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I know, I know, the movie version of work glory is to do all-nighters and say shit like, I'll rest when I'm dead.
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Well, keep living like that, pimp, and you'll be dead sooner than later.
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But no, it's worse than that.
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Because way before you die, you'll suck at productivity because you're exhausted.
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Welcome to part three of our four-part series on having ADHD or having attention span issues and becoming more focused and more productive to be your best.
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All right, so today, part three, we're going to start off with the end of part two.
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We covered a ton of details about how to do deep work sessions, which are the core essence of maximizing work productivity.
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You want to do something well, you do it in deep work.
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So how do you know you're ready to stop deep work for the session and how do you know to plan to pick it up again later?
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As opposed to just, oh, I just need another break.
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Your brain is starting to turn into mush.
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In other words, the quality of your output has fallen below your non-negotiable line.
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My best way to ascertain this transition point is to notice for when your need for breaks to keep the mind humming basically becomes back to back.
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Your break to work ratio falls to below three to one.
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Here's what I mean by that.
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If you're still good to go, but just need a break, you take five, come back and work at least another three X, 15 minutes.
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before you need to take five again.
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Ideally, you work much longer, like another hour, but anything lower than that three to one becomes highly inefficient.
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If you need a break before the three to one time, and it's only been like 12 minutes since your last five minute break, and you for sure need a break, and your output quality has fallen again to where you need a break, or it stayed so low that you can barely push through it anymore, it's probably time to consider ending that deep work session.
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When elite basketball players are so tired that they start missing really easy shots consistently, the smart ones go home and rest for the next session.
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Yes, it can feel warrior-like to persist, but almost never at the expense of quality.
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It's coming at the expense of quality.
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It's not called deep work anymore.
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It's called deep slop.
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Oh, you're deep.
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Make it slop.
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So that all being the case, I want you to consider pushing into mild discomfort towards the end of most of your deep work sessions.
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You want to push into mild discomfort.
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Instead of trying to ignore the temptation to break upon quality reduction just once, which is how you should be taking breaks.
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We covered this in part two.
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First time you want to take a break, just ignore it.
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Second time, okay, fine, I'll take one.
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I want you to try to recommit an extra time and see how long you can keep working for.
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So your brain says, break, recommit, work.
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Okay, now the quality's down.
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Okay, break.
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That's going to buy you either another five minutes of time or another like 90 minutes of time doing deep work, which could be incredible.
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You never can tell unless you push.
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So, for example, like usually when you feel like taking a break in like the middle of a deep work session, you gather your thoughts and try to keep going.
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Sometimes it works.
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Get another hour of deep work.
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Sometimes you're back to low quality one minute later.
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In the cases in which it's one minute later, then it's break time.
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But for the end of your deep work sessions, try to recommit one extra time.
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Like when it's getting close to the end and you wanna take a break, even a two-time recommit is good.
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Feel the difficulty of helping your mind ease in to the focus of the task despite your fatigue.
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This is like the analogy of going close to or beyond muscle failure in hypertrophy training in the gym.
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It's uncomfortable, but it works.
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And this practice can help you get slightly better at focusing under fatigue over time.
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It can thus expand your attention span and ability to do deep work meaningfully.
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It's massive.
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At some point years later, you might be able to actually get work done at a coffee shop for like an hour as opposed to your current five minutes at most in such a distracting environment because you were pushing it regularly.
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And if you're in your ideal office setup, you might be able to push your deep work session length from three hours maximum to four hours, which can be a huge deal.
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So at the end of your deep work sessions, if you feel compelled, try to push it a little bit.
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But again, if you're already just slopping and slopping, it's time to cut it off.
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Next up, this is this more grand hierarchical view.
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We're leaving the deep work session.
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We're going up a level to total weekly session number management.
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The sessions themselves we're done chatting about for now.
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Some folks at the end of deep work sessions, last thing I'll say, like to write down what their next deep work session should prioritize.
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But that can also be done in another time that's not deep work, or it can be done in the warmup for the next session.
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I'm agnostic on that tip.
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Try it, see if it works well for you.
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But thinking about what you're gonna do in your next deep work session opens up this topic for us, which is this little guy is the Plod Note Pin S. It is an AI note-taking device that has been designed
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to help you not lose ideas or conversations and be able to go back and search them later.
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Dylan and I had a meeting for this very channel and we were trying to theorize all sorts of productive ideas to turn into videos to get to you guys.
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but we had to keep interrupting our session to write down notes and making sure, hey, this is super important, let's write it down.
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Then we just pulled out the note pin and we could keep the conversation flowing with basically zero interruptions.
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We can take all of our insight later from the note pin S.
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And we don't have to search through it to find the important stuff.
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You can just talk to this thing like you would any other intelligent system and ask, hey, can you give me an idea of all the core main points that were discussed and so on.
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And it does this seamlessly.
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We basically have an expert note taker anywhere we go.
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Guys, you can save 20% on any PLOD product with code Mike20 at the first link in the description.
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All right, enjoy.
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How many deep work sessions should you be doing in a typical week?
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It is a very important question.
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In the last part of this video, in part two, I said, if you can do two three-hour deep work sessions twice a day, four days a week, and one three-hour deep work session on a Friday, almost every week, you can conquer the world.
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I swore at that time, the effing world, I said.
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Now, you might notice if you peruse your documents that conquering the world is not exactly on your proximate agenda for this year.
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So the more realistic question is how many deep work sessions of two to four hours per week should you be doing if you wanna do well at your job and stuff and not have to conquer the world?
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There are at least three, as I count them, intersecting variables that will guide your selection here.
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Ability, need, and desire.
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Let's go through all three of them.
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First is ability.
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You actually can't do any more deep work sessions than you're able to do.
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If you can do one three-hour deep work session Monday through Friday and no more, but the PhD program in quantum physics you're considering is gonna require two three-hour sessions every day, Monday through Friday, then you might need to reconsider signing up for the program.
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There are things outside of your ability set.
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That's a true fact.
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at least for now, right?
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I know it's not PC to say this, but we're not all work machines.
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For example, I can't code.
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I do not have the remote attention span to code.
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All of my software friends are like, oh my God, code, learn code, it's so easy.
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And they're like, just all take for granted that they were born with laser focus.
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And to code productively for an actual software business,
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I just can't, hey, there's no way I'm gonna do that.
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No big deal, I just do other stuff.
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Understanding your limitations, pushing them, and working within them is a real good thing.
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So if you just can't keep up with a deep work schedule, then just don't.
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There's a couple other examples of this.
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Medical school.
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Pre-med programs almost give you so much work that they just wanna see if you can hack.
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Plenty of people are smart enough to become doctors.
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Not everyone can just plow, doctors plow.
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And if you can do pre-med, yeah, med school will be just fine.
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And if you can do med school, residency will be just fine.
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But if you're really struggling pre-med, med school is gonna be a big fucking shock because there's a certain amount of work that's expected, you just gotta be able to do it.
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It's not for everybody.
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Next is need.
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Okay, so you're able or unable, and that'll change over time slowly.
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Need.
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So long as it's within your ability to do, need is the next most important factor to determine your deep work duration.
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Dylan, as hood vernacular would have it, shit needs to get did.
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You feel me?
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Done did.
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Done did.
