If you don’t already know, deep work is different from hard work.
Hard work focuses on urgent but not important tasks. Deep work focuses on the most important tasks that may not be urgent.
The beautiful thing about deep work is that you can accomplish more in less time by cutting out the unnecessary and working on the main levers of your success.
You can accomplish more in 6 months working 4 focused hours daily than in 2 years of simply working hard.
Several people tell you the benefits of deep work, but very few tell you how to do it. And deep work is not intuitive. It is a skill, and you need to learn how to do it.
So here are 4 steps to take to build the habit of deep work.
1. Prepare
A successful deep work session starts the day before. You need to prepare to get the most out of your work sessions. There are three parts to prepare for—physical, mental, and your work environment.
1a. Physical
Deep work requires your physical body to be in great shape. This means quality sleep the previous night and a bit of exercise the next morning. You can decide to fast or take coffee or any other stimulant. Whatever allows you to work 4 hours without interruptions.
1b. Mental
The hard part of focusing is with your brain. If your brain is used to getting distracted, you need to learn to focus. And the best time to do this is in the morning. So get your 4-hour work out of the way before engaging in any other activity.
One way I keep myself focused is by playing movie soundtracks. Here is a list by WrongstoWrite that I always listen to.
- The Dark Knight Trilogy
- Blade Runner 2049
- Interstellar
- Inception
- Dunkirk
- Tenet
You can find these playlists on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, etc.
1c. Environment
Your working environment plays a major role in how much you accomplish in your work session. Since you will be sitting in a place for most of the 4 hours, ensure your workspace is comfortable for every part of your body.
Finally, and most importantly, place your mobile device in another room. Remove notifications from your laptop. No emails, no slack, no discord. Nothing. Just you and your brain for 4 hours. Once your workspace is distraction-free, you can start working.
2. Have a list of tasks you want to accomplish
You should list tasks you want to work on the day before. Don’t spend the first 30 minutes of your work time deciding what to work on. Willpower depletion is real, so you want to eliminate any task that diminishes your willpower to work.
Ideally, you shouldn’t work on more than 3–4 tasks daily. Reducing your daily tasks to 3 forces you to focus on the most important ones. The only activities that should make your task list should be work, not learning.
Don’t watch coding videos, write code.
Don’t read, write.
Don’t read about marketing, create marketing strategies.
Finally, list your tasks by difficulty. You want to start with the hardest. Tick the task on the list once you are done. The psychological boost you get from doing that will motivate you to continue.
3. Work in sprints
To make the most of the work time, work in sprints. There are several ways you can divvy up your work time. The most popular is the Pomodoro technique, which is 25 minutes of work paired with 5 minutes of rest. That means for a 4-hour work time, you will have 8 sprints.
You can increase it to 50-minute sprints with 10 minutes break. If you have mastered the ability to focus, feel free to go all the way and work for 4 hours straight.
To work in sprints, I use an app called ‘Zone.’ This is available for Mac OS.
4. Rate every work session.
Once you are done working each day, rate how much you accomplished. The ability to focus and work for 4 hours is a skill you can improve. But you can only improve what you measure. Some questions to ask yourself include:
- What did you accomplish? And are the highest-value tasks?
- Were you distracted? And what distracted you?
- Did you get physically tired? And what caused the tiredness?
The answer to these questions will show you areas for improvement.
Conclusion
Focus is a superpower and is a prerequisite to doing great work. And the 4-hour workday is a tool to help you focus and work hard and smart. The 4-hour workday has changed my life. Use the 4 steps above to improve your deep work skill and increase your productivity by 1000%.
