Intense Focus – Cal Newport

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SUMMARY


All of us want to give intense focus and our full attention doing certain tasks so we could produce better results but the problems is we have so much in our plate that we find it difficult to get into the state of deep work. On this episode with Cal Newport, author and writer of Deep Work, he shares some tips on how we can go into a deep work state and give intense focus. He also talks about deep work not only having a lot of productivity benefits but also creating an incredibly fulfilling life.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS


arrow-iconDeep work is the activity in which you’re giving something intense focus for a long period of time.

arrow-iconDeep work is this type of effort where you’re able to give something unbroken, intense focus is incredibly valuable and becoming only more valuable at exactly the same time people are actually becoming worse at it.

arrow-iconDeep work and intense focus are one of these activities that if mastered, can really be transformative.

arrow-iconThings necessary to succeed with an intense focus and deep work session:

  1. Have a scheduling system or routine.
  2. Couple your system or routine with some sort of ritual surrounding how you actually approach the work.

arrow-iconGoing back to a location helps because it essentially allows your mind to initiate this transformation routine into deep work mode and intense focus.

arrow-iconThe more you can take off of your mind’s plate, just automate, and you don’t have to worry about it, the more energy you have to actually focus on the task.

arrow-iconThere are two types of work tasks.

  1. Deep work tasks – tasks that require your intense focus, full attention and push your skills to the limit.
  2. Shallow work tasks – tasks that are easy to replicate.

arrow-iconOne of the most important metrics you can start with is your deep to shallow work ratio.

arrow-iconAnyone who’s looking to thrive or to get ahead or create things of value should have an answer to those two questions.

  • What’s my target deepest shallow work ratio?
  • How close am I to hitting that right now?

arrow-iconFor females, looking at their cycles is big important part of when they can go to a intense focus work.

arrow-iconWe should not be so homogeneous in our work.

arrow-iconDepth Pacing – allotting time trying to tackle something that’s incredibly cognitive and intense focus demanding, you’re trying to learn something.

arrow-iconDoing things that are at the very limit of your skills are too difficult to instigate a flow state and required intense focus.

arrow-iconFlow states are something you hit usually where you’re applying a skill you’ve already honed in way that you are comfortable. Thus you can thrive with an intense focus.

arrow-iconAttention Residue – This effect happens when you’re doing something deliberate and difficult and you decided to shift over to a different context. It could take up to 20 minutes for the residue of that new thing to clear out and until it clears, you’re at reduced cognitive capacity and less intense focus.

arrow-iconYou should have passive type of breaks like getting a glass of water or walking around the block in order to maintain intense focus.

arrow-iconThe amount of time you spend the distraction is irrelevant because even a 10 second glance at an inbox can create a massive amount of attention residue.

arrow-iconIf you haven’t been systemically training your ability to concentrate and to give intense focus, the amount of concentration you can generate and the comfort you have being in a state of concentration is going to be pretty small.

arrow-iconSynchronous communication – Time allotted for talking about and dealing with everything that need to be dealt with. With this approach to work, you adapt your work habits so that you learn to get what you need in advance. You learn to plan out what you’re doing a little bit further and then, people end up being way more productive.

arrow-iconHuman beings seem to be wired for craftsmanship. We derive great satisfaction out of putting our resources and applying them at their fullest with intense focus to produce the best possible things for capable of producing.

arrow-iconIf you can put your intense focus on one thing, you get the same benefits plus others because you also get benefit of appreciation in having created something.

Summary-icon

TRANSCRIPTION: INTENSE FOCUS – CAL NEWPORT


Defining Intense Focus and Deep Work

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Kamala Chambers

Productivity and intense focus is the best currency we have as entrepreneurs. In this interview, we’re going to tap into how you can have intense focus, get more done, and really assess your own deep work.

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Luis Congdon

Today’s guest is Cal Newport, PhD from MIT, an associate professor at Georgetown University. He’s also an author and the writer of Deep Work as well as another book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Cal is going to dive deep with us on how to go into the zone and give intense focus.

Welcome to Thriving Launch. Calvin, it’s awesome to have you here. Are you ready to launch?

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Cal Newport

Always ready to launch. Thanks for having me on.

