Eric, I truly appreciated this article. Focus is more and more difficult these days.

Here’s what we learned from Cal:

• Don’t schedule distractions. Schedule deep work: Block hours for what really matters, not just for anything with a designated start time.
• Keep a scoreboard for deep work: And make it visible. The point is to shame yourself if you’re not up to snuff.
• Stop saying “yes” if you want to get things done: Want an example of how this works? Email me and ask me to “jump on a call.”
• Have a “Deep Work Ritual”: Whatever gets you ready to crank. Hiding in a conference room and throwing your phone into an abyss is a good one.
• Ask your boss how much time they want you spending on deep vs shallow work: If they say “100% shallow”, feel free to ignore everything above.

Real craftsmen are proud of their work. Just because you’re not a stonemason or a painter doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of yours.

We get that feeling of real accomplishment when we make things, not when we attend pointless meetings and reply to endless email chains. Here’s Cal:

In the book I quote some well known philosophers from Berkeley and Harvard who talk about how there’s a sense of sacredness that you uncover when you get really good at doing something. That touches something deep in the human condition that can be very rewarding. No matter what discipline you come at it from, deep work is a type of activity that’s going to be mentally satisfying, especially as compared to a fragmented attention that’s divided up in all these shallow activities.

The world is changing. We’re surrounded by distractions but those distractions matter less than ever. Here’s Cal:

If you can train your ability to focus and then fight to make time for real intense focused work in your schedule, you are absolutely going to thrive in this economy while the people sitting next to you are going to look up one day from their Facebook feed and realize they’ve been left behind.

Want to be the smartest person in the room in this new world of work? Cal sums it up simply:

“Focus is the new IQ.”

Wait, so where does reading this article fit into my distraction metric!?! Better start that list...

Yes Tara, it's a good idea to start that list. :)

This article is good to be distracted by because it helps you think through your strategy for time. 

Remember: Focus is the new IQ.