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If doing well at school or your job requires 12 total hours of deep work per week on average, that might mean four three-hour weekly sessions per week, no negotiations.
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Sometimes you hit a groove and get the work done in three sessions.
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Sometimes it's a slog and you have to do five sessions to get the work done.
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At the end of the week, though, the work simply needs to get done.
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So if you're able, then you do the work.
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Need is the big one.
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It doesn't cancel out ability, but it sure determines a lot.
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And then lastly is desire.
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Sometimes you're able to do more work than you need to be doing to have success at your job.
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And you might love your work, but once you finish, you move on to hobbies or other activities.
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Nothing at all wrong with that.
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I have many friends who have loads of leisure time and hobbies because they can get their deep work done with loads of time in that week to spare.
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But sometimes you just can't help yourself.
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You want to do more deep work.
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In some jobs, you can work way ahead of the pace and get weeks done ahead of time.
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In some other jobs, you can ask for other projects to work on or to help with when you're done with your core work.
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In other jobs, you get paid by the work, so the more work you do, the more you get paid.
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And in still other jobs, there's kind of no way to do more work than are already allotted, so you might be inclined to do some other work on the side, earning extra money, training up to elevate your career later on, or working on the transition to another career altogether.
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Like you work at a nine to five job in which you're supposed to be present and people call in and ask you for problems and you resolve them on your computer.
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If that's your job, but people sometimes only call in once an hour for five minutes at a time, you're gonna like be studying for a whole different academic specialty in your free time.
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And then you go and enroll in university and they're like, holy shit, you're an expert in this already.
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You get your degrees two years sooner and you get a new job as an engineer because you were studying to be an engineer while you did quality control at your old job.
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Totally a thing.
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Many of my colleague coaches at RP Strength, who coach a bunch of folks, are full-time college professors.
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They can plow through their college professor work in like half of their weekly deep work abilities.
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So they take on diet and training clients on the side through RP, earning loads of money, and in the process helping a bunch of folks get in the shapes of their lives.
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Amazing.
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When I was a professor, I used my extra deep work bandwidth to write visiting lectures and books, create templates, and eventually build logic maps for our suite of diet and training apps.
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If you have more deep work ability than need, consider this one of the most incredible gifts from the universe because you have the ability to do extra, which is incredible and will take you really, really far.
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My humble recommendation here is if you have more desire and ability than you have need for deep work, don't squander it.
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Tend to your needs.
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Stay late.
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Stay late.
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Do more deep work.
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Swim in the sea of focus and productivity.
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There's a point at which you don't need to be doing anything, but at 7 p.m. and you're still in the office, you're like, I want to be here, baby.
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I want to fucking do this.
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I'm so into whatever extra thing I'm doing now.
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Stay.
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Stay.
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Swim in the sea.
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Not only does it feel incredible to be immersed in deep work that's meaningful, but it helps the world and it often gets you paid extra.
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What a combination.
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Remember when you did a thing that was challenging, felt amazing, helped others, and made you more money?
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I mean, what more can you ask of life?
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Now, even if you're passionate and your desire for deep work is very high, you still need to hold yourself back to some extent.
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This is exactly like training with weights or for any other sport.
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You can love it so much,
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that you train too much and your body starts to break down, getting you burned out or hurt.
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The brain is literally a part of your body and it operates under the same rules.
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My biggest tip for how to find your weekly maximum average for total deep work is see how many sessions or total hours gets you to the point of, I'm pleasantly fried, and after a few days of minimal or no deep work, I'll be good to start another week at the same pace, no problem.
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If you feel like you're completely spent every Friday,
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such that you feel like quitting your job, you're probably doing too much.
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If you never feel remotely challenged, that's okay, but you know you can do more.
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This is true for almost all weeks of the year, but with a few exceptions.
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So for that, we're gonna chat next about evenings, weekends, and vacations, which are what support your ability to do work.
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But let me restate this, the golden amount of deep work to do is enough that just gets you fried up enough
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that the weekend or whatever hours of the rest of the week you have to chill, bring you back the next week fresh and ready.
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Challenging, but recoverable.
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If it's not challenging at all, you can just work more.
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I'm not here to tell you that.
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That's between you and you.
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If you're burning yourself out every week, there is this glory.
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Dylan, you know all those finance movies and all the media about Elon working every second of his life and sleeps under his desk, you know all that stuff?
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Mm-hmm.
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That's all good stuff, right?
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It gets you inspired.
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That is not sustainable.
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That is not how you do life.
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You want to push it, but you want to push it so that you recover every single time.
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Your quality is exceptionally high.
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It's a big deal.
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So you never have to be feeling guilty about not working enough.
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You work as much as you can and no more.
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And you can push it over months and over weeks to do a little bit more, but you have to be ginger with yourself.
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Speaking of which, evenings, weekends, and vacations.
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The feel on weekends and vacations and time off in general is a bit iffy in productivity discussions, of which there are very many on the Internet.
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You're supposed to be like working yourself into brain bleeds and this rat race to get ahead, right, brothers and sisters?
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Dylan, you ever heard that term, the rat race?
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No, but I do remember watching the movie.
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No way.
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Oh, the movie's great.
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The Rat Race is this thing people say about modern capitalist life.
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You're like, go to school, get a job, get promoted, get another promotion, become the head guy, and you're always stressing and working and stressing and working.
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Mind you, people say this when they have a $500,000 home in a fucking private pond and they're like the rat race.
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Like, shut up.
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The real rat race is when you're like enslaved in Africa or some shit like that.
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Get out of my face.
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You're doing all of this voluntarily.
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Right?
208
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Toxic slave capitalism demands that you work until you break for the corporation.
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So that when you die at your desk, the bosses writ large, of course, can slide your dead body over just far enough, Dylan, for a young, scared, feeble replacement worker of yours to take your place.
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Like, oh, oh, God, he's looking at your decomposing body.
211
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And he knows one thing, Dylan, for sure.
212
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He's next.
213
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Is this a threat?
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In however many years the corporation no longer needs him, right?
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When he like works himself to the bone or whatever.
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And, you know, he's trying to work and focus on his work as your corpse literally rots merely feet away from his body.
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Yeah, we keep the last guy down in the basement.
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Yes.
219
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Yes.
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Your colleague from across the table tells the new guy, hey, that'll be you in a few decades, right?
221
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And then he goes, don't worry, man.
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The night janitor will clean him out from here by tomorrow.
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The guys, the bosses just like to do that to everyone on their first day, right?
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You see enough Hollywood movies and shit.
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You read enough angry tweets.
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You might start thinking this is reality.
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It just don't work like that at all, okay?
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Your employer pays you maybe for a certain quantity of labor, but he's paying you for two much more important things, quality of labor and long-term sustainability.
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For example, is our PCEO Mr. Nick Shaw jazzed when our engineers were extra long one week to push a big feature release into production?
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Absolutely.
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But Mr. Nick Shaw also knows that loads of bugs are a bad deal for customer satisfaction and repeat subscriptions.
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And he wants next year and the year after that to make him loads of money too.
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And the problem is that overworked engineers push a lot of shitty bug-ridden code.
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And they quit their jobs after a few months of abuse and go to have better work-life balance elsewhere.
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There's incredibly talented people.
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They don't need to be around.
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So because of that, Mr. Nick Shaw only ever wants their engineers to work as much as they can sustainably work and never, but for very special occasions like pre-Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, more than that.
