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Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

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Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#81

Post by bigwavedave »

Buttons840 wrote: post #45

I read this article years ago and have logged about 1,800 hours using this system. Like many, when it comes to personal projects, I want to accomplish something and enjoy myself. The problem is that those are often at odds with each other: accomplishing something worthwhile requires hard work that isn't always enjoyable. I've modified the system slightly to a "20-Hour Method" but the idea is the same. I decide on som…

There was a really good Ted Talk to this effect called "The First Twenty Hours"!

link: https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#83

Post by llaolleh »

Buttons840 wrote: post #32
llaolleh wrote: post #16

I'm so tired of these articles that rehash the same idea over and over. Feel like life is too short to setup some complicated discipline system to force yourself to chug something down that you hate. You either enjoy doing it or you don't. Focus on deriving joy out of the process and not the end result.

What's the greatest accomplishment you're aware of that didn't require "chugging down" some hard work that the person hated?

Fair point. All great accomplishments require some grunt work. This leads one to wonder whether or not people who work crazy hours have a high tolerance for bs and pain or enjoy some of the hard work and perseverance anyways. I believe the latter.

Most of the successful people I know tend to enjoy the process and don't seem to be extremely occupied with results.

But based on the post, I felt that if you want to learn a skill you should have some fun or be interested enough in learning. Setting four hours blocks with specific goals don't help. I believe that it's not that people have problems entering deep work that's causing people not to sit down and read through repositories, but they don't care enough, or enjoy the process of learning that's preventing them from making significant progress.

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#84

Post by crdrost »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

It's easy to dismiss "Deep Work" articles for their use of buzzwords and pop-psychology, but this sort of structured language really does help drive the point home for some people. The core concept of Deep Work isn't really controversial. Everyone knows that hard problems require focus, but that doesn't seem to stop people from surrounding themselves with notifications and distractions. It also doesn't stop many comp…

I like this idea of phrasing it as branding.

In my experience nobody sits in one place and works on one thing for 8 hours a day. I am tempted to say that it's not only rare but it's undesirable.

I can work for approximately 5 hours straight without needing any sort of break; but part of becoming a more senior developer was to realize that this is actually a really bad thing for me. The “sweet spot” for me appears to be either 1.5 or 2 hours long. If I have some urgency I will literally shut down my laptop and move to a coffee shop or some other physical context and spend at least 15 minutes taking in the new ambiance before opening up the laptop and resuming a separate 2-hour burst of focused work.

The reason is basically that the flow state is good for one very important parameter that we might call ‘grit,’ the actual overcoming of pain and moving a project to completion... but it fails of course at a whole range of metacognitive processes which I might imperfectly class along at least three separate axes as... well, the words are not great but ‘creativity’ and ‘organization’ and ’empathy’ work. Flow states are really good for when you know what needs to be done and how to do it because your project is well-organized. They can be poor for stepping back and thinking “is this really the best way to satisfy that person’s needs?” and for stepping back and thinking “is there some more powerful idea I could leverage here which would make all of these sorts of problems just go away, even if it is a little strange given how the system exists right now?” and for simply asking “how can I clean things up now to make my life easier in the future?”. Even if you have individuals who by their personalities simply exude grit and radiate it for everyone else, which is an absolute treasure to have, you may want to balance them out with people who have a sort of moralistic imperative of “this is how a system like this should be built.” I don’t want to work with just hackers—but with hackers, engineers, dreamers, and evangelists—on my dev team. Either as separate people or as separate hats which people take on over the course of the day.

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#85

Post by dennisgorelik »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #55
mjayhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I greatly appreciate this, as someone who has had a very difficult time avoiding distractions (slack, email, meetings, etc) and tries to convey that I need time to not context switch constantly. I know I'm not the only one because other developers I work with have the same complaints but we keep winding up in environments where it's just kosher and "its how we do things" with regard to meetings and interruptions. Do…

> Do you tell managers this as well? That the developers need deep focus time? It's a delicate balance. When I was in a manager-of-managers position, I didn't explicitly micromanage how managers ran their teams or run their days. People don't respond well to that. Instead, I tried to lead by example by setting my own focus hours, giving ample notice for upcoming meetings, setting expectations for response times at th…

> When I was in a manager-of-managers position

Why did you quit your manager-of-managers position?

