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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

#191

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

jexah wrote: post #190
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example of colleges seems odd to me, since it’s a common resource at most colleges to get a study carel or private study room at the library, and it’s a place where even in common areas, there is rather strict enforcement of silence, lack of cell phones, and certainly nothing like modern open plan office noise or distraction. Also, I think it misses the point to talk about whether or not people can make compromis…

I can't imagine any non-senior employee (for instance) asking for a dedicated private office and not being laughed at, of course exempting any employees who require a private office to perform the core function of their job (not sure if any of these exist, though). I can't imagine how you believe that private offices are not a luxury. Depending on where the company is operating out of, the rent for the floor space of…

This comment seems like pure provocation or something. What does it matter what you can imagine?

Stack Overflow, for instance, famously gives private offices to all developers, even junior ones, and even in Manhattan.

I worked previously at a defense research lab in the eastern US, and had my own office straight out of undergrad (it didn’t even occur to me to ask).

I have former colleagues or friends working in private offices in: computer graphics form film, defense research, hospital research, quantitative investing, adtech, large ecommerce retailer, and education tech.

Private offices are utterly not a luxury. They are a basic tool. One simple reason is because they are cost efficient, so you don’t spend more on offices in any sense but the most narrow-minded. Other reasons include all of the decades of research on their basic ergonomic benefits.

This would be like calling an ergonomic chair or a trackball mouse “a luxury” because they superficially appear to cost (slightly) more than basic alternatives, without accounting for the cost-savings they cause. And, like offices, it’s a trivial extra cost for the company.

> “Depending on where the company is operating out of, the rent for the floor space of their office could cost more than the company pays the employee.”

Given that this is not true in Manhattan (e.g. see Stack Overflow’s big write-ups on it), can you provide data to show where this is true?

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

#192

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

B-Con wrote: post #189
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally have noted a level of collaboration and information sharing that just didn't happen in the more isolated environments I think it's important that we don't overly focus on one isolated experience point like yours, because empirically this is highly disputed. In my experience, information sharing has plummeted after moving to an open-plan layout. People are forced to use noise-cancelling headphones to av…

> I think it's important that we don't overly focus on one isolated experience point like yours, because empirically this is highly disputed. I'm not saying my experience generalizes, I doubt every environment would see the same benefit. My point is that even though I started exclusively preferring one side, I can see value on the other side. > It's a very shallow notion of information sharing, which could happen asy…

But an open-plan office layout assumes that all communication happens most effectively with only one possible type of communication: real-time, constantly preemptible audio streams.

It’s shallow to say that “information sharing” happens this way, since for many people it obviously impedes or completely prevents information sharing.

> “What's interesting is how pragmatically an environment actually works and what it's real life pros/cons are.”

I agree on this, which is why it only requires such a short analysis to see that open-plan offices fail so one-sidedly. They are empirically shown to be widely disliked, to lower morale, to lower producivity (both individually and overall), to lead to more superficial interaction and less deep communication, to lead to more defects in knowledge work outputs, to increase communicable disease transmission and negatively affect sick time and vacation time habits, all while entirely discounting the most pragmatic working styles of at least one huge group of people (introverts) and, when all is said and done, they don’t even save money except in the shallowest, short-term sense, and often companies spend on opulent luxury features in order for the workers to appear essentially as decorative office furniture for when investors or upper management walk by.

It is more than fair to call this phenomenon shallow.

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

#193

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

ryanstorm wrote: post #105
BeetleB wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

There's a very relevant article on this subject by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

This is a great article. I’ve come back to it many times over the years.

But it always puzzles me why Y Combinator companies don’t organize with the built-in default of private offices, even in brand new startups, but at least for sure in YC companies that grow to tens of employees or more.

Given such an impassioned writing about the need for privacy in workspace, why don’t we see YC putting out articles or blog posts on the value of private offices, for example like Stack Overflow does.

It’s like YC wants to be viewed as progressive (for recognizing how bad open-plan offices were ahead of the curve) but then to ignore this to just grift from unwitting junior employees who may unquestioningly join a startup and not think to negotiate for protection of the privacy they need as a basic workspace tool.

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

#194

Post by apatters »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #157
apatters wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, this discussion always devolves into good vs bad and understandably so because it's very frustrating when your work environment doesn't facilitate your performance. But the typical knowledge worker actually functions on some blend of the manager and maker schedules -- sometimes they need to do deep work without interruptions, sometimes they need to look up from their desk and communicate to make sure thei…

The trouble is that the distribution of work is not an even split between work that requires deep focus and other work that benefits from disruptive audio communication. Most engineering work requires deep focus. So if the office was designed to allow the majority of work to be private, quiet, and deeply focused, but with occasional meetings or break-out social rooms for the dynamic discussions, that would be great.…

Your comment is not wrong but it's all problems and no solutions. If I was designing an engineering office I would not go open plan (or the open plan area would be small). But today we have a lot of open plan offices that inhibit productivity. I identified a way that a company can quickly and inexpensively improve productivity and happiness by creating more opportunities for deep focus. Perfect is the enemy of good.