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Luis Congdon

I know that your work with your book So Good They Can’t Ignore You was an awesome read. A lot of people really latched onto it and you’ve come out with something new about Deep Work and how we can get more out of life and how even deep work and intense focus is something that is even creating a new kind of emotional intelligence.

I’d love to hear more about that from you.

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Cal Newport

I’ll start by laying the sort of foundations of the intense focus and deep work. Just to define it.

Deep work is the activity in which you’re giving something intense focus for a long period of time. It’s getting your full attention. You’re thinking about as hard as you can for a long period of time with no distraction. No glances at this. No breaks for that.

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Kamala Chambers

That’s right. Giving intense focus is my absolute favorite type of work.

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Luis Congdon

I’m really hoping I learn something about intense focus. I’m sorry to interrupt you but you can already tell. I’m somebody that has a hard time not glancing at my phone every 10 minutes or opening up a new tab or having a different conversation or phone call and trying to do work.

So I’m very interested in what you have to say.

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Cal Newport

Well, your excitement is well justified and essentially, the premise of my book and this is not my phrase, it’s actually a phrase that came from The Economist talking about the book is that Deep Work is like the killer app of the knowledge economy. This type of effort, where you’re able to give something unbroken, intense focus is incredibly valuable and becoming only more valuable at exactly the same time that as we know, people are actually becoming worse at it.

When I think about deep work and intense focus, I think about it as this great opportunity. If you cultivate the skill and it does require cultivation and if you prioritize this skill, which requires quite a commitment, there’s this huge order of magnitude benefits you stand to reap both in terms of business productivity but also in terms of just meaning and satisfaction and enjoyment in your professional life.

So, I’m as excited as you guys are about this concept because I think it’s one of these activities that if mastered, can really be transformative.

Succeed With Intense Focus And Deep Work Session

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Kamala Chambers

When I can get into those deep work zones with intense focus, so much gets done. It’s not even just about what I accomplish on the day. It’s about the way it moves through my whole being because I just feel so in the flow.

I have certain systems or methods that I use to get intense focus but I’d love to hear from you, how do we access that deep work where we do stay focused for long periods of time?

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Luis Congdon

I feel like you and Calvin are on a date right now because I’m so different. I’m like listening and excited to hear what you’re going to say. I have such a hard time to get intense focus on one task at a time. So, what are some ways we can do that Calvin?

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Cal Newport

There are two things that seem to be almost always necessary to succeed with an intense focus and deep work session.

  1. Have some notion of scheduling system or routine.

Deep work and intense focus is difficult. It uses a lot of cognitive energy so it’s something that is very hard to just spontaneously fall into and just aside, “Yehey! I don’t have a lot to do. I’m in the mood to focus really hard.” That doesn’t happen very often.

People who succeed with deep work and intense focus tend to have some sort of scheduling or routine, which might be, I do deep work at the same time on the same days or it might be a scheduling discipline like every Sunday, I block out on my calendar when my deep work is happening or it could be more extreme like the people that used this by model philosophy of putting aside many days at a time and just falling off the grid. Then, they are coming back, and being connected again, then, many days at aside being off the grid.

Whatever it is, having some sort of scheduling system or routine seems to be the key.

  1. Couple your system or routine with some sort of ritual surrounding how you actually approach the work, where you go, your rules when you do the work, what happens during your working session, which are not allowed to do, how long you work. It’s just like the structure and ritual around the Deep Work

Those two things combined are the necessary recipe if you’re going to succeed at doing a lot of deep work and intense focus in your life.

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Luis Congdon

Your sharing really reminds me of when I was preparing for my SATs. I don’t have a PhD so I never had to take like the GREs or some of those more advanced tests that are very arduous. However, one of the things I studied when I was looking at taking my SAT was that it was a better idea to try to study in the same place and environment that’s similar to where I would actually take the test.

As you’re sharing, you’re reminding me that if we want to go into intense focus and deep levels of work, we want to have a certain type of environment and go back to that place repeatedly. It’s like certain part of our mind gets triggered. Is that what’s happening?

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Cal Newport

Yes. Location helps because it essentially allows your mind to initiate this sort of transformation routine into intense focus and deep work mode in sort of autopilot.

So if you know that when I go to this location or I do this to my office or I go for this walk, this means I think deeply. Eventually, you can slip into your intense focus and deep work mode for free just by going to that location or initiate that ritual.