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Your boss does not want you to cook yourself and burn out.
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And if you're your own boss, that's hopefully exactly as true.
240
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You're an army of one.
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In fact, your boss might have a more rational restraint on your burnout than you do.
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Because you have an ego about pushing yourself hard and work to contend with, your boss doesn't care about your ego.
243
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He just needs you, the work machine, to keep functioning well and sustainably.
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Shit, Nick constantly tells me to back up and try to work less, and he's right.
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I want you to take this insight and reconfigure how you see evenings, weekends, and vacations.
246
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You can consider them not as time wasted instead of doing the deep work that you're supposed to be doing, and not as a way to accumulate guilt about wasted time.
247
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But instead, you can see evenings, weekends, and vacations as healers, as recovery time,
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so that your deep work sessions are better later.
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It's time off to recharge the machine, and not just recharge, but improve the machine.
250
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Loads of relaxation, of rest, and loads of sleep literally reorganize your brain to become more insightful at deeper levels.
251
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This will make you smarter the next time you do deep work.
252
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It will help you focus more.
253
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Because of these incredible powers of evenings, weekends, and vacations, you need to be taking them, you guys.
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I know, I know, the movie version of work glory is to do all-nighters and say shit like, I'll rest when I'm dead.
255
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Well, keep living like that, pimp, and you'll be dead sooner than later.
256
00:20:15.378 --> 00:20:16.939
But no, it's worse than that.
257
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Because way before you die, you'll suck at productivity because you're exhausted.
258
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Is there anything worse than the death of an Ashkenazi Jew?
259
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It's to be known to be a bad worker before you die.
260
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Dylan, can you imagine that dying on that legacy?
261
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It's crazy.
262
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Yeah, I don't know if I would want that.
263
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No way.
264
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If an athlete I'm coaching refuses to rest and does too much work chronically, I'm not so interested in coaching them much longer.
265
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I want athletes that take recovery as seriously as training.
266
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Most of the best athletes do this.
267
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So yes, you can have intellectual hobbies for your time off, and yes, you can work a bit extra when you feel like it.
268
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But if you're really about being maximally productive, taking a few hours almost every evening, most of both weekend days, including half a day Friday if you can, and taking up to a vacation week once every eight weeks,
269
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And two two-week vacations in a row per year isn't lazy.
270
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It's making your productivity better over time.
271
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Now, guys, what did I just say?
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Several hours on most evenings.
273
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Take most of the entire two-and-a-half weekend days off of formal deep work.
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Try to get a vacation in for a week once every eight weeks.
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And try every year to get two two-week vacations in.
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I will sit here in front of you right now and tell you I do not do this.
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To my detriment, if you feel too guilty for taking this much easy time to recharge, join the club.
278
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I am right there with you.
279
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But in the quest to do our very best in productive work, we do what we must, not what we feel like.
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If you really feel bad for taking that much time off, take revenge by sticking to the plan during your deep work sessions during the week.
281
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That's how you do it, not by sabotaging your rest time, but by using your work time well.
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Instead of not taking an evening off and working extra, try to when you are supposed to be working, put that phone away, pimp.
283
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Lock your office door, put on white nose or ambient music in your headphones and fucking go.
284
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That's how to get ahead.
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Not to think about when you're relaxing, like, oh, I shouldn't be relaxing.
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Nonsense.
287
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Good athletes don't do this.
288
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Good executives don't do this.
289
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And you only hear about the executives that do the opposite because it's glorious and it's tempting.
290
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All right, but what if you get hungry?
291
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Only weak people eat, never eat during teamwork.
292
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I almost had that without laughing.
293
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All right, for real.
294
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What sort of eating and sleeping schedule best helps support your deep work?
295
00:23:14.198 --> 00:23:15.438
Because you're going to fuel a machine.
296
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I'm not going to linger on this much because it's insanely straightforward.
297
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If you'd like to consume any of our other nutrition and sleep stuff, RP Strength YouTube has like more than that and more than you can shake a stick at.
298
00:23:27.007 --> 00:23:31.048
The best diet for focus for most people is one that is at caloric maintenance.
299
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Fat loss diets can enhance focus in some cases, but small deficits here work best, 250 kcal daily deficit, losing half a pound per week kind of diet.
300
00:23:41.731 --> 00:23:45.772
And what you gain in focus, you can lose in deep brain horsepower, so maintenance still wins.
301
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Like you're focused, but you're not as smart as usual.
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Maintenance calories still win.
303
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Enough protein and healthy fats are non-negotiable.
304
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Same advice as for most of my fitness stuff.
305
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Basically 0.75 to a gram per pound of protein per pound of body weight per day.
306
00:24:00.378 --> 00:24:03.220
So if you weigh 200 pounds, 150 to 200 grams of protein.
307
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Half a gram of fat per pound of body weight per day.
308
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So if you weigh 200 pounds, it's like 100 grams of fat.
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Protein is mostly from lean meats, dairy, and vegan sources.
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Ideally less processed food than not, but bars, shakes, and powders are totally fine.
311
00:24:18.928 --> 00:24:25.653
For fats, mostly plant fats, fats from fatty fish, so nuts, nut butters, olive oil, canola oil, avocados, fatty fish, etc.
312
00:24:27.435 --> 00:24:28.696
Carbs are a bit of a mixed bag.
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Most people will respond best to moderate amounts of carbs that are slow digesting.
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Veggies, fruits, and whole grains dominate.
315
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Some folks prefer lower carbs, just like mostly veggies and a few fruits, but healthy fats have to rise to keep you close to maintenance calories or you'll zonk out.
316
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You drop your calories low enough, your brain runs out of fuel, throws up two middle fingers.
317
00:24:50.385 --> 00:24:57.831
Meal timing and size can be a big deal for the best focus because big meals can make you sleepy as hell, and that's a bad deal.
318
00:24:58.491 --> 00:25:01.053
And meals that are too small can make you run and empty for too often.
319
00:25:01.073 --> 00:25:06.338
You eat a teeny tiny meal and you go to four hours of deep work, and by hour two, you're like, uh, I'm only thinking about French fries.
320
00:25:06.358 --> 00:25:07.098
What the hell's going on?
321
00:25:08.679 --> 00:25:14.144
For the best focus, I think in many cases, four roughly evenly spaced meals per day work best.
322
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Roughly evenly sized as well, with one exception, dinner.
323
00:25:19.813 --> 00:25:20.674
Let me put it another way.
324
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The meal you eat after your deep work for the day is done and before you intend to do most of your relaxing can be a bit bigger than the other meals, like 25% or 33% bigger.
325
00:25:33.723 --> 00:25:34.023
Why?
326
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This both helps your brain recharge because you just spent and moved around a ton of substrate.
327
00:25:40.027 --> 00:25:42.349
You emptied a bunch of vesicles in your neurons.
328
00:25:42.709 --> 00:25:43.790
You need a recharge, recharge.
329
00:25:43.810 --> 00:25:44.530
You need a lot of food.
330
00:25:46.132 --> 00:25:46.352
And...
331
00:25:47.495 --> 00:25:52.679
Notice I said that when you eat too much food, quote unquote, a bigger meal, you can feel like kind of out of it because you're super relaxed.
