The Significance of Deep Work and Flow States in Learning and Productivity

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What is the most prized skill of the 21st century? It's not intelligence, not social skills, not even confidence; it's focus. And does that feel like it's getting easier or harder for you?

You're not alone. We're in an age of distractions. In 2007, it was estimated that you saw around 4 to 5,000 ads a day. You know what that number is estimated today? Over 10,000. 10,000 pieces of information trying to steal your focus away from you. And now, we've got what the metaverse coming, where we're all going to be locked in with our VR goggles, eyes literally peeled, and seeing like 20,000 ads a day.

What's in this video is the solution, I promise, for someone who was super distracted, couldn't focus, used all the excuses in the world, to finally having something click, being able to lock myself down, and whatever I set my mind on, it gets done.

We're going to cover what deep work is and what it's not, the three rules you need to know to work deeply, and the three best pieces of productivity advice.

This video can be dense, but I promise it'll be one of the most important ones you watch all year.

Full credit, this comes from Cal Newport's book 'Deep Work,' although this is not a book review, I'm pulling a lot from what's in here.

Deep work is your ability to focus on a demanding task without distractions, not just any task, usually one that pushes your cognitive abilities. Now, obviously not everything is deep work, so there's also another type of important but different work called shallow work. Shallow work describes tasks that aren't cognitively demanding, things like answering emails, attending unproductive meetings, and more of just the day-to-day things that you have to do but aren't super cognitively demanding. Let's say you're a content creator; shallow work is answering your emails, using social media, planning, running payroll for your team, tweaking thumbnails, researching camera gear, etc. Deep work is filming and writing videos. Now, you're probably asking, well, okay, what is my deep work? Deep work is usually the things we're avoiding. If you wiped away everything and could only do one or two things that day, what would those one or two things be that actually like progressed you towards your goals? That's your deep work right there. So, that's deep work, that's shallow work, there's a third bucket called distractions, and these are what you want to minimize at all costs. The richest companies that ever existed are the social media companies, and they literally make these apps like slot machines, where it's random intermittent spikes, likes, notifications. So minimizing distractions is universal, and we all struggle with it. The more distractions that hijack your dopamine circuits, the less motivation you have. Remember, dopamine is that neurotransmitter that's for wanting, cravings, and drives. So if you're getting excess dopamine from all these distractions, no wonder you have less motivation to do your work, and no wonder you procrastinate more. So now that you know what deep work is, let's go over three reasons why it's really important for you and why it's super valuable and something you should prioritize. Our economy has moved away from Brute Force labor to more analyzing and applying information. The skills that are going to Succeed In This Modern economy are complex problem-solving, data analysis, computer programming, art—anything that requires deep work to really learn and execute. Put another way, your ability to work deeply is what is valued and will determine the future of if you're able to thrive in this economy or get wiped out with things like AI. Goldman Sachs estimates AI is going to replace 300 million jobs, and by 2030, McKinley's estimating it is between 400 million and 800 million; there will be new ones created from that, but that is a lot of jobs. So, this idea of job security that I'm just going to like learn a skill, and it's going to be secure, it doesn't really exist. The only thing that exists is if you know how to focus and you know how to work deeply, you're going to excel because the cognitively demanding tasks are the things that take a lot of presence and a lot of like you, that's the things that are going to stand out and be rewarded.

Refusing to settle,

Clark