I’ve never talked about Deep Work before in this blog, but in brief, by the definition of Deep Work from the book with the same name:

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.

But how can one be in that state? It is already described how on the book (Deep Work by Cal Newport), but this is my attempt to summarise those various Deep Work scheduling methods.

Method I: The Monastic Way

This usually means cutting out almost or all of the distractions you can get: emails, phone calls, etc. This means to focus on your work alone, with only yourself.

One message from the example user of this method, Donald Knuth, knows for his dedicated computer science works and being the winner of the Turing Award, describes it well:

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

Those works that requires such massive concentration energy deserves to get no distractions. This method is hard to pull off by normal workers like most people are, but if you’re one of the lucky few, whose work also requires such dedication, you may consider using this method.

Method II: The Bimodal Way

Many couldn’t afford the requirements needed by the above method, but you can split some time to work with only yourself instead: In the morning or in the night where you don’t have to worry (or don’t have much to worry) about your normal daily works.

Mind you though this needs not to be on the scale of one day. It could be in a week where you work deeply on your weekend, or even better for some people, between the semesters.

One thing I think that I get from the book and should aid the way you schedule this kind of method:

If your work truly requires so much concentration and dedication and it truly matters to you, the schedule will come naturally, you can’t afford otherwise.

Method III: The Rhythmic Way

One of the most famous methods used in this day is the rhythmic way, where you focus on your thing and do it little by little and everyday. Every single day.

Perhaps this article should succinctly describe it.

This should work for many of us with 9-to-5 works or even with more work hours. It just that we need to be able to concentrate and be disciplined with ourselves on those set-aside time.

Method IV: The Journalistic Way

Well, I think it’s best described by an example of the way Walter Isaacson, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, does his writing:

It was always amazing…he could retreat up to the bedroom for a while, when the rest of us were chilling on the patio or whatever, to work on his book…he’d go up for twenty minutes or an hour, we’d hear the typewriter pounding, then he’d come down as relaxed as the rest of us…the work never seemed to faze him, he just happily went up to work when he had the spare time.

As you can see this method is difficult to pull off, but worry not, if your work is truly matters, we do have ways to aid you to get to your deep thoughts, regardless of the method you will choose.

But that is a subject of the next post. Until next time :)

PS. By the way if you can’t wait, I really recommend you to read the book, you should easily find it on your local book stores (Kinokuniya or Asia Books, if you’re in Bangkok). It is also available as Kindle edition.