are trying to get into a deep sleep, and I came in and woke you up every hour,
and I said, so, how's your sleep going, how's your sleep going, how's your sleep going?
By the morning, you'll be pretty exhausted, and if I did that night after night, after
a week, you'll be in pain, physical pain.
If I did it for a month, you'd probably need psychiatric treatment, right?
That would be brutal, yet we do that to people in our work.
We call them meetings, manager updates, we interrupt people all the time.
So we have to take control over the culture where we all do deep work.
Deep work doesn't work when one person does deep work.
There has to be a permission, we all do this.
So if you were in our offices in Santa Barbara, there'd be physical signs up on the door that
says, in deep work session.
And that says, that means no interruptions.
That means I can't interrupt them.
Now only in the case of emergency, as in, your kid was rushed to the hospital type emergency.
Not like, I forgot to ask you two hours earlier, now I have to have it, and I'm going into
a meeting, that's my issue.
So my lack of planning doesn't constitute a crisis for people who are in their deep
work session.
So what do we, the second analogy is this.
There are two trains, and I did some research on these, one in China and one in Japan.
And these are really fast trains, I mean they move at unbelievable speeds.
And they're like bullet trains.
And there's two versions of, on the same track, there are two versions of the train.
The one is point A to point F and no stops.
Just flat out go.
It starts up and it gains so much momentum and so much speed on that train, it just flies
to the destination and gets there hours before the other train who left and stopped at all
of the ten stops in between.
Now think of the one that stops.
They can't accelerate to a very high level because they've got to immediately decelerate
to get into the station.
Then if there's any other delays, like
like somebody blocks the door or something else happens or there's another interruption,
then that delay might actually take longer. And there's no easy way for the train to make
up that difference by simply going faster. Because the mechanism to go faster means no
interruptions, no stops.
So step number one is we've got to develop a culture where we stop interrupting each
other. The two big destroyers of productivity is the M and M problem, M and M's, not the
candy, but meetings and managers. The constant meetings, the constant managers interrupt
how's your work going, how's your sleep going, how's your sleep going, how's your sleep going,
make a stop, make a stop, make a stop. That's the stuff that destroys because that's not
how your mind is wired. Like deep sleep, it takes time to get into that very deep state
of sleep. Same with your thinking. Deep work needs to be long enough and so we're suggesting
four hours. Now we know four hours is a long time for people who have never done this.
But you want to get each team member to block out one four hour block of time to do deep
work once a week. That's the starting place. If they can't do four hours, let them do two
hours once a week. Why once a week? So we've already discussed in the previous training
that you divide your week up into ten buckets of four hours for each bucket. Bucket in the
morning, bucket in the afternoon, five days, ten buckets. Give one bucket at the start
of the week and pick a time you think will work. You have to be flexible and move it
to another time, that's fine. Life happens, business happens, stuff happens. So yesterday
morning I got up and I hit a deep work session and my record actually is to do seven deep
work sessions in a row. If you can do seven deep work sessions in a week, you'll be shocked
at what you pull off. Because deep work creates something new. Remember how focused work is
working on existing work? Well deep work is working on new stuff, new things, new innovation.
Now imagine if every member of your team is working on something new to move the business
forward, to move the organization forward with something new. Maybe it's as simple as
we're in the accounting department, what if we can make our collections from 40 days down
to 30 days? Or we can reduce steps or reduce paperwork or automate something. Or we can
use a different vendor. So you're researching all the vendors and you take a deep work
session and you set a problem. And we're going to talk in later sessions how you pitch your
team on these ideas. But for now, getting the idea of a deep work session there and
in place on a weekly basis. Why is this important? This is important because these deep work
elements become the building blocks of innovation when we get to the innovation section. Because
we're going to say, hey I'm doing this innovation project and it's going to take me five deep
work sessions. Well if you have no deep work sessions in your schedule and you don't have
a habit of deep work, you will not be able to step up to the level of innovation that
you will, by the way, love. Because now you're learning to respect yourself and you're learning
to respect your contribution to the world, to the organization by giving yourself deep
work sessions. This means going to your team leader and saying, I want to do deep work
at this time, does that work? And have your team lead cover for you on anything that might
happen. That means that you as the CEO will not interrupt any of your team members who
are in a deep work session. That also means a second permission. Firstly permission to
say no to everybody interrupting them. Give that, make that, normalize that in your organization.
And secondly, you want them to be able to work on a deep work session and make that
culture that we expect everybody at some point to have deep work sessions. Well people say,
well my job isn't like that. You know, I do customer service. Well does customer service
not need to be upgraded? Well I do construction. I do whatever. You don't need to look and
do research on new tools or new methods. You don't need to do any upgrade. And here's what
I found really, really works. You're teaching people to develop their super power. And deep
work is your super power. Because what this turns out to be is the amount of deep work
sessions going on throughout your organization sets the rate of innovation of your organization.
And the one who innovates the fastest wins. We know this already. So it helps you to really
focus on what you're doing and what you want to do.
Focus on what you're doing.
It creates a sense of ownership.
Think of this.
If I have to, I'm doing a certain job right now
in the organization, but you tell me
I have to do a deep work session.
I'm not used to it, but I'm willing to learn.
So I get rid of all the distractions.
I turn off all the interruptions.