332
00:25:52.699 --> 00:25:54.561
Well, that's exactly what we want after work.
333
00:25:55.741 --> 00:26:05.749
So a bigger dinner or whatever meal you have that's the last meal after deep work is going to be awesome because it puts you into the relaxation mode as bigger meals tend to do.
334
00:26:06.029 --> 00:26:09.332
And literally the extra nutrients are going to recharge you more for the next time.
335
00:26:10.962 --> 00:26:18.805
For the other meals, eat them evenly throughout the day, but with one caveat, wait about 30 minutes or so after a meal to begin your deep work.
336
00:26:18.825 --> 00:26:27.587
Initial digestion can zonk you out a little bit, but once you're well on your way, you'll feel the calm, steady stream of mental energy that will power your deep work session.
337
00:26:28.848 --> 00:26:35.130
And as for sleep, get you your seven to nine hours of restful sleep daily, and don't even futz with that.
338
00:26:36.090 --> 00:26:38.571
You need to do deep work,
339
00:26:39.901 --> 00:26:41.503
After bad or limited sleep sometimes.
340
00:26:42.083 --> 00:26:42.704
That just happens.
341
00:26:43.705 --> 00:26:48.869
Show up to the office on shit sleep and the boss is like, we need to redesign one of those fan blades for the engine.
342
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It needs to happen today.
343
00:26:50.351 --> 00:26:51.412
Oh, shit.
344
00:26:52.653 --> 00:26:53.513
Caffeine can work.
345
00:26:53.574 --> 00:26:58.018
I personally like something called parazanthine because it's caffeine without the anxiety stuff.
346
00:26:58.977 --> 00:27:00.898
Caffeine plus L-theanine is really good.
347
00:27:01.898 --> 00:27:10.682
20 grams, I said that right, 20 grams of creatine monohydrate also tends to make the brain perform better when sleep deprived and tired.
348
00:27:10.702 --> 00:27:18.226
So get you 20 grams of creatine, get you L-theanine, 200 milligrams of L-theanine, and get you some caffeine or get some paraxanthine instead of that caffeine.
349
00:27:19.066 --> 00:27:23.728
You won't be at your best because sleep has no equal, but you'll be way better than not and then plow through it.
350
00:27:24.488 --> 00:27:27.910
But if you're always getting bad sleep, that ain't it.
351
00:27:29.045 --> 00:27:31.147
Let's talk about passion and challenge in your work.
352
00:27:31.407 --> 00:27:40.977
One of the biggest sources of focus, and one that especially makes a huge difference if you're struggling with attention, is how much passion you have in your work and how much challenge the work gives you.
353
00:27:42.058 --> 00:27:43.780
Look, we all have to do mundane shit.
354
00:27:44.682 --> 00:27:55.753
But if you really buy into the work and you really care, sometimes by trying to care, at least at first, about the work, your ability to focus will skyrocket.
355
00:27:55.773 --> 00:28:00.758
When I'm doing something I'm passionate about, I'll soil myself before stopping and sometimes just for fun.
356
00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:07.966
I've had to get rid of like five work chairs this year because they're covered in urine and feces, you guys, and earwax.
357
00:28:09.237 --> 00:28:10.418
Oh, the earwax, Dylan.
358
00:28:10.779 --> 00:28:11.780
It baffles the mind.
359
00:28:11.860 --> 00:28:13.782
Does it fall out of my ears onto the chair?
360
00:28:14.363 --> 00:28:17.206
Are you doing it like gum or you like take it out of your ear and then put it under the chair?
361
00:28:17.226 --> 00:28:18.928
I definitely do that.
362
00:28:19.008 --> 00:28:20.490
I also try to taste my earwax.
363
00:28:21.551 --> 00:28:24.494
It works as a good chapstick if you don't have chapstick.
364
00:28:24.514 --> 00:28:25.295
Yeah, I don't need chapstick.
365
00:28:25.335 --> 00:28:25.876
I have earwax.
366
00:28:25.916 --> 00:28:29.480
You go on a first date like that, the girl like sits down and just gets up and leaves and you never see her again.
367
00:28:31.133 --> 00:28:34.479
All jokes aside, passion goes a long, long way.
368
00:28:34.760 --> 00:28:39.950
So whatever you can do to kindle passion is going to make deep work 10 times more productive and easier.
369
00:28:41.352 --> 00:28:42.775
Challenge has an effect as well.
370
00:28:44.432 --> 00:28:50.073
It's tougher to focus on something easy and like when it's rote, when it's routine.
371
00:28:50.573 --> 00:28:51.333
Your mind will wander.
372
00:28:52.173 --> 00:28:55.374
It's also tougher to focus on things that are super out of your depth difficult.
373
00:28:55.854 --> 00:28:58.294
Frustration is a poison to attention.
374
00:28:59.255 --> 00:29:01.915
It's almost literally evolution telling you like, bro, you can't do this.
375
00:29:01.955 --> 00:29:03.155
Just go put your focus elsewhere.
376
00:29:03.895 --> 00:29:06.376
Like it's like you're trying to pull a bone off a mammoth and it's not working.
377
00:29:06.636 --> 00:29:10.477
Your brain is like, stop, go get meat off another part of this animal.
378
00:29:10.577 --> 00:29:12.357
You're doing something just wasting calories.
379
00:29:14.312 --> 00:29:20.314
The Goldilocks zone that we're looking for ideally is challenging but doable.
380
00:29:20.794 --> 00:29:21.734
That is mint.
381
00:29:23.575 --> 00:29:30.957
Get in there, do your deep work, and you'll move mountains while time passes by like it was never even there.
382
00:29:31.817 --> 00:29:32.997
You're passionate about something.
383
00:29:33.257 --> 00:29:35.438
It's challenging, but it's possible.
384
00:29:35.718 --> 00:29:36.278
It's doable.
385
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:40.039
Can you always do passionate and challenging things in your deep work?
386
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:40.259
No.
387
00:29:41.100 --> 00:29:42.420
Sometimes it just has to get did.
388
00:29:44.265 --> 00:29:49.627
Can you lean into any work and care about it more and see it as a challenge?
389
00:29:49.787 --> 00:29:50.067
Yes.
390
00:29:51.187 --> 00:29:53.528
If the work is easy, speed up to challenge yourself.
391
00:29:53.748 --> 00:29:55.549
If it's hard, slow down to keep it doable.
392
00:29:56.349 --> 00:30:04.072
If you don't care about it, think about how it's making you smarter to do it, training you to do things you don't love to do, which is an enormous asset, by the way.
393
00:30:04.694 --> 00:30:05.354
I'll say this again.
394
00:30:05.755 --> 00:30:16.341
The way to motivate yourself to do work you don't want to do is to realize that after you do it, as you do it, you're going to be training yourself to do things you don't want to do, which is a huge unlock because you become a work machine that can do anything if you do that enough.
395
00:30:17.502 --> 00:30:20.124
And it's helping you and it's helping society get the work done.
396
00:30:21.285 --> 00:30:21.525
You're like…
397
00:30:22.250 --> 00:30:26.352
People degrade like McDonald's, like, oh, you want to get a job being a burger flipper?
398
00:30:26.472 --> 00:30:27.052
Well, guess what?
399
00:30:27.112 --> 00:30:31.454
When hungry people need burgers, they're so goddamn thankful that McDonald's employees exist.