On the other hand, if you’re just in an auto trail location, at an arbitrary time, just say, “You know what? I’m going to try to wrench my attention away from what I’m doing right now and force it to focus.” That’s actually going to expend a lot of willpower. As we know, your willpower reserves really fluctuate throughout the day and through the week and so, that’s going to be a much more risky gamble and one that’s not going to pay off quite often.

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Luis Congdon

Kamala is really powerful at going into states of really deep work and intense focus. When she was writing one of her first major books, I remember that she could just work for 10-12 hours straight and she did this for days. For more like weeks on end where she would just go into this deep state and intense focus. My job at that time was really to make food for her and bring her stuff so she could work.

I really wanted to support her through this process. Writing a book is such a big accomplishment and I’m just curious to hear from you Kamala. Is environment a part of that for you?

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Kamala Chambers

Maybe this is a different thing than what you’re talking about, Calvin, but some things that I find that really help me go on those states are:

  1. Blocking off my schedule.
  2. Cutting out the noise. I have a specific play list that I use to help me get in the zone and tap into intense focus because I get distracted by noise.
  3. Making sure that I’ve got nourishment and the food to stay focused for long periods of time and I use coffee like a drug because I think it is a drug. So, I will sometimes use coffee to go into intense focus and use it intentionally for that.

Getting Into The State of Intense Focus

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Cal Newport

All of those things come up often. I profiled several people on the book who had their intense focus and deep work rituals down to the point where it wasn’t just where they went, how long they’re going to work, what they’re going to drink, what they’re going to eat. However, at the exact times, they were going to fill up their second cup of coffee when they were going to take a break to go to the bathroom even.

Some of these people had it so regimented that from the outside, this is crazy but on the other hand, they we’re accomplishing a massive amount of stuff because it seems to be a law of true concentration and intense focus. The more you can take off of your mind’s plate, just automate, fix, it’s just there supporting you, and you don’t have to worry about it, the more energy you have to actually focus on the task which means, you can actually get to deeper levels of concentration and it’s really worth emphasizing.

Cal Newport Intense Focus Thriving Launch Podcast
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Cal Newport

It’s not a little bit more productivity. It’s more like orders of magnitude for productivity and it’s almost like a super power. That those who have really hone this ability to give intense focus, it’s almost like a super power how much they’re able to produce per say, unit of time they actually spend working.

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Luis Congdon

You’re reminding me a lot of the interview we did with Jay Papasan where he talked about The One Thing and trying to reduce your tasks to the very most essential so even when you have bunch of tasks or you only have 3 or 4 tasks, taking that to 2 or 1 task and ultimately, getting to one and then really giving intense focus on that. That’s something that he talked about.

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Cal Newport

Yeah. I think there’s an important distinction here that supports what he wrote in that book and then also like Greg McKeown in Essentialism. They both touched on this point of trying to identify the most important things to work on and give intense focus.

From my perspective, an important way to think about this is to recognize that there are really two types of work tasks.

  1. Deep work tasks

They are tasks that really do require your full attention and intense focus. They push your skills to your limit. It’s when you’re sitting down to write a chapter of the new book and to produce the best possible writing. It’s just pushing your mind to its limit.

  1. Shallow work.

These are tasks that do not really require your full attention and intense focus. They don’t require you to apply hard one skills. They’re easy to replicate like answering emails, do social media, tweaking your WordPress configuration. These are the types of things that don’t need your full attention but are still necessary.

The reality is that shallow work in a job is what prevents you from getting fired in some sense while deep work, is the type of effort that gets you promoted. In the entrepreneurial context, shallow work efforts are the types that maybe prevent you from going bankrupt next month but, intense focus and deep work efforts are the types that double your revenue a few months down the line.

I think the selection question is also clarified through the length of deep work and intense focus because what it tells you is it’s only these deep work efforts, the efforts that require your intense concentration that are really going to push you forward or push your business forward and that they’re different. It’s a different class effort than shallow work efforts.

Shallow work has to be done but I try to help people foster this mindset where it’s where they crave the deep work and intense focus. If they’re not getting a lot of that done, they feel more and more people in knowledge economy are doing essentially 100% shallow work and considering themselves successful. They say, “I’m busy all the time. I’m always doing things. Shouldn’t this count?” So, this is sort of a secondary benefit of this terminology. It helps you understand that there are some efforts that push your mind to its limit and produce the most value you’re capable of producing and then there’s the easy to replicate stuff. They’re not the same thing.

