Most think they lack motivation, inspiration, or drive.
While that could be true, there’s something that rests as the common denominator for each.
Focus
In a distracted world, your ability to get shit done, stay on task (without distraction), and produce great work is the result of your ability to focus deeply and craft segments of time where you’re solely working on one thing.
The enemy of accessing a deeply focused state is clear.
Distraction
When you succumb to the impulse to shift your attention away from what you’re doing and onto something that is (the vast majority of the time) completely counterproductive to the task at hand, that comes at a cost.
So then… what’s the solution?
Deep work
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport identifies two groups of people he says are posed to thrive.
Those who can work creatively with intelligent machines and those who are stars in their field.
We’ll focus on the latter.
Those who become stars in their field master two core abilities according to Cal.
- The ability to quickly master hard things.
- The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.1
And the thing that drives these two core abilities?
Deep work
In order to access a state of deep work, you have to understand how to eliminate distractions while harnessing your attention and focus.
In this article, I’m going to unpack the concept of deep work, what gets in the way of the ability to focus on a single task, and then explore how to understand your pattern of distraction so you can systematically move forward in the direction of your goals.
What is Deep Work?
Newport defines Deep Work as…
The act of focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
The key here is without distraction.
When identifying the source of this culprit, you can point to two sources of distraction.
Internal distraction and External distraction
Internal distractions come in the form of competing ideas, desires, emotions… anything that swells up from the inside and moves your attention away from what’s right in front of you.
External distractions are anything in your surroundings, people, a noisy cafe, construction, your phone, social media, etc.
But here’s the funny thing about distraction…
It’s a predictable pattern.
You don’t just randomly do shit.
You do what you do for a reason.
What gets in the way of deep work?
In short, our surroundings.
Well, our surrounding AND how our environment and how we design our environment shapes us.
There’s a concept called ontological designing.
I remember the first time I heard this unpacked by Jason Silva.2 Essentially what this means is that we shape our environment and then our environment shapes us.
We build our tools and our tools shape us.
Phones
Social media (this is actually the reason I started this newsletter. To get away from short-form content brain and get into more depth in my work)
Our spaces
And not just our physical environment or tools in a strict sense.
Our habits and behaviors as well.
It’s not that social media in and of itself is an inherently negative thing. It’s the way we interact with it, how we compare ourselves to others, and the emotions it evokes along with the amount of time we spend getting sucked into the vortex.
Most of us are patterned for distraction not because something merely exists, but because we exercise that pattern of behavior.
With any behavior, there’s a clear list of triggers that prompt us to do something.
When you can understand what those triggers are, you can design a flow, rhythm, and environment that favors what you actually want to do instead of the bad habits you have now.
This is why habit formation works so cleverly at the same time, every day, doing the same activity.
You create a cadence that conditions your mind and body to drop into that state with little to no friction.
And without a whole bunch of willpower and effort.
Benjamin Hardy goes deep into this phenomenon in his book Willpower Doesn’t Work.3
He points to your environment as one of the major sources for why willpower is required.
To put it in his words the source is when “Your environment opposes your goal.”
He talks about how “Environmental design is different. It’s about creating conditions that make your success inevitable. For example, if you want to be focused at work, you need to remove all distractions from your physical and digital workspace.”
He even references how in the self-help world we tend to focus on ourselves.
On the internal.
While the internal is massively important, this leaves out a very important piece.
Our external environment
Because our environment gives back.
We design our surroundings and in turn, they design us.
Being aware of why you get distracted and designing an environment, practices, and habits for controlling your focus will go a very long way.
But first… a little more on the cost of distraction.
Here’s the problem with constantly breaking focus
With distraction comes a heavy cost.
Every time you get distracted…
Opening an email you can’t respond to at the moment
Scrolling on Instagram and seeing what someone else is doing that you wish you could do or that you think you should be doing
Buying that thing you need to order now (even though you’re in the middle of writing a sales page or post for social)
Leaves a trace
It’s called attention residue.
