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The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

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Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#71

Post by keyle »

Having a baby will really flip this on its head. I used to "geek out" like my wife would say for a few hours on the weekend, sometimes an entire day, uninterrupted. This is all over now. I barely get 3 hours block at best, once or twice a week (rarely).

Thing is, there is hope, I can still get some really big things done. I realise now how much time was wasted in the past, clicking around the web, diverging. When you're on a deadline of productive time, focus goes up 300%.

Because you'll come to hate that feeling of being forced to stop as you were just getting into it.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#72

Post by bitexploder »

BeetleB wrote: post #55
jonathanfoster wrote: post #45

The author references Cal Newport's Deep Work [1]. I recently read this book and I can't recommend it enough. It's not just a productivity fluff piece about the importance of focus. He brings an academic rigor to the debate and backs up his claims with legitimate evidence. Best of all, the book is not just theory, it's 100% actionable. I used Newport's recommendations to reclaim 4+ solid hours of deep focus and it's…

>Block off each hour of the day and and fill it with one of the TODO items Generally agree with the points but I'd like to note that this point is the most likely failure point in the method. Organizing the day by hours doesn't work for a lot of people. Most productivity books in the old days (60's) recommended it. They generally don't anymore due to the low success rate. That was one of the first things I tried as a…

This is addressed in Cal's book. He acknowledges no plan will survive the day perfectly. Basically, you just re-prioritize your blocks throughout the day. The goal is not to break the day into hour long blocks as much as it is to always have a priority and to maintain focus on that priority. Things happen and no plan survives contact with reality. I have found this method to work well and fit with a modern knowledge worker's work patterns for the most part.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#73

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

theoh wrote: post #63
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been studies going back as far as Peopleware and The Timeless Way of Building that suggest people are generally adversely affected when the noise is more than noise they personally generate (e.g. keyboard clicking), and not in their control (e.g. choosing to listen to music may be fine, but when you’re forced to listen to music because the alternative is a distracting conversation between teammates it has…

Christopher Alexander's work isn't based on empirical studies, though, is it? Never seen any. It's just his, uh, inspired opinion.

In large part yes, you are right, his writing was more qualitative and sociological, sometimes philosophy.

But seeing your comment made me start trying to dig up a 1987 paper from Alexander titled, "Toward a Personal Workplace," and I am actually amazed and unsettled by how hard it is to find anything online. That article surveys more empirical properties of office interiors. But yes, I would look to the studies cited in the Peopleware chapter called, "Bring Back the Door" for the empirical extensions of what Alexander had inspired.

Here's the best link I could find on that thread of Alexander's work:

http://zeta.math.utsa.edu/~yxk833/Chris.furniture.html >

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#74

Post by GordonS »

keyle wrote: post #71

Having a baby will really flip this on its head. I used to "geek out" like my wife would say for a few hours on the weekend, sometimes an entire day, uninterrupted. This is all over now. I barely get 3 hours block at best, once or twice a week (rarely). Thing is, there is hope, I can still get some really big things done. I realise now how much time was wasted in the past, clicking around the web, diverging. When you…

> focus goes up 300%

I agree with everything you said, except perhaps this - every day is an early morning with young kids, and often I'm so tired that when I get the opportunity to work on side projects in the evenings, I just can't focus at all :(

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#75

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

mmt wrote: post #69
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy the argument that bean counters are unable to account for vaguer aspects of productivity loss. For one, bigger corporations invest huge amounts of money into productivity research and take the topic very seriously. They aren’t unsophisticated or naive and corporations will really study the internal incentives they create for cost cutting, to make sure they aren’t mistakenly cutting costs that actually lea…

> Plus, it’s widely and popularly disputed that open plans are actually cheaper, e.g. even in pop articles like this: It is now , but when did that start? I vaguely recall when it was still actually controversial (perhaps due to lack of data), but that may have been as long as 10 years ago. I also recall when open plan wasn't even a thing and the discussion was merely cubicles vs. hard walls. > My only remaining surp…

Your reply made me chuckle and you are right.

For me personally, I derive a lot of self-identity from my own productivity, and end up caring about my work and treating it like a craft.

I wish I could turn this off and just accept better paying jobs that embed me in a distraction-filled room where nobody really cares about my productivity so long as I superficially appear to try hard and evangelize the company line.

But I just can't. I am too intrinsically quixotic. For me, and the I guess dying breed of people like me, the side effect of the VC behavior you mention is like death by a thousand cuts.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#76

Post by 0x445442 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #14

One thing I cannot understand is why we have both: (a) a long history of research proving to us that principles like "High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)" are accurate and highly related to extracting the most economically valuable outputs from knowledge workers. (b) open plan offices. Maybe the tech industry is daunting for newcomers because we cram people into a sardine can, give them a…

The primary reason is middle an upper management's holy grail quest to commoditize knowledge work and turn software development into an automotive assembly line.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#77

Post by xfitm3 »

keyle wrote: post #71

Having a baby will really flip this on its head. I used to "geek out" like my wife would say for a few hours on the weekend, sometimes an entire day, uninterrupted. This is all over now. I barely get 3 hours block at best, once or twice a week (rarely). Thing is, there is hope, I can still get some really big things done. I realise now how much time was wasted in the past, clicking around the web, diverging. When you…

I am glad you found the upside but for those who do not have the life associated with children don’t forget you were happy at the time prior.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#78

Post by xfitm3 »

adamweld wrote: post #12
auntad wrote: post #2

I really like his example at the end - step-by-step deep dive into a specific topic. 30 hours of learning, direct links to resources, come out the other end as informed and aware of the topic at hand. I usually find it difficult to wade through the mountains of possible (often outdated) resources on a topic I'm unfamiliar with - At one point I was thinking it'd be useful to crowdsource those kind of step-by-step guid…

I think this is a great idea. It's really saddened me watching the internet turn from a place where people deeply invested in a topic or passion share their work personally to a SEO-ranked shit show where millions of low-effort 'blogs' compile second hand knowledge for views and commissions. While compiling great resources in one place is a good stop-gap I'd love to hear some ideas about how we can move towards a Web…

I have found myself asking the same question. While I don’t have an answer I can share my plan. I am studying the social impact of the printing press. I don’t think you can go wrong studying history.

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#79

Post by the_seraphim »

taeric wrote: post #66
the_seraphim wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get your point, and a lot of this is individual to the person... I personally know that when I am in the zone I perform better and remember the lessons learned for longer. I would certainly be interested in more/followup studies regarding this matter.

You "know" this. But how? Have you truly tabulated results showing it is the case? Not just collected confirming data, but tried to disprove it?

Would you like me to?

Re: The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

#80

Post by aetimmes »

lixtra wrote: post #46
metal13 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, the author is a woman. And her twitter account is very much worth a follow: https://twitter.com/intent/follow?original_referer=https%3A%...

Thanks for pointing to her Twitter account. Also good to know that she agrees we are trash bros[1]. We can still learn from people who despise us. [1] https://twitter.com/AdrienneCohea/status/1000463172581580800...

I don't see anything that indicates agreement from the author of the post.
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