Embrace Deep Work

by exchangetradedideas | Sep 25, 2022 | growth, knowledge, productivity

Embrace the concept of deep work

While sitting at my desk, trying to read a paragraph for at least the third time, an email alert pops up!

The latest finance newsletter just dropped, better check out the latest stock quotes. Meanwhile my mobile phone buzzes and I feel the urge to check it immediately.

Oh, my wife send me a cute cat video!

Focusing back on the paragraph I read a few minutes ago, I realize I have to start all over again because my brain does not remember a thing!

This short scene is just one example of the vicious cycle of concentration and distraction, which repeats a dozen times throughout the day.

Sound familiar to you, too?

I may not exaggerate when I assert, that most of today’s knowledge workers’ day looks quite similar to what I just described!

Welcome to the everyday hustle to stay focused amid a stream of information flooding our cognitive systems.

At the same time, our ability to focus has diminished over the previous decades, making it hard to create meaningful and valuable work.

For my part, I’m fed up with this never-ending cycle and will do something about it!

You can too!

Today’s working environment is designed for collaboration and instant communication. Open office plans, as well as corporate instant massaging services like Teams or Slack, are meant to create a constant connection within the workforce. Additionally, the average worker sends 40 and receives 120 emails a day and spends a huge amount of time doing so. (The Guardian 2019)

To complete the struggle, we spend nearly the rest of our time available in video or conference calls. In the majority of cases, these activities don’t contribute value to our “core” work but they even have a detrimental effect on our ability to do so.

In a 2005 Study, the authors (Mark, Gonazels, and Harris) examined the degree of fragmentation of a typical workday. The subjects were a group of IT professionals employed at a big finance firm. Throughout their study, they found that the average worker of the sample only concentrated ~11 minutes on a single task until switching to the next one. As a reason for this rapid task switching, researchers identified external and internal factors. Interruptions by colleagues as well as changing priorities demanded by incoming tasks. were cited as the biggest contributors to fragmentation.

As a result, workers felt extremely uncomfortable with their fragmented work and their corresponding lack of productivity.

Since this seems to be a major theme in today’s working environment, let’s try to get a grasp of the reasons behind these developments and what we can do, to not only feel better about it but increase the value of our work.

In a world, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on one thing at a time, the ability to do so is becoming an asset you should have on your balance sheet.

The Concept of shallow work and deep work

To get to the core of a problem, you first have to define it’s key parameters as well as the desired outcome. Therefore, we need to capture the different states of work we experience throughout the workday and strive to minimize those which are detrimental to our success.

Shallow work

For our purpose, shallow work should be defined as work that is artificial and does not contribute value to our core tasks.

Shallow work oftentimes includes the following activities, which in general are administrative by nature:

Monitoring your inbox and responding to emails
Scheduling meetings
Making administrative phone calls
Video calls without a clear agenda
Creating PowerPoint slides

Shallow work is insidious because a day filled with it makes you feel productive! You are exhausted by it and because of the high amount of emails sand and calls made, you even are perceived like it.

I don’t exaggerate when I state, that everone knows this particular feeling after a day full of back-to-back zoom calls and emails!

Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, this type of work doesn’t resemble the high-value work you should strive for during your day.

I admit, there is a baseload of shallow work anybody has to cope with, to be a good functioning part of the overall team. No one will perceive you as a team player if you are unable to reach or don’t fulfill your administrative day-to-day duties.

Nevertheless, a bit of planning will help you minimize the time you spend with shallow work and increase the time spent with the higher value deep work

Deep work

In contrast to the shallow work I just defined, deep work is of high value to your core responsibilities and moves the needle for your business.

You have to immerse in hard thinking and spend a vast amount of mental capacity to get it done.

To get a grasp of the concept, I made a non-exhaustive list of examples of deep work:

Writing a sales proposal for a customer
Crafting an investment memo for your board
Doing research for a specific market you want to target
Writing code for an app you develop

Deep work always has some kind of strategic thinking embedded in its core, therefore we need long periods of uninterrupted time to succeed.

The conflict between shallow and deep Work

There is a ravaging war going on in our brains for the capacity to perform deep work.

Briefly summarized, our brains a wired to emphasize shallow work over deep work! It is more convenient for us to get a dopamine hit by answering emails, instead of solving cognitively challenging problems.

The feedback loops for shallow work are much shorter and rewards are more easily obtained. In addition, the modern workplace oftentimes isn’t designed for performing deep work. Open floor plans and instant messaging communication devices inhibit our ability to concentrate on one task at a time, which is crucial for creating valuable work.