Analyzing Deep Shallow Work Ratio And Intense Focus

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Kamala Chambers

This is really liberating for me to hear you talk about this stuff because even coming down to the craving of the desire to get into the deep work. When I want to get there and maybe Luis is distracting me with another project or something else is happening in our business, I find myself irritated because I know where I want to get to the most productivity, intense focus and that sense of flow.

What is something else that we can be doing to gain intense focus? All of us here, all the thriving launchers, what can we be doing to tap into the deep work?

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Cal Newport

I think one thing that is important is to measure and I think one of the most important metrics you can start with is your deep to shallow work ratio. It’s a pretty simple idea. You track your time throughout the period of a week, you count how many real working hours are actually spent in a state of deep work, giving something unbroken, intense focus for an hour or more at the time, your intense concentration and how many hours for everything else and then, look at the ratio of those two.

I think this is really informative because it gives you an actual number to not only observe but to use manage. It allows you to say things such as, “For my current positioning goals, my deepest shallow work ratio should be X.” You can go and measure it and if you’re falling short, you can let that concrete number help push you to make concrete changes to how you push your work and how you run your work days.

Cal Newport Intense Focus Thriving Launch Podcast

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Cal Newport

Anyone who’s looking to thrive or to get ahead or create things of value should have an answer to those two questions. What’s my target deepest shallow work ratio and how close am I to hitting that right now?

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Kamala Chambers

That’s a great tip. I want to share something that the male listeners might not like at all but from a female perspective, my ability to access deep work depends on where I am in my cycle and I just think that’s something as females and even if males like when are you most productive during the day? Is it the morning or is it the evening?

Look at your cycles. As a female, like I’m brain dead around menstruation and then like, I can go right into the deep work when I’m ovulating. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that perspective in getting intense focus but for me, looking at my cycles is a really big important part of when I can go there.

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Cal Newport

I think this is an emerging area of study that requires intense focus and certainly, something that people are increasingly recognizing as being important in the world of professional productivity and that’s this notion that we’re not computer processors. You can’t just think about, “Okay, I have a bunch of task and I’m a processor. My only decision is to sequence them and then I just execute them one after another.” And to instead recognize that we have rhythms.

High energy here, low energy here. This type of the month I have higher energy. This part of the day I have higher energy. This part of the week versus this part of week I have higher energy and that this notion that work should be uniform at all points between 9 to 5, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month that you should be executing the same way, doing same amount of work, at the same level, at the same pace. Increasingly recognize just like your note that doesn’t make sense.

I think you’re onto something really important. Tony Schwartz has done some interesting work on getting intense focus. Douglas Rushkoff’s book Present Shock, has a really interesting treatment of this as well and is something that I hear more and more that we should not be so homogeneous in our work, so the rhythms and energies. It’s okay.

I got to tell you, I do this in my own life all the time and I can get away with intense focus pretty easily because I’m a professor. So, I don’t have boss. I have a lot of flexibility and what that means for me is that I have huge swings, seasonal, monthly, and weekly. Really hard and then I’m ramped down for a while taking days off and then, really hard and then this month is lighter, this month is really intense. It’s all over the place. I’ve had a lot of success with intense focus. I think you’re hitting on something important.

Handling Intense Focus and Cognitive Demanding Tasks

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Luis Congdon

That’s really great. I’m glad that we dove into that piece because as humans, we do have different seasons and different things that are impacting us.

Maybe our children, our partner, work is impacting us in certain ways. It’s our ability to give intense focus in different areas, changes. You said something interesting about deep work and you said it’s the 60 minute thing or you said an hour more.

For me, that was interesting because I really got into trying to study effectiveness and one of the things I kept finding repeatedly was set a timer 20 minutes and give intense focus and go deep into that thing and then, take a little break and then come back to it and, I’ve read articles from people like Tim Ferriss, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and some very high level business people where they talked about this 25 – 30 minute thing where they go into it.

However, I’m just curious your opinion on intense focus or what you found through your research.