For a period of time, your mind is still on the previous task or activity.
And it’s been shown that we don’t get right back to the thing we were working on previously.
“For example, a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that it took participants an average of 25 minutes to return to a suspended task after being interrupted, with some taking up to two hours to fully regain their focus. This study focused on more complex tasks that required a high degree of concentration – which for most professionals is most of the tasks we do.”4
For some, that means our true depth focus is never achieved because we pick up our phones more often than we hunker down for deep work.
In fact…
“In 2019, Asurion published a study indicating that US residents checked their smartphones an average of 96 times per day, or about once every ten minutes (when accounting for eight hours of sleep).
The company has recently done a follow-up study and found that the number increased nearly four-fold to a whopping 352 times a day. That would mean the average American checks their phone about once every three minutes.”5
That’s fucking insane.
Right now you may be thinking…
Well, I’m not the average American.
I’m not either.
AND I still have an average of 92 pickups a day.
Want to find out for yourself?
I know this is ridiculously absurd to put in the middle of an article about deep work and understanding your pattern of distraction, BUT here’s an article on how you can see what your average is.
When you have the hard facts you can actually do something about it.
Understanding what robs your attention and getting your focus dialed so you can do deep work is not only a good idea. It’s what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.
The fulfilled from unfulfilled.
It’s everything.
Understanding your pattern of distraction and what to do about it
Do you know what rips your attention away from the task at hand?
It should be simple, right?
Focus on the thing, get it done, and move on to the next.
But, you’ve conditioned yourself for distraction.
From the habits you have to the kind of content you consume, you feed the cycle of consumption and reward with cheap hits of novelty and dopamine.
So first things first.
What are you distracted by?
Do you shop when you’re stuck (I do 😀)?
Do you open IG because you’re wrestling with something you’re undecided on and you’re stressed out about it?
Do you let yourself watch “just one episode” of your show before you get back to work but end up watching the entire season?
Having the awareness and knowing where you get tripped up is going to give you the lens through which you’ll see what needs to change.
One very simple way to do that is to have a retrospect at the end of the day. Look back on your day and notice what pulled your attention away.
Once you’re clear on what you’re pulled by you now have a dashboard of the things to look out for.
Now it’s time to deploy some new practices and craft your environment to foster flow.
Practices, Principles, and Engineering Your Environment for Focus
“Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it.”
~ Cal Newport
There’s definitely something to be said about this and as I mentioned earlier, this was one of the major reasons I shifted my content strategy to create more long-form content as opposed to JUST pumping out a ton of short-form.
I noticed that creating and consuming content in a 90-second or less format was keeping my thought process more shallow. Not only that, but the amount of time I spent on my phone was absurd.
Being consistent with the practices below had a radical effect on my screen time AND the number of pickups.
And each week these numbers continue to decrease.
That’s not necessarily the goal but it’s a great indication that I’m spending more time focused on things that matter.
In order to do that I had to get very diligent about how I structured my time and what I took on.
The following is a list of practices and principles that not only shifted how I thought and decreased the amount of time I spent giving in to impulses and distractions, but contributed to an overall sense of feeling grounded and rooted in creating a body of work instead of simply churning out bite-size pieces of content all day.
Short-form still has its place, but this shift now provided a deeper channel for that content to point to.
9 Practices to Stimulate Deep Work
- Time Block – When I suggest this, most say “I do that” but what we discover is they either did that or they’re just chunking time without a clear directive. The purpose of a time block is to carry one specific outcome or goal to have completed in the time allotted, not to just have chunks of time where you do work. Working in clearly delineated chunks of time with a specific objective is true time blocking.
- Use the Pomodoro technique – Traditionally, this method is 25 minutes of focused work followed by a 5-minute break. Then every couple of hours taking a longer 25-minute break. I personally found that 45-minute chunks work extremely well for me. Test different amounts of time to see what works best for you. Use an actual timer. I just use the clock app right on my desktop and it does the trick.