400
00:30:31.694 --> 00:30:33.815
How am I supposed to eat a burger if no one's going to do the shit?
401
00:30:34.436 --> 00:30:40.859
It is an absolutely critical, essential, amazing job that very directly helps someone right away.
402
00:30:41.339 --> 00:30:42.139
You're a therapist.
403
00:30:42.219 --> 00:30:43.100
Listen, you're doing great work.
404
00:30:43.120 --> 00:30:43.880
This is just a joke.
405
00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:44.841
But, like, you could be there.
406
00:30:45.601 --> 00:30:49.943
therapy-ing someone for days and weeks and nothing happens.
407
00:30:50.243 --> 00:30:53.104
You give someone a cheeseburger, that for sure makes them happy right then and there.
408
00:30:53.524 --> 00:31:00.027
Every job that is determined to be a good thing to do is a good thing to do, so remember that.
409
00:31:00.147 --> 00:31:07.210
Over time, if you care, you can focus your education on career more and more into the stuff that's both challenging and passion-inducing.
410
00:31:09.177 --> 00:31:13.420
A lot of folks that work on missions they love say that deep work is almost automatic for them.
411
00:31:13.781 --> 00:31:14.621
Can you imagine that?
412
00:31:15.082 --> 00:31:15.702
It's possible.
413
00:31:16.403 --> 00:31:16.943
It's possible.
414
00:31:20.246 --> 00:31:25.250
Taking all of this together, what can getting better at deep work do for you?
415
00:31:25.450 --> 00:31:31.375
Because I'm ranting about how to do deep work because for us ADHD people, we kind of need all the help we can get.
416
00:31:32.055 --> 00:31:34.978
For us, deep work is the only way we're going to get much work done at all.
417
00:31:35.018 --> 00:31:36.639
It's either deep work or it just doesn't happen.
418
00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:38.781
But no matter who you are,
419
00:31:39.737 --> 00:31:49.640
doing months and years of deep work with more and more of the tips that hopefully you've learned in these last two videos will change you and it will make you better.
420
00:31:50.980 --> 00:31:51.560
Better at what?
421
00:31:52.521 --> 00:31:53.721
Well, a few things.
422
00:31:55.041 --> 00:31:59.323
Over months and years, diligent two to four hour sessions of deep work can do the following.
423
00:32:01.903 --> 00:32:07.085
First, it can dramatically increase the amount of valuable work that you produce.
424
00:32:08.792 --> 00:32:12.994
Most people spend so much of the day responding, scrolling, switching tasks, warming up.
425
00:32:13.674 --> 00:32:18.717
Two or three genuinely focused hours can produce more meaningful output than an entire distracted workday.
426
00:32:19.117 --> 00:32:21.478
I see this happen all the time to people.
427
00:32:22.098 --> 00:32:22.598
All the time.
428
00:32:23.079 --> 00:32:25.000
There's work and then there's quote unquote work.
429
00:32:26.020 --> 00:32:28.961
Just checking emails and doing Instagram something or other.
430
00:32:29.021 --> 00:32:29.562
Pretend work.
431
00:32:30.942 --> 00:32:32.263
Deep work makes you go to real work.
432
00:32:34.942 --> 00:32:39.765
Deep work lets you solve problems that are literally inaccessible in shallow thinking modes.
433
00:32:39.805 --> 00:32:43.427
Some problems have too many interacting parts to fit into your mind immediately.
434
00:32:44.288 --> 00:32:55.294
Deep work gives you time to load the whole system into your working memory, turn it around, futz with it, test possibilities, and finally see relationships that were invisible just 20 minutes later of you just randomly thinking about it.
435
00:32:56.232 --> 00:33:01.035
When I'm on calls with my engineering team at RP, sometimes big questions will be like, guys, let me get back to you on that.
436
00:33:01.095 --> 00:33:02.476
I don't think about them on the call.
437
00:33:02.817 --> 00:33:04.518
After the call, I clean my plate.
438
00:33:04.618 --> 00:33:05.578
I write out a couple to-dos.
439
00:33:05.839 --> 00:33:07.360
I try to intellectually grapple with a problem.
440
00:33:07.380 --> 00:33:09.301
And then 30 minutes later, I call them back.
441
00:33:09.321 --> 00:33:10.742
I'm like, fellas, one, two, three.
442
00:33:10.762 --> 00:33:11.663
They're like, wow, okay, sweet.
443
00:33:11.703 --> 00:33:12.223
That works.
444
00:33:12.423 --> 00:33:12.843
Thank you.
445
00:33:13.584 --> 00:33:15.685
Because I need to go back on my own and do deep work on it.
446
00:33:16.466 --> 00:33:17.827
I can't just vibe off everything.
447
00:33:18.663 --> 00:33:20.224
You guys have seen me on podcasts before.
448
00:33:20.404 --> 00:33:23.146
I'm pretty goddamn good at vibing on the spot, but that's nonsense.
449
00:33:23.386 --> 00:33:24.247
This is good for vibing.
450
00:33:24.447 --> 00:33:26.208
It's not good to that next quality standard.
451
00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:32.973
The thing about Deep Work Next is it converts raw intelligence into applied intelligence.
452
00:33:34.154 --> 00:33:36.615
Being smart gives you potential processing power.
453
00:33:37.376 --> 00:33:45.141
Deep Work teaches you to aim that power at one target long enough to generate a useful answer or a product or a strategy or a skill.
454
00:33:46.528 --> 00:33:51.573
Intelligence without application is an extremely expensive sports car idling in the driveway.
455
00:33:51.593 --> 00:33:52.614
You ain't driving that shit anywhere.
456
00:33:53.735 --> 00:33:58.820
I remember back in my school days, some folks would really brag about how little they worked and how much they could get done.
457
00:33:59.140 --> 00:34:04.526
And the only thing I thought of, like, well, imagine if that person really tried to work a long time, they wouldn't have to be in school anymore.
458
00:34:06.768 --> 00:34:09.771
Another benefit of deep work is it accelerates difficult learning.
459
00:34:11.462 --> 00:34:20.648
Focused immersion allows you to build richer mental models, connecting new information to old information, which is massive.
460
00:34:21.769 --> 00:34:25.772
It lets you identify precisely what you don't understand and correct mistakes later.
461
00:34:26.665 --> 00:34:28.065
correct mistakes faster.
462
00:34:28.125 --> 00:34:31.686
Over several years, this can create an absurd knowledge advantage.
463
00:34:31.806 --> 00:34:34.767
All the stuff that I know real well, I did a lot of deep work on.
464
00:34:35.327 --> 00:34:38.668
I go on podcasts for exercise science like, damn, you can just explain this offhand.
465
00:34:38.688 --> 00:34:39.708
Like, that's my job.
466
00:34:40.148 --> 00:34:43.669
But it's not because I just read a few books and I was like, yeah, okay, maybe that makes sense.
467
00:34:44.029 --> 00:34:45.249
Deep work is the key.
468
00:34:46.290 --> 00:34:50.711
It's going to make you deeply familiar with your subject in a way that makes you unlock new stuff.
469
00:34:52.251 --> 00:34:56.252
And really importantly, deep work trains your ability to stay with discomfort,
470
00:34:57.785 --> 00:35:09.288
Deep work frequently produces confusion, frustration, boredom, and like the real temptation that you might just want to go to your phone because something on your phone is important, right?