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#86

Post by baxtr »

Buttons840 wrote: post #45

I read this article years ago and have logged about 1,800 hours using this system. Like many, when it comes to personal projects, I want to accomplish something and enjoy myself. The problem is that those are often at odds with each other: accomplishing something worthwhile requires hard work that isn't always enjoyable. I've modified the system slightly to a "20-Hour Method" but the idea is the same. I decide on som…

I’d love to read that blog post

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#87

Post by ZephyrBlu »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

It's easy to dismiss "Deep Work" articles for their use of buzzwords and pop-psychology, but this sort of structured language really does help drive the point home for some people. The core concept of Deep Work isn't really controversial. Everyone knows that hard problems require focus, but that doesn't seem to stop people from surrounding themselves with notifications and distractions. It also doesn't stop many comp…

I'm grad age (22), but I dropped out of uni. I don't understand how people get anything done if they only spend 1-2hrs on it. It takes me that long to get into a flow state and become productive, then ideally I would spend at least 3-4 more hours working productively. Based on the article, I definitely fall into the Monastic category.

> Once they graduate and have to sit in one place and work on one thing for 8 hours a day, many of them struggle.

Funnily enough, I'm finding that a work environment isn't actually very conducive with doing work. I spend most of my day being distracted with very little opportunity to focus on something.

> If I try to lecture them on the importance of sustained focus and minimizing distractions, I sound like an out of touch old guy. If I instead say "Hey, we practice Deep Work here. Let me get you a copy of a Deep Work book so you can join us" then they're on board

I would have the opposite reaction. "Deep Work" is cringy, but if you said "we value sustained focus and minimizing distractions" I would be very interested.

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#88

Post by abnry »

zackmorris wrote: post #80
vp8989 wrote: post #31

The sad thing is that the way the software industry is structured, it creates environments where juniors are doing the deep work and people with more experience are doing shallow logistical work. We have it totally backwards.

Thank you, I hadn't arrived at that insight until you articulated it. This is probably the main reason why I burned out last year (1 year before COVID-19). I started programming when I was 12, but after 30 years of acquiring knowledge and experience, I'd find myself getting blank stares at meetings when I explained the crux of a problem and how to go about solving it. The team just perceived me as slow and out of tou…

Thank you for sharing, I enjoyed reading your comment.

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#89

Post by audiometry »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #28
audiometry wrote: post #4

These articles are derivatives of derivatives. They become very tedious and repetitive.

A substance-less complaint can become both helpful and a more honest critique simply by including a link to something less derivative.

https://mrbartonmaths.com/resourcesnew/8.%20Research/Explici... There you go... the source from which Malcolm Gladwell and thousands of his imitators have pulled.

Here’s another for those writing the “get things done” derivative.

https://interruptions.net/literature/Wicklund-BASP81.pdf

Ad nauseum

Re: Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill (2018)

#90

Post by buffet_overflow »

crdrost wrote: post #84
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

It's easy to dismiss "Deep Work" articles for their use of buzzwords and pop-psychology, but this sort of structured language really does help drive the point home for some people. The core concept of Deep Work isn't really controversial. Everyone knows that hard problems require focus, but that doesn't seem to stop people from surrounding themselves with notifications and distractions. It also doesn't stop many comp…

I like this idea of phrasing it as branding. In my experience nobody sits in one place and works on one thing for 8 hours a day. I am tempted to say that it's not only rare but it's undesirable. I can work for approximately 5 hours straight without needing any sort of break; but part of becoming a more senior developer was to realize that this is actually a really bad thing for me. The “sweet spot” for me appears to…

>They can be poor for stepping back and thinking “is this really the best way to satisfy that person’s needs?”

This is something I stumbled onto recently. I've been hellbent on making sure I had no distractions and could hit that 5 hour flow state, only to find smaller chunks gave me more points to reflect on the state of the work and redirect it more effectively.

Thanks for capturing it into words.

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