cn-ama-account

It helps to structure work. If you approach your work day, for example, with the mindset that you're going to do your best to churn through your task list until the day is over, it's difficulty to keep resisting procrastination. If you instead time block the day -- build a schedule of what you're going to do at specific times throughout the day -- then you can simply make the single decision to commit to your plan. (You can even include "procrastination blocks" into the plan to give your mind a rest at certain points.)

The ability to focus, like the ability to run a fast mile, is all about practice and general (cognitive) fitness.

On the cognitive fitness side, if you, like most people, reach for your phone or a browser tab at the slightest hint of boredom, you are conditioning your brain to expect constant stimuli. A brain conditioned in this manner is going to have a hard time focusing, just like if you eat a lot of junk food you should expect to have a hard time on the treadmill.

To combat this you need regular does of boredom -- by which I mean time away from screens where you are just alone with your own thoughts. I like to achieve this with walks or commutes in which the phone stays in my bag.

In terms of practicing, here are a few exercises that help...

(1) Do interval training. Get a timer. Set it for 20 minutes. See if you can concentrate with 0 distractions for 20 minutes. If you fail (e.g., glance at your phone), reset the timer. Once you can consistently hit the 20 minute mark, add 10 more minutes. Repeat until you can do 90 minutes of intensity between breaks (should take 2 - 6 weeks, depending on where you're starting from).

(2) Practice "productive meditation." Go for a walk and while walking try to make progress on a professional/school problem entirely in your head. When you notice your attention wandering, don't judge, just bring it back to the problem, again and again. This will be really hard at first, but it's incredibly powerful in increasing concentration (like pull-ups for the mind).

(3) Read more. For at least 20 minutes at a time. It helps if you have a special location you use for the reading (coffee shop, bar, particular corner of the library). Reading is necessary practice for deep thinking.

This is a good question and a really important point. A lot of critics (myself included) talk about how distractions keep us away from much more important activities, but we often neglect to emphasize that it can be really hard work developing these activities.

High quality work and leisure is not something that just naturally fills our time once we remove idle screen browsing from our life. These are pursuits that must be cultivated and this can take time and experimentation and a lot of self-discovery.

My (perhaps less than helpful) short answer to your question is not to despair about what you're experiencing, as it's really common. The key is to keep relentlessly working on what it is that you find worth doing, so that you can get the point where there's very little question about what you will do with focused time as you can get it.

Thank you everyone for participating in this AMA. I really enjoyed it! But now I have to return to deep work.

(If you're in the DC area, I'm speaking at the WeWork down by the Navy Yard at 6:30, with a reception starting at 5:30...come on down if you're around.)

One of the most effective strategies seems to be having a discussion with your boss about your deep-to-shallow work hour ratio. The idea is that you explain what deep work is and you explain what shallow work is. You note both are important. You discuss what ratio of deep to shallow hours in a typical week is optimal for your position. Once you have a number set, you can measure and report back. If you're falling short, then you can work with your boss to make some accommodations to help you hit the target.

The key to this approach is that it's positive in that it focuses on how to make you more valuable to the company (not you complaining about distractions), and it's something you're doing along with your boss...