471
00:35:10.268 --> 00:35:11.348
Them hoes and the DMs.
472
00:35:12.648 --> 00:35:17.410
Remaining engaged even when you don't want to teaches your brain that discomfort is not an evacuation order.
473
00:35:18.770 --> 00:35:22.651
And over time, you become radically more effective and less distractible.
474
00:35:23.151 --> 00:35:23.771
Deep work,
475
00:35:26.232 --> 00:35:30.338
increases your professional rarity because most people don't do deep work.
476
00:35:30.919 --> 00:35:36.447
You can just become more productive than most people that are even more talented than you because you go off and make amazing things.
477
00:35:37.897 --> 00:35:44.361
The way it does that in some sense is improving the quality and originality of every idea is because you're really focusing on the task.
478
00:35:44.701 --> 00:35:45.301
Let me ask you a question.
479
00:35:45.582 --> 00:35:49.664
How much smarter is ChatGPT Pro on thinking mode than ChatGPT Instant?
480
00:35:49.844 --> 00:35:50.805
Like, I don't know, a trillion?
481
00:35:50.905 --> 00:35:51.125
Why?
482
00:35:51.385 --> 00:35:52.446
Because it's doing deep work.
483
00:35:52.506 --> 00:35:53.466
That's what it's doing in there.
484
00:35:53.827 --> 00:35:56.408
If it just vibes an idea off, it's never as good.
485
00:35:57.709 --> 00:35:59.270
It's never as good if you just vibe.
486
00:36:01.596 --> 00:36:03.578
You do this long enough and you get good at deep work.
487
00:36:03.598 --> 00:36:04.919
You begin to trust yourself more.
488
00:36:04.959 --> 00:36:06.861
You're the kind of person that can do deep work.
489
00:36:06.881 --> 00:36:07.983
You get things done.
490
00:36:08.563 --> 00:36:09.985
You have an expanded sense of agency.
491
00:36:10.005 --> 00:36:11.947
Someone's like, hey, can you do this project by next week?
492
00:36:11.967 --> 00:36:15.270
You're like, yeah, probably because you've done it before.
493
00:36:17.506 --> 00:36:21.827
And it can make your most ambitious ideas and projects psychologically manageable.
494
00:36:21.967 --> 00:36:27.328
Because like writing a book, building a company, building an app, mastering a technical field, you don't do that on vibes.
495
00:36:27.348 --> 00:36:30.389
You don't do that just by like, oh, I seem to be able to do that.
496
00:36:30.689 --> 00:36:32.450
That's hundreds of deep work sessions.
497
00:36:32.490 --> 00:36:37.291
If you know you can do deep work well, you're going to do amazing things.
498
00:36:38.111 --> 00:36:43.772
And the last thing I'll say for today is that deep work does this magical, magical thing.
499
00:36:48.211 --> 00:36:51.633
it erases your dependence on motivation.
500
00:36:53.134 --> 00:36:59.979
You're not always going to be motivated to work, but if you're good at deep work, just like if you're good at training, you warm up and you get in and you do it.
501
00:37:00.939 --> 00:37:03.061
And what needs to get done gets done.
502
00:37:04.202 --> 00:37:07.604
Whether or not you felt like it, that is the huge unlock.
503
00:37:08.843 --> 00:37:15.791
In my own time with deep work, this is where I get my most transcendent Buddhist experiences of mindfulness.
504
00:37:15.991 --> 00:37:17.573
I love deep work.
505
00:37:17.613 --> 00:37:19.995
It's my favorite thing to do by a mile.
506
00:37:21.277 --> 00:37:22.138
Sometimes it's tough.
507
00:37:22.958 --> 00:37:24.420
With ADHD, it can be real tough.
508
00:37:25.475 --> 00:37:32.782
If you integrate all of the tips that we talked about for the past three lectures, especially two, on this topic, it's going to give you an advantage.
509
00:37:33.703 --> 00:37:34.444
Thanks for tuning in.
510
00:37:34.464 --> 00:37:43.012
Guys, next time we talk about ADHD in the last video, it'll be talking about all the medications you can potentially take for ADHD to give yourself an edge.
511
00:37:43.533 --> 00:37:44.754
And I'll see you in the next video.
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I know, I know, the movie version of work glory is to do all-nighters and say shit like, I'll rest when I'm dead.
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Well, keep living like that, pimp, and you'll be dead sooner than later.
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But no, it's worse than that.
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Because way before you die, you'll suck at productivity because you're exhausted.
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Welcome to part three of our four-part series on having ADHD or having attention span issues and becoming more focused and more productive to be your best.
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All right, so today, part three, we're going to start off with the end of part two.
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We covered a ton of details about how to do deep work sessions, which are the core essence of maximizing work productivity.
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You want to do something well, you do it in deep work.
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So how do you know you're ready to stop deep work for the session and how do you know to plan to pick it up again later?
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As opposed to just, oh, I just need another break.
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Your brain is starting to turn into mush.
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In other words, the quality of your output has fallen below your non-negotiable line.
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My best way to ascertain this transition point is to notice for when your need for breaks to keep the mind humming basically becomes back to back.
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Your break to work ratio falls to below three to one.
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Here's what I mean by that.
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If you're still good to go, but just need a break, you take five, come back and work at least another three X, 15 minutes.
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before you need to take five again.
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Ideally, you work much longer, like another hour, but anything lower than that three to one becomes highly inefficient.
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If you need a break before the three to one time, and it's only been like 12 minutes since your last five minute break, and you for sure need a break, and your output quality has fallen again to where you need a break, or it stayed so low that you can barely push through it anymore, it's probably time to consider ending that deep work session.
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When elite basketball players are so tired that they start missing really easy shots consistently, the smart ones go home and rest for the next session.
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Yes, it can feel warrior-like to persist, but almost never at the expense of quality.
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It's coming at the expense of quality.
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It's not called deep work anymore.
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It's called deep slop.
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Oh, you're deep.
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Make it slop.
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So that all being the case, I want you to consider pushing into mild discomfort towards the end of most of your deep work sessions.
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You want to push into mild discomfort.
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Instead of trying to ignore the temptation to break upon quality reduction just once, which is how you should be taking breaks.
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We covered this in part two.
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First time you want to take a break, just ignore it.
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Second time, okay, fine, I'll take one.
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I want you to try to recommit an extra time and see how long you can keep working for.
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So your brain says, break, recommit, work.
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Okay, now the quality's down.
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Okay, break.
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That's going to buy you either another five minutes of time or another like 90 minutes of time doing deep work, which could be incredible.
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You never can tell unless you push.
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So, for example, like usually when you feel like taking a break in like the middle of a deep work session, you gather your thoughts and try to keep going.
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Sometimes it works.
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Get another hour of deep work.
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Sometimes you're back to low quality one minute later.
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In the cases in which it's one minute later, then it's break time.
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00:03:25.420 --> 00:03:29.741
But for the end of your deep work sessions, try to recommit one extra time.
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Like when it's getting close to the end and you wanna take a break, even a two-time recommit is good.
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00:03:34.223 --> 00:03:40.164
Feel the difficulty of helping your mind ease in to the focus of the task despite your fatigue.
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This is like the analogy of going close to or beyond muscle failure in hypertrophy training in the gym.
