Practice #1: Plan Out Time for Deep Work
After establishing what deep work is and why it’s important, Newport moves on to explain different ways to make deep work practices part of your life. The first step is carving out time that you’ll dedicate to deep work. He warns that it’s difficult to simply will yourself to do deep work on demand. It’s more effective to approach deep work with structure, habit, and discipline-in other words, to make deep work a practiced ritual.
The Four Types of Deep Work Scheduling
If you make deep work a ritual or habit, you no longer have to employ your willpower to overcome distraction. Newport says it’s most effective to set time aside specifically for focusing on deep work. To be successful at doing deep work in the long term, you’ll have to try out different schedules to see what best fits your lifestyle and needs. Newport offers four types of deep work schedules for consideration, each with different time requirements and efficacy.
Schedule Type 1: Seclusion
Remove as many shallow work tasks from your life as possible. Spend nearly all your time on deep work.
• Example: Some authors go off the grid and aren’t reachable by email or through social media. All correspondence comes in by postal mail or through their editor.
The advantage of this schedule is that you get extended periods of deep work-it becomes your default working style, not something you have to plan for. However, this isn’t feasible for most people, given the requirements of their careers.
(Note: This schedule requires you to avoid all shallow tasks, though often these tasks are a necessary part of life. To handle this, you’ll have to learn the essential skill of delegation. In Who Not How, Dan Sullivan explains that successful delegation depends on finding the best person for the job, instead of finding the best way to do the job. Instead of asking, “How can I get my shallow work done with this kind of schedule?” ask, “Who can I delegate my shallow work to?”)
Schedule Type 2: Periodic
Carve out regular periods each week, month, or entire parts of the year to focus on deep work.
The book stresses that the period should be at least one full day to reach the maximum intensity of deep work. (As we’ll see in the following schedule suggestion, it’s possible to do a few daily hours of deep work, but those few hours won’t be at the intensity you would achieve in a full day of deep work.)
• Example: You might carve out a three-day block of the week where you aren’t contactable while preserving the other two days for shallower work.
The advantage of this schedule is that it’s more realistic than the seclusion schedule. Setting aside at least one full day of deep work helps you reach your maximum level of focus.
However, despite being more realistic, it’s still impractical for many workers, who have to perform certain tasks daily.
(Note: Even if you’re a 9-5 office worker, it may be possible to adopt a periodic schedule-especially as companies normalize remote work. In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker recommends working from home at least one day per week, and planning to do your most mentally demanding tasks in this isolated, focused time.)
Schedule Type 3: Daily
Set aside a regular block of time each day to focus on deep work.
• Example: Set aside the morning (such as 8 to 11 a.m.) for deep work, before jumping into shallow work.
The regularity of this schedule is conducive to forming a habit, and it’s realistic for many careers and lifestyles. However, this schedule doesn’t give the full day of deep work that the seclusion or periodic schedules can provide, and therefore you won’t reach your maximum focus potential.
(Note: In The 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma notes that the most productive part of your day is the hour right after you wake up because you’re recharged and the world is relatively quiet and distraction-free. It therefore makes sense to try to schedule your deep work time block in the early morning.)
Schedule Type 4: Ad Hoc
Find some time to do deep work whenever you can get it.
• Example: When on a trip with your family, carve out a few hours to do work before joining them for activities.
This is the most flexible schedule. You can do deep work at any point when it’s possible. But, because it’s irregular, it’s the least successful in setting up a habit. It requires the ability to switch on deep work instantaneously.
(Note: It’s difficult to successfully achieve a level of deep work on the ad hoc schedule unless you’ve trained your ability to switch your “deep work brain” on and off at will— like a journalist, for example-or if you’re strongly driven by the belief that your work matters and that you’ll succeed. In his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Newport elaborates on why having a strong sense of purpose is essential to doing your best work at an exceptional performance level.)
How Much Deep Work Should You Try to Fit Into Your Day?
Newport cautions that there is a limit to how much deep work you’ll be able to accomplish per day. Anders Ericsson, author of Peak, explains that most novices can only accomplish about an hour a day of intense concentration. Experts who have extensive practice can expand to up to four hours, but rarely are able to exceed this.
(Note: Newport doesn’t discuss circumstances under which people can-and do — concentrate deeply for more than four hours at a time, such as chess grandmasters. Critics point out that this gives Newport a sort of loophole: If someone claims that they’re able to do deep work for more than four hours, he can always respond that their work must have actually been shallow work.)
Plan Out Your Days
Newport suggests several techniques for making sure you leave yourself enough time for deep work and aren’t tempted to engage in shallow work during that time.
Technique #1: Schedule Internet Time
Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet. Avoid it completely outside these times.
Newport gives some tips on how to make the most of this practice:
- Keep a notepad nearby where you record the next time you’re scheduled to use the Internet, and any ideas you need to revisit once you’re online again.
- Plan your work so you don’t need the Internet to make progress. If you get stuck by not being able to access the Internet, then move on to another task. Plan better next time.
- If you do this primarily at work, then don’t stop this practice at home after work. This will undo the training you did at work.
(Note: For most knowledge workers, it’s not possible to only use the Internet at certain times of the day. But if you must use the Internet all day, try using website-blocking apps like Forest or Self Control to help remove the temptation to switch your attention away from deep work.)
Technique #2: Plan Out Every Minute of Your Day, and Quantify Depth
Next, plan out everything that you need to do throughout the day. Newport says that when you set specific goals by planning out what you’ll work on in advance, you’re less likely to switch to other tasks. He outlines three steps to planning your time in a deep work-supporting way:
- Plan your tasks: Think about the tasks that you need to complete and note what time you plan to complete them. Newport recommends breaking down your tasks into half-hour blocks, making sure to schedule buffer blocks to handle emergencies or tasks that run over their allotted time.
(Note: In 2020, Newport released The Time-Block Planner, which helps guide readers to create schedules broken down into half-hour increments and in alignment with their goals.) - Quantify depth: He then says to estimate and note the “deep work” complexity of each task.
As a rule of thumb, imagine how long it would take to train a smart college grad to do the task-the more time, the deeper the work.
(Note: This heuristic doesn’t always work if you’ve built up a skill to the point that it’s routine. For instance, a surgeon operating may not consider a certain procedure deep work.) Once you’ve finished quantifying the depth of your day’s tasks, look over your schedule. If your day is full of shallow tasks, Newport urges you to consider how you can replace those with deeper work. - Reflect on and tweak your schedule: Newport suggests reviewing the accuracy of your time blocks at the end of each day. This will help you set more accurate goals and expectations in the future.
(Note: You may feel discouraged if you aren’t able to follow your schedule or give in to distraction. Nir Eyal addresses this feeling in Indistractable-he explains that it’s essential to think of your schedule as an evolving experiment that you probably won’t get right on the first try. Instead of stressing out, think of ways to build a schedule better aligned with your needs.)
Technique #3: Set Ambitious Deadlines
Give yourself intense deadlines that will force you to concentrate at the limit of your ability.
Newport recommends estimating how long you’d normally schedule for the task. Then cut down the time drastically, and set it as your deadline.
(Note: Intense deadlines not only force you into focus mode but can actually make your work better. When you set an ambitious deadline, you create a moderate amount of emotional arousal-which, according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, is where you achieve peak performance. In other words, people really do “work best under pressure.”)