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How to Actually, Truly Focus on What You’re Doing
Tired: Shallow work. Wired: Deep work.
By Tim Herrera
New York Times
January 13, 2019

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This week I’ve invited Cal, whose new book, “Digital Minimalism,” comes out next month, to talk about how to do deep work, why it matters and how we can use it in our lives.

Tim Herrera: Hey, Cal! Thanks so much for chatting with me this week. For those who don’t know: What exactly is deep work?

Cal Newport: Deep work is my term for the activity of focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It describes, in other words, when you’re really locked into doing something hard with your mind.

TH: So, like, closing your email tab or putting your phone in a drawer?

CN: Right. In order for a session to count as deep work there must be zero distractions. Even a quick glance at your phone or email inbox can significantly reduce your performance due to the cost of context switching.

CN: Every time you switch your attention from one target to another and then back again, there’s a cost. This switching creates an effect that psychologists call attention residue, which can reduce your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time before it clears. If you constantly make “quick checks” of various devices and inboxes, you essentially keep yourself in a state of persistent attention residue, which is a terrible idea if you’re someone who uses your brain to make a living.

TH: You outline the four rules of deep work in your book, which I think is a great place to start for someone who’s just learning about these ideas. Let’s go through them. What is the first rule of deep work, and how do I apply it to my life?

CN: The first rule is to “work deeply.” The idea here is that if you want to successfully integrate more deep work into your professional life, you cannot just wait until you find yourself with lots of free time and in the mood to concentrate. You have to actively fight to incorporate this into your schedule. It helps, for example, to include deep work blocks on my calendar like meetings or appointments and then protect them as you would a meeting or appointment.

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Why Forgetfulness Might Actually Help You: An absent-minded moment may actually be a sign of a healthy level of creativity or focus
By Sue Shellenbarger
Wall Street Journal
January 22, 2019

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Forgetting prevents a memory problem called interference, which causes you to recall incorrect information because it’s similar to the memory you want, Dr. Richards says. This happens when, say, you mix up the names of people who play similar roles—calling your current intern, whose name is Matt, by the name of your intern last year, Mike, or when you suffer the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, unable to recall a word or name because your memory of a similar one is blocking it.

Forgetting also helps solve another thinking problem called fixation, or a blind adherence to ideas, solutions or designs that already exist.

By clearing the mind of past patterns and practices, forgetting can make way for breakthrough thinking, says Benjamin Storm, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-writer of numerous studieson the role of memory and forgetting in creative thinking. “One of the biggest obstacles to thinking of something new and different is our old ideas, our current perspective and things we already know. Forgetting is at the heart of getting around that,” he says.

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Deep concentration can temporarily erase irrelevant details from the mind. Novelist Jill Shalvis sometimes becomes so consumed by writing and creating scenes in her mind that she leaves her house wearing her sweater inside-out or shoes that don’t match. When a checkout clerk at the grocery store pointed out her mismatched flip-flops, Ms. Shalvis’s teenage daughter piped up, explaining that her mother’s shoes never match when she’s on deadline.

“I have gone outside to walk the dog and forgotten to take the dog,” says Ms. Shalvis, who lives near Lake Tahoe in California, and owns two Labrador retrievers with her husband. “When I’m on deadline, I can forget what I’m doing while I’m doing it.”

Thinking hard about ideas or problems also can disrupt your ability to remember why you decided to do some other, less-important chore or task, says Chris Bailey, author of “Hyperfocus,” a book on staying productive amid distractions.

He sometimes finds himself walking into his kitchen and realizing he’s forgotten the reason he wanted to go there in the first place—such as picking up a grocery list from the table. “It’s usually a sign that I need to let my mind wander a little, and carve out more space to process that problem or decision,” he says.