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It's uncomfortable, but it works.
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And this practice can help you get slightly better at focusing under fatigue over time.
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It can thus expand your attention span and ability to do deep work meaningfully.
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It's massive.
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At some point years later, you might be able to actually get work done at a coffee shop for like an hour as opposed to your current five minutes at most in such a distracting environment because you were pushing it regularly.
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00:04:12.726 --> 00:04:19.810
And if you're in your ideal office setup, you might be able to push your deep work session length from three hours maximum to four hours, which can be a huge deal.
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So at the end of your deep work sessions, if you feel compelled, try to push it a little bit.
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But again, if you're already just slopping and slopping, it's time to cut it off.
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Next up, this is this more grand hierarchical view.
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We're leaving the deep work session.
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We're going up a level to total weekly session number management.
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The sessions themselves we're done chatting about for now.
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Some folks at the end of deep work sessions, last thing I'll say, like to write down what their next deep work session should prioritize.
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But that can also be done in another time that's not deep work, or it can be done in the warmup for the next session.
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I'm agnostic on that tip.
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Try it, see if it works well for you.
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But thinking about what you're gonna do in your next deep work session opens up this topic for us, which is this little guy is the Plod Note Pin S. It is an AI note-taking device that has been designed
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to help you not lose ideas or conversations and be able to go back and search them later.
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Dylan and I had a meeting for this very channel and we were trying to theorize all sorts of productive ideas to turn into videos to get to you guys.
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but we had to keep interrupting our session to write down notes and making sure, hey, this is super important, let's write it down.
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Then we just pulled out the note pin and we could keep the conversation flowing with basically zero interruptions.
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We can take all of our insight later from the note pin S.
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And we don't have to search through it to find the important stuff.
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You can just talk to this thing like you would any other intelligent system and ask, hey, can you give me an idea of all the core main points that were discussed and so on.
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And it does this seamlessly.
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We basically have an expert note taker anywhere we go.
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Guys, you can save 20% on any PLOD product with code Mike20 at the first link in the description.
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All right, enjoy.
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How many deep work sessions should you be doing in a typical week?
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It is a very important question.
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In the last part of this video, in part two, I said, if you can do two three-hour deep work sessions twice a day, four days a week, and one three-hour deep work session on a Friday, almost every week, you can conquer the world.
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I swore at that time, the effing world, I said.
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Now, you might notice if you peruse your documents that conquering the world is not exactly on your proximate agenda for this year.
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So the more realistic question is how many deep work sessions of two to four hours per week should you be doing if you wanna do well at your job and stuff and not have to conquer the world?
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There are at least three, as I count them, intersecting variables that will guide your selection here.
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Ability, need, and desire.
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Let's go through all three of them.
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First is ability.
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You actually can't do any more deep work sessions than you're able to do.
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If you can do one three-hour deep work session Monday through Friday and no more, but the PhD program in quantum physics you're considering is gonna require two three-hour sessions every day, Monday through Friday, then you might need to reconsider signing up for the program.
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There are things outside of your ability set.
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That's a true fact.
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at least for now, right?
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I know it's not PC to say this, but we're not all work machines.
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For example, I can't code.
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I do not have the remote attention span to code.
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All of my software friends are like, oh my God, code, learn code, it's so easy.
95
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And they're like, just all take for granted that they were born with laser focus.
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And to code productively for an actual software business,
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I just can't, hey, there's no way I'm gonna do that.
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No big deal, I just do other stuff.
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Understanding your limitations, pushing them, and working within them is a real good thing.
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So if you just can't keep up with a deep work schedule, then just don't.
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There's a couple other examples of this.
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Medical school.
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Pre-med programs almost give you so much work that they just wanna see if you can hack.
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Plenty of people are smart enough to become doctors.
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Not everyone can just plow, doctors plow.
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And if you can do pre-med, yeah, med school will be just fine.
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And if you can do med school, residency will be just fine.
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But if you're really struggling pre-med, med school is gonna be a big fucking shock because there's a certain amount of work that's expected, you just gotta be able to do it.
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It's not for everybody.
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Next is need.
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Okay, so you're able or unable, and that'll change over time slowly.
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Need.
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So long as it's within your ability to do, need is the next most important factor to determine your deep work duration.
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Dylan, as hood vernacular would have it, shit needs to get did.
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You feel me?
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Done did.
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Done did.
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If doing well at school or your job requires 12 total hours of deep work per week on average, that might mean four three-hour weekly sessions per week, no negotiations.
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Sometimes you hit a groove and get the work done in three sessions.
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Sometimes it's a slog and you have to do five sessions to get the work done.
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At the end of the week, though, the work simply needs to get done.
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So if you're able, then you do the work.
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Need is the big one.
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It doesn't cancel out ability, but it sure determines a lot.
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And then lastly is desire.
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Sometimes you're able to do more work than you need to be doing to have success at your job.
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And you might love your work, but once you finish, you move on to hobbies or other activities.
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Nothing at all wrong with that.
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I have many friends who have loads of leisure time and hobbies because they can get their deep work done with loads of time in that week to spare.
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But sometimes you just can't help yourself.
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You want to do more deep work.
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In some jobs, you can work way ahead of the pace and get weeks done ahead of time.
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In some other jobs, you can ask for other projects to work on or to help with when you're done with your core work.
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In other jobs, you get paid by the work, so the more work you do, the more you get paid.
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And in still other jobs, there's kind of no way to do more work than are already allotted, so you might be inclined to do some other work on the side, earning extra money, training up to elevate your career later on, or working on the transition to another career altogether.
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Like you work at a nine to five job in which you're supposed to be present and people call in and ask you for problems and you resolve them on your computer.
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If that's your job, but people sometimes only call in once an hour for five minutes at a time, you're gonna like be studying for a whole different academic specialty in your free time.
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And then you go and enroll in university and they're like, holy shit, you're an expert in this already.
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You get your degrees two years sooner and you get a new job as an engineer because you were studying to be an engineer while you did quality control at your old job.
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Totally a thing.
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Many of my colleague coaches at RP Strength, who coach a bunch of folks, are full-time college professors.
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They can plow through their college professor work in like half of their weekly deep work abilities.
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So they take on diet and training clients on the side through RP, earning loads of money, and in the process helping a bunch of folks get in the shapes of their lives.
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Amazing.
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When I was a professor, I used my extra deep work bandwidth to write visiting lectures and books, create templates, and eventually build logic maps for our suite of diet and training apps.
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If you have more deep work ability than need, consider this one of the most incredible gifts from the universe because you have the ability to do extra, which is incredible and will take you really, really far.
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My humble recommendation here is if you have more desire and ability than you have need for deep work, don't squander it.
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Tend to your needs.
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Stay late.
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Stay late.
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Do more deep work.
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Swim in the sea of focus and productivity.
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There's a point at which you don't need to be doing anything, but at 7 p.m. and you're still in the office, you're like, I want to be here, baby.
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I want to fucking do this.
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I'm so into whatever extra thing I'm doing now.
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Stay.
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Stay.
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Swim in the sea.
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Not only does it feel incredible to be immersed in deep work that's meaningful, but it helps the world and it often gets you paid extra.
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What a combination.
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Remember when you did a thing that was challenging, felt amazing, helped others, and made you more money?
