51–60 of 226 posts
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
> Do you spend your time marketing your self to others and letting people know your accomplishments, or do you spend the time doing work that will benefit others? I like the luck surface area analogy for this. Take a rectangle. Side A is "Quality of work". Side B is "How many people know about it". The surface area – A*B – is your luck and opportunity. If you do amazing work and nobody knows about it, your luck is ze…
In this case, you also get the benefit that both of you can get credit for the same work. Everyone will know them as "the guy who knows people who get things done" (i.e., good manager/leader) and you'll get credit as a great individual contributer. There's no competition for credit here.
It gets even better if the few people who know you as "their guy for X" are social supernodes--while we're all only 6 degrees of separation from each other, it's actually because a small percentage of us know tons of people, while the average is much less. If you become the "guy for X" for one of these supernodes, you're basically the "guy for X" for anyone who would ask them "hey, do you know a guy for X?"
In my career, I've had two of those types of people know me and my work--and between the two of them, they have generated almost every opportunity I've had in the past 10 years.
I could spend 50% of my time networking, and I doubt it would generate as much value as adding just one more social supernode that knows my work.
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
Later I started being more assertive about my time.
Meeting request in the middle of my core work hours? Decline as busy, suggest to move it to a lunch meeting or offer to call the person after working hours (Everyone chooses lunch meeting instead of after hours).
People tapping me on the shoulder to ask a question while I'm wearing headphones? Before they can speak, I politely say that I'm in the middle of something I need to finish and ask if it's urgent. It's rarely urgent, but people quickly learn that it doesn't pay off to interrupt me.
Constant deluge of Slack messages? I set a status that I was busy but would be available to chat during certain hours. When I'm pinged, I quickly respond that I'm in the middle of something but I'll get back to them later.
The key was to realize that taking charge of my own time didn't have the negative consequences I thought it would. In my mind, I thought declining people's meeting invites or refusing to prioritize other people's demands would end my career, so I let people walk all over my schedule. Reality couldn't have been further from the truth. Nearly everyone was very understanding and very few people interpreted my responses as rude. Obviously you need to be polite and professional, no matter how aggravating the interruptions are.
Carving out dedicated meeting and socializing time was also important. It's unlikely that I'm going to sit in one place for 8 straight hours anyway, so allocating two blocks of time each day for meetings and catching up was helpful. Making it predictable and communicating it to others made it easy for everyone else to understand. I even marked it on my shared calendar.
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
Why is getting up early not considered?
Also, if your waking hours are say 0800-2300 then you can easily work late and move your leisure time to the morning without changing your sleep schedule.
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…
If you work on a team, being reachable is part of your work. There are (few) opportunities for solo thinking, and Cal is lucky to find one. I hope you find one for yourself. But as a team, the answer "I can't reach the expert because they secluded themselves" is not acceptable. Because as a senior figure on a team, you job is to become a force multiplier for others, not a solo force. Not to do work that magnanimously…
Over the years I’ve come to realize it is not as clear cut of a trade off. Teams can be coached to be self-reliant and to distribute knowledge effectively, so that they have fewer urgent questions. I try to proactively take myself out of the critical path as much as possible. Documenting thoroughly is one way. Another is to use channels for question-asking and encouraging the use of the channel instead of dm. There’s a higher chance a person can answer who is not interrupted, and because everyone passively follows the channel the knowledge is shared more effectively.
Decision-making is always the tricky part. Junior devs need constant handholding and it is more about a lack of lived experience than a lack of knowledge. You need enough senior devs so that the load of constant micro-decisions for the juniors can be spread around.
The thing is that getting to the point where there is enough time for deep work is a process that takes time and that is easily undone by team churn. IMHO the only way to sidestep the matter entirely is to have a lieutenant who handles all the urgent matters, but I’ve only had that once and in retrospect it was hardly a fair situation.
I'm constantly amazed at how the mainstream population uses phones. Most people tend to have phone with alarming-notifications, so they get informed that they have a message, or email or whatever. The phone interrupts them and directs their attention. They train themselves to be controlled by their phones. I'd go crazy trying to live like that. I have no audible notifications, and vibration only for actual calls. Eve…
We use ours like regular phone junkies to stay connected/dick around/navigate life throughout the work day. But we use gps/time triggers to shut off notifications during our time most likely to be used for deep focus, and/or enable airplane mode at night, when at home, on dates, or with family.
That way the silence is natural, and we don't have to rely on our own self-control to do the right thing.
I'm constantly amazed at how the mainstream population uses phones. Most people tend to have phone with alarming-notifications, so they get informed that they have a message, or email or whatever. The phone interrupts them and directs their attention. They train themselves to be controlled by their phones. I'd go crazy trying to live like that. I have no audible notifications, and vibration only for actual calls. Eve…