Confronting Chaos and the First Step Towards Organization

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Prepare yourself to confront the reality of your workload, even if it's overwhelming. This first step in becoming organized is crucial and takes time. David Allen emphasizes the importance of dedicating a full day for this process. You need to set up a storage system for all your tasks, considering that most professional obligations are digital in today's world. Take the time to gather and organize your digital artifacts to transition from chaos to calm.

We talk a lot on this show about remaining organized in a digital workplace that drowns us with incoming obligations. In this episode, Cal focuses on the key question of how you get *started* toward this goal. What do you do, in other words, on day one of your quest to find depth amidst the shallows.

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

Deep Dive: Getting organized in a distracted world [6:46]

- How do I get more excited about my work plans? [45:55]

- How do I get my classmates to get better about time management? [53:59]

- How should I organize my deep work blocks? [1:00:13]

- How do I account for contingencies in my quarterly plan? [1:05:11]

- When does Cal find time to read? [1:05:50]

- CALL: How to train Deep Focus muscles [1:11:06]

CASE STUDY: Investing concentrated time [1:17:04]

The 5 books Cal read in November 2023 [1:24:08]

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