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Cal Newport

That’s what I call Depth Pacing and it’s pretty common. What’s important to recognize about what that actually means is that if you’re trying to tackle something that’s incredibly cognitive and intense focus demanding, you’re trying to learn something really hard to produce something of really high value at the very limit.

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Luis Congdon

Or if you’re trying to write a book for example.

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Cal Newport

Things that are at the very limit of your skills, they’re too difficult to instigate a flow state. Flow states are nice but flow states are something you hit usually where you’re applying a skill you’ve already honed in way that you are comfortable.

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Luis Congdon

It’s like this groove has already been built in your mind. I’m thinking of ski jumpers. I was watching this video where they jump off these big slopes and they put their skies right into this groove so that then, once they start going down, they’re in a groove and they’re going fast whereas if it’s something new, you don’t have that groove.

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Cal Newport

Yes. The other analogy is in music. If you’ve mastered a difficult guitar songs or guitar play when you’re performing, you can fall into the flow state because you’re applying this hard one skill at a very high level. It can feel effortless. You get lost in it but the process of learning that song is really frustrating because you have to keep pushing yourself past where you’re comfortable in order to learn the new things and you’re not going to fall into a flow state.

In fact, it’s going to be uncomfortable as often sort of deliberate practice or learning things deliberately is and that’s where having this depth pacing helps, where you go, “20 minutes as hard as I can at this thing that’s very uncomfortable and difficult. I’m pushing my fingers a little bit faster than they’re able to go right now in this slick,” and then you back off for 5 – 10 minutes, then back into it 20 minutes.

That’s important in those scenarios because it’s so hard, you can’t sustain it but what’s also important to recognize is when you’re doing this type of depth pacing, this breaks are of a certain type.

Now, let me turn my attention to like email or social media or completely change my cognitive context because then, it’s going to be really hard to actually get your attention back to the hard thing you’re working on. There’s an effect called Attention Residue which is really important here. It could take up to 20 minutes for the residue of that new thing to clear out and until it clears, you’re at reduced cognitive capacity and at less intense focus.

This breaks that you do like when you’re studying something new or learning a new song or trying to master new skill, it’s more like giving your brain a breather but it’s like, you go for a walk around the block or go get a glass of water but you’re not context shifting. You’re not shifting over to something else and coming back. This type of pacing is really important when you’re doing something that’s deliberate and very difficult. It’s important when you do this types of pacing blocks that you don’t actually completely change your context during your breaks. It’s a really sort of passive type of break where you’re just letting your neurons essentially cool down.

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Luis Congdon

In some ways, this isn’t completely related and yet, somehow my mind is connecting it and the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, he talks about a study that was done where people had to do complex math.

They watched something that was depressing and sad and then, they had to do math. They didn’t do very well. And then, they watched something that made them happy and then did math. They did a lot better. Somehow, that just relates to what you’re saying. I know it’s not an exact connection but somehow that just relates to me because you’re forcing people to create the stress and then, go over and create this new stress and it’s going to be very challenging to then have a rhythm because things that are very demanding on us take a lot of energy. Then, it’s going to be very hard to shift and be very effective in either one.

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Cal Newport

Yeah. I think weightlifting is a good analogy for this effect. When you actually want to build your muscle, you have to lift something really heavy and strain the muscle and obviously, you have to take breaks. You can’t keep doing the bicep curls for 20 minutes. You have to take a break. However, if you watch people who are doing weightlifting, they don’t in between sets go off and get some work done, and watch TV for a little bit.

You see that they’re in the zone still. They’re keeping their mind inside their work out. They’re keeping their attention in that area. They have to really keep attention in what they’re doing. So I think it’s similar when you’re trying to do a really deliberate type of deep work. The intensity now is focusing on weight lifting. Then you back off the intensity but your head is still on the game.

You’re still, “Okay, I’m in weightlifting mode. I’m in the gym. This is where my focus is.”

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Kamala Chambers

I find that sometimes it’ll take me an hour or so trying to get in the mode or preparing myself to work up to that mode but actively working on it until I actually drop in. That’s when I’m having a harder time focusing.

Do you have any tips on dropping into that mode a little more rapidly?

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Cal Newport

Part of that has to do with this effect I mentioned briefly before called Attention Residue which essentially tells us that when you switch your attention from one target to another, the original target leaves a residue in your mind that can take a while to clear out. Until it clears out, it’ll reduce your cognitive capacity but to talk it a little bit more informally, those thoughts just kind of stick around and gunk the works up.