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

#195

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

apatters wrote: post #194
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that the distribution of work is not an even split between work that requires deep focus and other work that benefits from disruptive audio communication. Most engineering work requires deep focus. So if the office was designed to allow the majority of work to be private, quiet, and deeply focused, but with occasional meetings or break-out social rooms for the dynamic discussions, that would be great.…

Your comment is not wrong but it's all problems and no solutions. If I was designing an engineering office I would not go open plan (or the open plan area would be small). But today we have a lot of open plan offices that inhibit productivity. I identified a way that a company can quickly and inexpensively improve productivity and happiness by creating more opportunities for deep focus. Perfect is the enemy of good.

That is a fair point.

My concern though is that when companies see an example in which someone deflects on addressing a real need for private space, and externalizes the cost onto the employee (via micromanaged work-from-home), it sets a precedent that further entrenches open plan designs for new offices later on, and also discounts the value of investing to rebuild office dividers and spending to change from an open plan back to offices.

I’ve had fully remote jobs before and jobs where I could generally WFH when needed, but neither option provides a good solution.

If your spouse lives with you, they might need to generate noise at home, especially if there are young children. Or you might just live in a cramped city apartment with no space for a desk, or noisy neighbors, etc.

The point is that this pushes the costs onto the employee: “here, you figure this out.” But providing good tools to get the work done is the employer’s responsibility. WFH solutions let them try to absolve that duty, often without actually resulting in private or quiet space for the worker anyway.

A better proposal might be that an employer will pay the cost to fully rent dedicated private offices at a coworking space, and then let the employees who want offices simply work from that company-rented private office space.

This way the employer bears the costs, and doesn’t view it as “right” to just lob the grenade back at the employees by leaning on WFH as the only possible way to work in a quiet setting.

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

#196

Post by mathinpens »

reificator wrote: post #92
mathinpens wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lol

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

#197

Post by valdezm »

jfaucett wrote: post #21

I'm amazed at how much this person's philosophy for learning mirrors my own. Even down to the details, building habits, pushing yourself to the edge always, deep focused flow based work. What I would add is you should feel a little bit of stress from the difficulty of the task. As an example, recently, I did research and in an unknown field both for the first time. I was a little tense, it forced me to focus every mi…

yeah, it's not really that special, I suspect a lot of people share this knowledge from innate sources. I always looked up derivations in Discrete Mathematics(again, innately as my primary-mode of understanding) and to this day... Anyways, not very special at all.. I bet you too love office hours to discuss the professor's dissertations and enjoy long distance running too?

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

#198

Post by chuckdries »

B-Con wrote: post #139
tomtimtall wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked both in private offices and in open plans. And my experience is that private offices are good for those occasional long deep work sessions but overall the team in total is more productive and happier in open plan. Not everything is about your personal productivity and it’s all too common to see separate team members deeply focused on non-aligned items which makes the joined work much much less than the su…

I've worked in private offices, private cubes, and open office. As much as I personally prefer isolated offices/cubes, the last 4 years in a mostly open office have definitely given me sympathy to the argument for them. I personally have noted a level of collaboration and information sharing that just didn't happen in the more isolated environments. There is something pragmatically useful about having people be able…

I'm in a similar setup right now - open rooms with 12 people per room. We have huge desks that leave plenty of space between each other and dividers separating desks that face each other. You only see another person if you turn 90 degrees from your forward facing position. We also have private rooms of various sizes that can accommodate one, two or five people if you need to be alone. Some of my colleagues use the rooms a lot, I personally rarely do. Overall, I really really like it, my experience mirrors your own.

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

#199

Post by staystrong22 »

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…

> Anyone know of anything like that? How do you approach deep diving into unfamiliar spaces?

Once you're past learning the basics, I've found it very productive to go to SO, search for the topic tag ie. React, sort by most voted, and read all questions/answers in sequence. It's a great way to forcefully gain real world experience on something.

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

#200

Post by el_cid »

vit05 wrote: post #127

There is any relationship between Pomodoro Technique[1] and Deep Work? Using a tracker to force you to concentrate on the specific task could help to archive the goal? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I have been using the Pomodoro Technique with good results for a while now. What it helps me with is to get started. I noticed that my reluctance to get started increases proportionally with the complexity/difficulty of the task. However knowing that all I have to do is just spend half an hour on TRYING to make progress makes a big difference. This concept of trying instead of the pressure of solving the problem outright made a big difference in my motivation.
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