The way we interact with our friends and family as well as our broader social life doesn’t help either.

Who is not familiar with the urge to check one’s smartphone a dozen times an hour? At least I am guilty of this type of behavior! I suggest you try to track your screen time and activity with a suitable app and you will be SHOCKED!

I’m honest with you, this is not a war you can win, but a constant struggle! Almost any app on the planet is competing for the limited amount of concentration you have.

How to get better at performing deep work

Although the odds are against us, let’s try to tilt them at least a bit in our favor. This is all you need to get ahead!

I recognized the following methods to be helpful to me to develop a more focused attitude:

Make deep work your lifestyle

To have only the smallest kind of chance of making a difference, you have to not only try to incorporate small pieces of deep work into your day but make it the other way around. Embrace the concept of deep work and try to adhere to it in the tiniest parts of your life. For example, resist the urge to reach for your smartphone during any interruption. We have primed our brains to be distracted constantly, so during the slightest break, we crave distraction. Try to be present in the moment, and notice your surroundings!

The overreaching principle is, to lengthen the time periods without distractions for your brain! You will notice significant changes immediately.

Create routines to minimize the expense of mental energy

Throughout the day, you will lose a lot of cognitive energy and will be more susceptible to the old habits of distraction. If you create your personalized deep work routines, you will conserve more energy and willpower. For example, I try to not touch my smartphone until I have written my daily journal, which takes me maybe 15 minutes in the morning. The lack of interruptions helps me put down my thinking more precisely.

Create dedicated deep work slots

To increase the actual time spend doing deep work, try to schedule ahead dedicated deep work slots throughout your day or week. Otherwise, other people’s agendas will fill up your calendar and impact your efforts. You will also be less vulnerable to shallow work during these blocked periods of time. During the deep work slots, make yourself hard to reach, close your email tab and set your phone on flight mode. With a little bit of training, you should be able to resist the urge to constantly crave distraction.

Act on the lead metrics of deep work

I know that the actual workday can get messy sometimes and you won’t be always able to stick to your thoroughly crafted plans. Nevertheless, pick some lead metrics (e.g. total time spend doing deep work or total words written per day) and try to maximize them.

Do the work and the results will follow!

The continuity of this effort will pay off massively. I once utilized this during the preparation for my CFA exams, where I maximized total hours spend going without interruption. The results were amazing, you don’t need to plan for everything in advance, act on the lead metrics and the rest will take care of itself.

Prioritize and embrace downtime

This one is critical because oftentimes people confuse spending more time with being more successful. I’m a huge proponent of being effective and I assert, that I’m getting more things done in 6 hours than a lot of people in 10. There is a limit to your cognitive ability, once exhausted, results will deteriorate rapidly. Be aware of your mental capacity and build downtime into your life.

I recognized spending time in nature, reading, or meditating restores my brain capacity quickly.

Conclusion

Overall, in todays world, deep work is getting extremely rare! If you are able to cultivate this valuable skill, it will be an asset few possess. I admit, that this is an issue I have been battling with for a long time.

Every time I increase my efforts to perform deep work, I feel empowered more calm and overall more productive and happy.

I can only encourage you to experiment with deep work habits and judge the advantages for yourself.

Additional resources

Cal Newport’s Book “Deep Work”

An extensive summary of the Deep Work concept

A NY Times article on the “art of focus”

A NY Times article on the trap of being busy

A long-form article on why downtime is important

Farnam Street on the dangers of email

A System to boost productivity

by exchangetradedideas | May 6, 2020 | growth, productivity

Boosting productivity

The improvement of productivity is a battle many people keep struggling with.

This battle isn’t won in a single day but needs constant effort. Every day there will be new challenges testing your resilience to outside forces that may distract you.

In my personal life, private and professional, I’m also struggling to be my productive best, not always winning the challenge.

I noticed recurring bad behaviors of mine like:

Trying to keep all tasks in my head
Not prioritize tasks efficiently
Not saying “no” enough
Not delegating tasks which are out of my responsibilities
Checking my smartphone too often
Exessive multi-tasking
Constant checking and reacting to emails

Overall, there was much room for altering my behavior to become more productive. So I started researching and implementing techniques to strive for a more productive life, which in retrospect, also reduced stress levels by a considerable amount.

I discovered the “getting things done method”, or short GTD, developed by David Allen during my quest for an effective productivity system.

In the course of this article, I’d like to explain how GTD works and give brief examples of how to apply it.

