Could ‘deep work’ change your life?

Welcome to Love Mondays, a weekly newsletter designed as a 3-minute hit to fire up the other 10,077 minutes of your week.

Could 'deep work' change your life?

It's Monday - time to get coffee, read and respond to emails, attend meetings, schedule more meetings, send a text or 10, respond to the team chat...the list goes on!

Multi-tasking has become the norm and our brain's ability to concentrate on a particular goal has become increasingly impaired in this digital world of pings, dings and rings. Enter Deep Work.

What's your biggest obstacle to staying focused? Write it down

Consider: How much of your time is spent flicking between emails, messages, social media and phone calls?

Practice: Having no distractions, for set periods of time. Start small.

Decide to: Schedule in regular blocks of time, free of distractions for deep work.

What is deep work and how can it help you?

The concept of deep work was coined by Cal Newport, a computer science professor and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. 

Cal defines deep work as:
“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

Deep work allows you to approach your work with more focus and higher-quality attention, and can help you tap into your inner creativity and brilliance.

Sounds good right? 

But it takes discipline and a little practice because disconnecting in today's world, even for short periods of time, can be a challenge. You can start by scheduling small 'chunks' of time throughout your week which you will use to switch off the outside world, and switch on your focus.

Deep work is best for cognitively demanding activities (writing, researching, analysing), while shallow work describes tasks that require less mental exertion (emails, phone calls, texts). Making time for both across the week can help you accomplish more quality work.

Try scheduling in some deep work this week, ask your team to do the same, and see if you can boost your productivity and achieve more!

Love your Mondays