- Protect your attention – This is part willpower and mostly environment. Eliminate all potential distractions, intrusions, and interruptions. This means keeping a clear space, silencing notifications on your phone, and making sure that anyone in your home is aware that you can’t be bothered.
- Identify your keystone habit – I believe we all have one thing that by doing it, everything else becomes easier. For me, that’s running. It is 100% predictable that when I’m consistently running and training, sitting my ass at my desk is infinitely more likely to happen. Not just because of the physical exercise, but it’s also a time when I don’t consume any media. No music, podcast, audiobook… nada. For some it’s spending time with their partner and for others, it’s hanging with their kids. Find what one activity sets you up to function at your best and prioritize doing it consistently.
- Identify your top 3 to-dos – Most people keep a laundry list of to-dos. While keeping a log of everything that needs to get done is useful, often it contributes to that never-ending feeling more than it does gives you a place to check things off. A few years ago I switched to using an analog notecard system where I identify my top 3 tasks or projects for the day and keep that card on a stand on my desk. Then if I need to add to it I do. But the psychology here really rocks. Instead of having a bunch of things that didn’t get done and a huge list, it’s a living system. You can use the fancy version like this one from Ugmonk or you can grab a pack of 300 from Amazon like I did.
- Have a clear stop time – At a certain time, cut off all work-related activities where you have to go into solution mode. This means that you don’t check anything that even potentially requires a response from you. This gives your mind a chance to rest and recover so you can come back fresh the next day.
- Create a list of 5s – I believe this comes from David Allen’s Getting Things Done method, but I’ve been doing it for years. Throughout the day you’re going to have the impulse to do relatively random short tasks that only take a few minutes. In the moment it seems like a good idea to just knock it out. But we already know that comes at a cost. Instead, keep a list (digital or analog) of all these as they come up. Then have a 30-45 minute block later in the day or after your focused block where you just sit down and knock all those tasks out.
- Reset rituals – Setting the space for the next day is a powerful way to clear the clutter and reset the energy of a space. At the end of the day, clean off your desk and put everything back in its place. I’d also do this with high-traffic areas in your home or apartment. For me, that’s the kitchen. At the end of the day, I make sure it’s completely spotless and also set out all my goodies for the next morning… electrolytes, green drink powder, supplements, fill the hot water pot, set out the french press, coffee grinds, etc. A little goes a long way here. When you start the next day you’ve already got your flow mapped out and the energy of the day has been reset.
- Break the pattern of distraction – Don’t open your phone for at least the first 30 minutes of the day. When you check your phone (social media, email, messages) first thing in the morning you’re training your brain to seek novelty and distraction. In my opinion, this habit is one of the main drivers of compulsively picking your phone up all day. When you can cut that off at the head by not doing it first thing in the morning you set yourself up to win.
The goal here is not to become a robot.
It’s to have a set of operating principles so you can (1) have a clear map of when things will get done that could occupy your attention (2) create an environment and set of habits that foster focus and deep work and (3) find what works for you so you can craft your flow in a way that forces focus.
While this is not an exhaustive list, it is definitely enough to get you started. I’m a huge advocate for Cal Newport’s philosophy on deep work and truly believe that your ability to quickly master hard things produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed are the top predictors of success.
Master these and you will absolutely set yourself up for success.
Until next time,
Jeff Agostinelli
1. Newport, Cal. “Deep Work Is Valuable.” Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing 2016, pp. 28-29, 106.
2. Jason Silva “How Environments Shape Us” 2015. Facebook
3. Hardy, Benjamin. “Introduction.” Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success. pp XiV
4. Corsetti, Cynthia. “Do Daily Interruptions Really Impact My Business?” LinkedIn. 2023.
5. Cibean, Tudor. “Adults in the U.S. check their phones 352 times a day on average, 4x more often than in 2019.” Techspot. 2022.
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