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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

#91

Post by coldtea »

taeric wrote: post #67
coldtea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm worried this is nothing more than intellectuals showing pretty severe selection bias. What intellectuals? These plans can equally apply to a high-school educated person learning to cook or whatever. > Take the archetypes listed. There are non famous failures in each. Selecting the successes is a bit of a sleight. What archetypes? The post never mentions any archetypes or lists any chery-picked successes. Perhap…

The archetypes were the "monastic", "bimodal", etc. Called them strategies, but each is backed by a success. But, if you have evidence that these are more successful than alternatives, I'm game. Where is the evidence? For that matter, what are the alternatives? (Currently typing with my 4mo old. So... apologies for any typos.)

>But, if you have evidence that these are more successful than alternatives, I'm game. Where is the evidence? For that matter, what are the alternatives?

The strategies (or archetypes) are just 4 different ways to achieve a focus period for doing some work.

Regardless of which you pick, the core thing you look for in each (and possibly others, but those seem quite an exhaustive list of such strategies, or at least the major ones) is focused work.

I don't think we need any evidence besides the mountains of empirical evidence that focused work is better - not any more than people needed evidence that we should breath before we learned about oxygen and the workings of the lungs...

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

#92

Post by reificator »

mathinpens wrote: post #25
adamweld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 that good high quality blogs typically link to other high quality blogs. Most of the ones I am familiar with are math/computer science blogs run by researchers. If those topics are in your wheelhouse there is definitely a ton of high quality original content from the advanced undergraduate level to the research level. so maybe a lot of the internet is seo ranked shit show...but not all of it.

> so maybe a lot of the internet is seo ranked shit show...but not all of it.

Just the parts you can actually find.

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

#93

Post by dpatru »

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…

I recall that Cal Newport suggests three ways of scheduling deep work. 1) dedicate a portion of the day: Writer John Grisham regularly writes from 7 to 10 every morning. 2) dedicate a portion of the year: Cal gives the example of a professor who moves out to a remote cabin for several months each year to be away from distraction and do deep work. 3) ad hoc with tracking: Cal himself fits in deep work whenever he can and tracts it, making sure that he is spending the desired amount of hours every week. Any of these methods can work.

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

#94

Post by cortesoft »

adamnemecek wrote: post #15
cgb223 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to do something like this, but without any kind of income I’d probably be homeless in a few months How do you bring in money while hacking on your passion?

I saved hardcore. I also made some ok stock decisions which helped me somewhat. Besides rent you won’t have too many expenses. But rent sucks.

Unless you have a family.

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

#95

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sndean wrote: post #20
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intensive courses in the summer aren’t unusual, especially in the summer and especially for language classes.

This also reminded me of some summer classes. Maybe one month, 5 days/week? Some of the things that best remember from undergrad were learned over the summer. I still don't know whether it was the short/intensive set up of the courses that improved learning, or if it was the fact that I was only willing to do summer courses in topics I knew I'd do well in. Either way, it's my best memory of school.

I always took advantage of summer quarter as an undergrad. It was a better experience though course selection wasn’t great (especially for CS).

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

#96

Post by cncrnd »

massens wrote: post #87

One of the big challenges that I've always had is creating this habits. I recently discovered an interesting thing: * I use email everyday. It's important that it is clean and not full of shit. I care about it. * At my startup (Happy Scribe), we recently implemented a small feature where the tech team gets emailed/called/sms every 10m if there's any user with a problem, or for wired 5xx request (Stripe style [1]). *…

Interesting idea to use google forms and do analysis on correlation of text to rating. I'm going to try this including things like food eaten, time woken up, and time went to bed.

Thanks for the tip.

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

#97

Post by Amygaz »

hutzlibu wrote: post #64
bgilroy26 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For how long?

Until it is all empty and my stomach is sick ... And then I don't like it for a while...

When I crave chocolate pudding, I'll eventually make a bowl, and instead of splitting it into many desert cups (which I would just crave for), I eat the entire bowl in one go. Then I'm cured from pudding for a while.

Chips (or fries) though, I can't resist. Better not to buy any...

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

#99

Post by nextos »

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…

You've hit one of the core problems, but your perception of what Cal recommends and what you should do to achieve deep work is wrong.

For deep work, you should be able to block a chunk of your day to do important tasks without being interrupted. That's not the same as organizing the day by hours. This blocked chunk can be dynamic to accommodate emergencies, but you must be able to say nobody should interrupt me for the next few hours at some point in your day.

Otherwise how can you engage in something deep? I've been in this situation many times. I can't do any productive work in my office because there's an endless stream of interruptions, emergencies and stupid things going on. That's why I have to resort to doing all significant work at home, where nobody can annoy me.

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

#100

Post by taeric »

the_seraphim wrote: post #79
taeric wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't have that big of a horse in this race, all told. So, do I want you personally to do so? Don't care. I would be interested in evidence in the debate, though.
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