I turn off Slack and I turn off
all the notification systems and I turn my phone off
and I turn off everything because I'm gonna protect
this deep work session needs to be protected.
So I'm protecting the deep work session.
When I get there, I have an idea
of what it is I wanna go after
and maybe I'm researching new ways or new innovations.
What am I doing when I do that?
I'm acting like an owner.
I'm taking ownership of a piece of the business
and I'm moving that piece forward.
Now we're creating a team of leaders,
not just a team with a leader
because we need breakthrough business ideas, new research.
Sometimes you just have to figure out,
well, do I even know the question I'm trying to answer?
Maybe you take a deep work session to figure out
where in the area of my responsibility,
where should I focus?
Maybe you take a deep work session to think about
the problem of coming up with a problem,
if you know what I'm saying.
So you're thinking about your thinking,
what's called metacognition.
So you'll have three challenges
as you go through this, right?
You have to learn to develop your ability
to focus more intensely for longer periods of time.
That is like going to the gym.
You can't learn this, you can't say,
oh yeah, I watched the video about deep work, I'm good.
That's like going to the gym and watching people work out.
That doesn't do anything.
You have to learn to develop and be patient with yourself.
It takes time to do this.
So, hey, I got through 40 minutes
of my first deep work session.
Well, okay, that's good.
How about next week you do 50 minutes?
How about the week after that you go for an hour?
How about you push it and push it until you get up to it?
So maybe you start with the light weights in the gym
and you work it up.
Second challenge, develop your ability
to resist distractions.
This is actually an ability
because our brains are so used to being interrupted
that it doesn't know how to behave anymore in that context
and you have to train your brain.
By the way, this has been kind to your mind.
Your mind actually wants to do this
and that's why we know from previous training
that multitasking makes you dumb.
Well, interruptions also, it's the trains constantly stopping.
So what do I do?
Plan ahead.
Turn off anything that beeps, dings,
or grabs your attention on even if it's the weather,
news, whatever, shut that stuff down.
Turn off those apps.
There's actually an app or several apps
that will help you turn off all of that stuff for you
with a click of a button.
You can go and do some research.
If you're on a Windows or a Mac user,
you can go and find apps that do that.
For some of you, you may just need to get away
from your computer and just get pen and paper
and just go the old fashioned way if that helps you,
especially if you're writing content
or you're writing a book, that type of thing.
So you have to develop this ability to resist distractions.
We call it protected thinking.
You have to learn to protect your mind
from that being bounced around
because it takes your mind that much longer to go back.
As a programmer in my early part of my career,
a software developer,
I found that I was building all these mental structures
in my mind.
Then somebody came in and interrupted that process
and it was like all the Jenga blocks
just fell to the ground.
Then I dealt with whatever it was.
Then I had to come back,
even if I just went to lunch and came back,
I had to rebuild it up so I can start working.
And that's what you're developing is that ability to focus.
And the third thing you're going to learn
and third challenge you're gonna have,
and we're telling you upfront
so that you're patient with yourself,
is to reframe, to learn to love this kind of work,
that it becomes a lifestyle for you.
It's not, okay, I checked the box, I did deep work,
but that you actually start to look forward to it,
that it's your favorite time maybe of the week
when you get to shut down everything else
and bring your big contribution to the business.
Okay, so here are five practical hacks if you like
for developing deep work.
Number one, you need to understand.
In order to produce your absolute best stuff
that you're capable of, you need to commit to this.
Number two, goal.
The ability to quickly master hard things.
What will happen is the more you do deep work,
the quicker and quicker and quicker you'll be able to do
to master more and more complex things.
And so you'll start to produce at an elite.
level. Both in terms of quality and speed. Both are two core capabilities. Not just quality
but you'll go faster and faster and faster. When we talk about the whole culture goes
faster it's because everyone's doing deep work.
And number three, it's time to go deep. Like sleep, which takes 40 minutes to get into
that deep state, you're saying it takes about 40 minutes to get into that deep thought state
of mind. So if you do a deep work session that's 20 minutes, you didn't do anything.
And if you're being interrupted every 20 minutes, you're just doing a lot of train stops. So
time to go deep. Give yourself time. Be kind to your mind. Give yourself time to go deep.
Number four, routines. This is a great hack. The key to developing a deep work habit is
to move by just intentions but add an actual routine like a ritual you go through. Clean
my desk. Turn off all the computer stuff. Get my coffee. Get my snacks. Go through that
whole planning like a little ritual you go through in preparation for your deep work.
Because it shows a kind of respect. I know some people who take it a step further and
literally go and change their clothes. Because they found that when they change their clothes
like really casual or whatever, it just helps the mind to say, oh we're starting this route.
It acts as a cue for that routine, for that habit to kick in. Because honestly you want
to minimize the amount of willpower it takes to do this. You want this to become a delight.
Remember we talked before in our training, delight leads to discipline. So make it delightful
to you. Number five, train your brain. Working memory is like muscle memory. The ability
to concentrate must be trained like a muscle. You say, well I have this and I can't do that.
You can train your mind no matter where you're starting. You can train yourself like a muscle.
But you can't use it if you didn't train it. So if you train it in a structured way and
push yourself to the limit, it will get stronger. And so this is a practical way for you to
take your contribution to the next level. And really deep work is your superpower to
help you master your craft. Enjoy.