Even a quick change in attention can generate this residue and that’s why it’s really important that in a deep work session, there is no distraction.

The amount of time you spend the distraction is irrelevant because even a 10 second glance at an inbox can create a massive amount of attention residue.

You see an email there. It’s from your boss. You know you have to answer it. You know you don’t have time to answer it now and you immediately turn your attention back to the hard thing you’re trying to focus on. That email and your mind and what I’m going to say and what you think it is and how I’m going to write my response is going to be there for 20 – 30 minutes eating up cognitive capacity, preventing you from achieving true depth. So, it takes a while to get started. If you even glance to the source of distraction, you essentially go back to square one and it’s going to take a long time to clear that residue out. That’s why it’s difficult.

In terms of helping to get around it, there’s a short term things you can do which is these scheduling systems and rituals. This is when I do my deep work, for the first 5 minute of deep work, I do this. I take a walk before I start. I do this to my life.

You have these rituals in that help your mind know it’s deep work time. That’ll help clear out the attention residue a little bit quicker but also, I do have to emphasize that deep work in generals are very practice skill. People like to think, “I know how to focus. I just need to make more time to do it,” but it’s more complicated than that.

If you haven’t been systemically training your ability to concentrate, the amount of concentration you can generate and the comfort you have being in a state of concentration is going to be pretty small. This is also something that gets better at practice. People that have to do deep thinking and intense focus most of their time professionally, get really good at this. They can fall into it quicker. They can sustain it longer. They can get to deeper levels of intensity. It’s less uncomfortable.

That’s the other thing I want to emphasize is that…

Cal Newport Intense Focus Thriving Launch Podcast
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Kamala Chambers

Calvin, you did something amazing. Luis and I, we interview some of the top relationship experts in the world as well and I think this interview is been the most beneficial to our relationship that I’ve ever did because one thing that we do is we work together. Luis will message me and we’ll message each other about different projects we have going on instead of having to get up and go into the other person’s space and talk to him.

However, when I’m trying to go into that deep work space and I get messages from Luis, it sets me back to square one and I keep getting distracted. So, I think like muting Luis all together when I’m going to those spaces is going to be really good all around.

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Luis Congdon

That brings up an interesting question. I have a question to follow up with that around, how do you support somebody and how do you signal to other people that you’re going to that space but, I want to let go ahead with your comments.

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Cal Newport

I think what I was going to say can actually just what where you’re going there because this is a topic I’ve been working on since this book came out which is how do you get these ideas into an actual workplace. What’s the right way to work in a knowledge economy where the main thing you’re doing is producing value with your mind? There’s a lot of different answers to those questions but in your type of situation, what I was going to suggest is that, I’m a huge proponent of synchronous communication.

You can call it office hours or meeting slots but you know in your day and maybe it’s every 2 hours. Here is our synchronous conversation time. We sit down together and we talk and we deal with everything we need to deal with. If in between those synchronous slots things come up, you just have batch them on your end until the next synchronous slot comes up.

You might end up building up a long list of things that you need to ask Luis about, then when you get there, like, “Okay, now let’s just talk about it all in person,” as opposed to asynchronously sort of this sending off as things arise, “Oh, I need to know this,” or “Can you tell me about this?”

There’s some good research that has studied this approach to work with intense focus. What it finds is that at first, it’s hard because you need things and the next slot for discussion is not for a while and it stalls you but what the research also shows is that, pretty quickly, you adapt your work habits so that you learn to get what you need in advance. You learn to plan out what you’re doing a little bit further and then, people end up being way more productive.

This is my relationship advice.

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Kamala Chambers

All right. I love it.

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Luis Congdon

Calvin Newport just saved our relationship.

You talked about focus and deep work being this muscle that you need to exercise. As you were sharing that, I just imagined what Kamala and I would look physically if we could make those skillsets predominant as a physical attribute or as our muscles and she looks like a bodybuilder while I look like a shrilled up nerd guy because she’s so exercising and so great in this area of her life. She really knows how to go into a deep work space.

One of the last things I’d like to wrap up with and talk about a little bit is what are some of the benefits of this? Just as thinking about a holistic person. Does this increase, less decrease stress? Does this increase happiness? Does this increase output? Does this increase our ability to manage other tasks in life?