The GTD system consists of five distinct steps which, when followed correctly, will help you get more done with less stress.

Step 1: Capture

To develop trust in your system, you need to capture every task on your mind, be it personal or business-related, and store it in a trusted way. Your storage system may consist of a physical notebook or some useful app on your smartphone, this actually depends on personal preferences.

However, for the system to work effectively, it is essential that you capture every loose end floating around in your head.

For me, my smartphone works best, since there are only a few occasions when it’s not to hand. I use Evernote to capture and store tasks, as well as make them accessible from every device.

Step 2: Clarify

Before you tackle the most pressing tasks, you have to clarify what it is exactly. By asking yourself: “Is this item actionable or not?” you sort tasks in two categories “actionable” and “not actionable”.

The latter category is easy because unactionable items go either in the trash bin or are stored and reviewed later, in-kind they may be of use someday.

The actionable items are the ones you want to focus on!

In case, the item is a project, consisting of many actionable steps over a longer period of time, you put it on the “projects list” and decide on the next physical actions to come closer to its completion.

Simple single tasks may be “write an email to a business partner” or “gather data for your financial model”.

After labeling items as projects or tasks, you have to decide on the time horizon and your ability to complete them.

So you can:

Do it yourself, if you are the right person for the job and able to complete it in less than two minutes
Delegate it, if you think someone is more suited to complete it
Defer it, which include scheduling the task in your calendar for later completion

Step 3: Organize

After getting clear about what tasks you have at hand, you can organize them. As I mentioned before, non-actionable items go to the trash bin or the storage system for later review.

To organize the actionable items you need a “projects list”, which consists of multi-action processes and is used to derive the next actions.

In addition, you need a “next actions list” where you collect all physical actions you need to complete to move ahead.

Lastly, a “waiting for list” is needed where you store all actions you are waiting for to be done by others. All these lists can now be used to schedule tasks in your calendar and process them one at a time.

Step 4: Reflect

Frequent reflection of your workflow management system is essential to keep it clean and up to date. The daily review of tasks on your calendar can be supplemented by weekly reviews of your overall system to see whether it is still working.

Step 5: Engage

The fifth stage is essential for pushing projects and next actions forward. You actually need to decide which task to tackle first and which to postpone for late completion. In his book, David Allen suggests you can take at least three different perspectives on your tasks.

a) The four-criteria model to choose actions in the moment:

Context:

Is it possible to complete the items in the current set-up? Are you at work or at home?

Time available:

Is there enough time available to complete it? In case you have an important call in 15 minutes, you don’t need to start a time-consuming task now.

Energy available:

Do you have enough energy available to complete it? After crunching complex models for several hours, starting a new complex project may not be the best idea.

Priority:

Which of your tasks would give you the highest pay-off if completed?

b) The threefold-model for identifying your daily work:

For me, it is helpful to clarify what kind of work I am doing.

Doing pre-defined work:

Solving tasks which were previously clarified and scheduled fall in this category. Doing pre-defined work helps you push things forward.

Doing work as it shows up:

It is inevitable to deal with important ad-hoc tasks, which show up during the day but are not directly contributing to the progress of your projects.

Defining your work:

In case you are not working on some scheduled or ad-hoc tasks, you may define what you have at hand during the “clarify” step.

c) The six-level Model for reviewing your own work:

There are different altitudes from which you can view your next actions. The higher the altitude, the more it impacts every decision you make.

Horizon 5: Purpose and Principles

What are your core beliefs and principles? This category tends to drive all decisions in other categories.

Horizon 4: Vision

What is your plan for the next 5 years? What is your long term vision regarding personal, business and financial matters?

Horizon 3: Goals

What are the goals you want to achieve in the next one to two years? These define the areas you want to focus on most.

Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountabilities

Balancing all your areas of focus and accountabilities towards your family and business partners is important to sustain long term performance.

Horizon 1: Current Projects

The current projects are derived from your areas of focus and are responsible for the majority of the tasks on your “next actions” list.

Ground: Current Actions

This level consists of all the next actions you have to take (e.g. write the sales proposal or feed the data into your financial model) to push the items on higher altitudes forward.

When you are able to be aware of the three perspectives I just mentioned, you just leaped a step forward to being more in control of your “next actions” list.

Hopefully, you can implement some of the principles mentioned above in your life and increase productivity by a vast amount.

I will keep you up to date regarding my daily struggle of increased productivity.

Below you’ll find five additional tips, which may be useful for your daily life!