Just a little thing there too for people that are in the yoga and spirituality world. One of the things they talk about in Buddhism and yoga tradition is when you’ve been a long term meditator, you go into deep states that are meditation states and then, that allows you to go into what they call single-mindedness focus, which allows you to focus on a task single-mindedly. Nothing else is really present other than the task at hand and you go into that zone where people have created incredible arts of bodies of work and all sorts of contributions to the world because they go into this deep single-minded state.

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Cal Newport

Yeah. I think this is an important point and it’s actually something that caught me off guard when I was writing the book about this because originally, the first part of the book which makes the case for Deep Work had been outlined to only have this sort of professional arguments.

So, why does deep work help you produce so much more and when into it, it helps you learn complex things quickly. It helps you produce more per unit spent working because of various neurological effects and, that’s what I felt the arguments for deep work was going to be. However, as I was doing the research, I kept coming up with example after example and resource after resource that kept pushing towards another conclusion which was deep work also just feels more meaningful.

So, I ended up diving into that and there is all this different threads of evidence. Some threads coming from neuroscience. Some threads coming from psychology. Some threads coming from philosophy. All of which move together produce the same output, which is this idea that deep work just feels better.

You can go into the science and the philosophy of it but really, what it comes down to it, I think the best way to summarize why this is true is that human being seem to be wired for craftsmanship. We derive great satisfaction out of putting our resources and applying them at their fullest to produce the best possible things for capable of producing. That just feels good to us. It feels right. It touches our soul. It feels meaningful. It feels satisfying, and it’s a completely different experience than this sort of typical fragmented attention busyness which most of us spend our time.

Something I learned in doing this book is that we have sort of a whole cohort of peoples, the whole generations of people who are walking around with these low levels of anxiety because we’re not really wired to be in the state of continuous partial attention that instead of creating something of value, we’re instead putting our attention from this to this and this and it creates this low level anxiety that we even don’t identified anymore as, “I don’t have to feel that way.”

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Luis Congdon

I can identify with that. Just to back that up for you, I’ve been trying to track that sometimes when I get really wrapped up and having all these different tabs open and multiple projects, I’ve noticed sometimes, at the end of the work day, I feel this anxiety and I don’t know why.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how do I lower some of that anxiety and one of the things that I’ve been finding is spending more time with just everything shut off and just maybe gazing over at nature. One of the ways that a lot of people self- medicate is watching some television program or movie which in all honesty, I do some of my best deep work there.

I’m just joking because sometimes I can go very long into watching TV show or movie but this is one of the ways that we’re self-medicating is trying to find ways where our attention isn’t really anywhere and what I’ve been finding is if I can just create a little peace and quiet for a little bit, it alleviates so much of that anxiety. It even gets rid of it.

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Cal Newport

Yeah, and it turns out that if you can put your attention on one thing, you get the same benefits plus others because you also get benefit of appreciation in having created something and what the Greeks called arête which means putting your talents to their fullest application.

That’s my final pitch for this, is there’s a lot of productivity benefits to spending more time focusing intensely but there’s this huge philosophical argument that if you’re able to craft for yourself a deep life, which is a life where you focus on a small number of things that you do in an incredibly high level and minimize as much as possible non-deep things.

Cal Newport Intense Focus Thriving Launch Podcast

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Cal Newport

It could be somewhat drastic. I embrace these principles and accordingly, I’ve never had a social media account. I don’t web surf. I don’t really know how to entertain myself on the internet. I don’t use computers after work hours for the most part.

All this stuff can seem pretty drastic but it creates this great rich life. I focus on a small number of things. I try them really well and that’s very fulfilling and it’s professionally rewarding as well. I’m a big advocate as a deep life really is a good life.

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Kamala Chambers

We’ve been here with Calvin Newport on the Thriving Launch podcast. It’s been so fantastic to have Calvin on the show. This is probably one of my favorite interviews of all time.

Thank you so much Calvin for coming on and helping us all go deeper in our work.

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Cal Newport

Thank you. I always love the opportunity to do some impromptu relationship advice. That’s the first one.

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Luis Congdon

Well, thank you very much. It’s been a blast to have you here.

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Cal Newport

All right. Thanks.

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