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I mean, what more can you ask of life?
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Now, even if you're passionate and your desire for deep work is very high, you still need to hold yourself back to some extent.
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This is exactly like training with weights or for any other sport.
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You can love it so much,
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that you train too much and your body starts to break down, getting you burned out or hurt.
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The brain is literally a part of your body and it operates under the same rules.
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My biggest tip for how to find your weekly maximum average for total deep work is see how many sessions or total hours gets you to the point of, I'm pleasantly fried, and after a few days of minimal or no deep work, I'll be good to start another week at the same pace, no problem.
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If you feel like you're completely spent every Friday,
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such that you feel like quitting your job, you're probably doing too much.
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If you never feel remotely challenged, that's okay, but you know you can do more.
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This is true for almost all weeks of the year, but with a few exceptions.
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So for that, we're gonna chat next about evenings, weekends, and vacations, which are what support your ability to do work.
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But let me restate this, the golden amount of deep work to do is enough that just gets you fried up enough
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that the weekend or whatever hours of the rest of the week you have to chill, bring you back the next week fresh and ready.
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Challenging, but recoverable.
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If it's not challenging at all, you can just work more.
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I'm not here to tell you that.
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That's between you and you.
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If you're burning yourself out every week, there is this glory.
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Dylan, you know all those finance movies and all the media about Elon working every second of his life and sleeps under his desk, you know all that stuff?
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Mm-hmm.
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That's all good stuff, right?
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It gets you inspired.
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That is not sustainable.
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That is not how you do life.
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You want to push it, but you want to push it so that you recover every single time.
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Your quality is exceptionally high.
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It's a big deal.
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So you never have to be feeling guilty about not working enough.
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You work as much as you can and no more.
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And you can push it over months and over weeks to do a little bit more, but you have to be ginger with yourself.
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Speaking of which, evenings, weekends, and vacations.
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The feel on weekends and vacations and time off in general is a bit iffy in productivity discussions, of which there are very many on the Internet.
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You're supposed to be like working yourself into brain bleeds and this rat race to get ahead, right, brothers and sisters?
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Dylan, you ever heard that term, the rat race?
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No, but I do remember watching the movie.
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No way.
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Oh, the movie's great.
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The Rat Race is this thing people say about modern capitalist life.
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You're like, go to school, get a job, get promoted, get another promotion, become the head guy, and you're always stressing and working and stressing and working.
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Mind you, people say this when they have a $500,000 home in a fucking private pond and they're like the rat race.
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Like, shut up.
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The real rat race is when you're like enslaved in Africa or some shit like that.
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Get out of my face.
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You're doing all of this voluntarily.
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Right?
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Toxic slave capitalism demands that you work until you break for the corporation.
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So that when you die at your desk, the bosses writ large, of course, can slide your dead body over just far enough, Dylan, for a young, scared, feeble replacement worker of yours to take your place.
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Like, oh, oh, God, he's looking at your decomposing body.
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And he knows one thing, Dylan, for sure.
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He's next.
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Is this a threat?
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In however many years the corporation no longer needs him, right?
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When he like works himself to the bone or whatever.
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And, you know, he's trying to work and focus on his work as your corpse literally rots merely feet away from his body.
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Yeah, we keep the last guy down in the basement.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Your colleague from across the table tells the new guy, hey, that'll be you in a few decades, right?
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And then he goes, don't worry, man.
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The night janitor will clean him out from here by tomorrow.
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The guys, the bosses just like to do that to everyone on their first day, right?
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You see enough Hollywood movies and shit.
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You read enough angry tweets.
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You might start thinking this is reality.
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It just don't work like that at all, okay?
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Your employer pays you maybe for a certain quantity of labor, but he's paying you for two much more important things, quality of labor and long-term sustainability.
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For example, is our PCEO Mr. Nick Shaw jazzed when our engineers were extra long one week to push a big feature release into production?
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Absolutely.
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But Mr. Nick Shaw also knows that loads of bugs are a bad deal for customer satisfaction and repeat subscriptions.
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And he wants next year and the year after that to make him loads of money too.
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And the problem is that overworked engineers push a lot of shitty bug-ridden code.
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And they quit their jobs after a few months of abuse and go to have better work-life balance elsewhere.
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There's incredibly talented people.
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They don't need to be around.
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So because of that, Mr. Nick Shaw only ever wants their engineers to work as much as they can sustainably work and never, but for very special occasions like pre-Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, more than that.
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Your boss does not want you to cook yourself and burn out.
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And if you're your own boss, that's hopefully exactly as true.
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You're an army of one.
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In fact, your boss might have a more rational restraint on your burnout than you do.
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Because you have an ego about pushing yourself hard and work to contend with, your boss doesn't care about your ego.
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He just needs you, the work machine, to keep functioning well and sustainably.
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Shit, Nick constantly tells me to back up and try to work less, and he's right.
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I want you to take this insight and reconfigure how you see evenings, weekends, and vacations.
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You can consider them not as time wasted instead of doing the deep work that you're supposed to be doing, and not as a way to accumulate guilt about wasted time.
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But instead, you can see evenings, weekends, and vacations as healers, as recovery time,
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so that your deep work sessions are better later.
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It's time off to recharge the machine, and not just recharge, but improve the machine.
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Loads of relaxation, of rest, and loads of sleep literally reorganize your brain to become more insightful at deeper levels.
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This will make you smarter the next time you do deep work.
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It will help you focus more.
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Because of these incredible powers of evenings, weekends, and vacations, you need to be taking them, you guys.
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I know, I know, the movie version of work glory is to do all-nighters and say shit like, I'll rest when I'm dead.
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Well, keep living like that, pimp, and you'll be dead sooner than later.
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But no, it's worse than that.
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Because way before you die, you'll suck at productivity because you're exhausted.
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Is there anything worse than the death of an Ashkenazi Jew?
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It's to be known to be a bad worker before you die.
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Dylan, can you imagine that dying on that legacy?
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It's crazy.
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Yeah, I don't know if I would want that.
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No way.
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If an athlete I'm coaching refuses to rest and does too much work chronically, I'm not so interested in coaching them much longer.
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I want athletes that take recovery as seriously as training.
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Most of the best athletes do this.
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So yes, you can have intellectual hobbies for your time off, and yes, you can work a bit extra when you feel like it.
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But if you're really about being maximally productive, taking a few hours almost every evening, most of both weekend days, including half a day Friday if you can, and taking up to a vacation week once every eight weeks,
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And two two-week vacations in a row per year isn't lazy.
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It's making your productivity better over time.
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Now, guys, what did I just say?
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Several hours on most evenings.
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Take most of the entire two-and-a-half weekend days off of formal deep work.
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Try to get a vacation in for a week once every eight weeks.
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And try every year to get two two-week vacations in.
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I will sit here in front of you right now and tell you I do not do this.
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To my detriment, if you feel too guilty for taking this much easy time to recharge, join the club.
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I am right there with you.
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But in the quest to do our very best in productive work, we do what we must, not what we feel like.
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If you really feel bad for taking that much time off, take revenge by sticking to the plan during your deep work sessions during the week.
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That's how you do it, not by sabotaging your rest time, but by using your work time well.
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Instead of not taking an evening off and working extra, try to when you are supposed to be working, put that phone away, pimp.
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Lock your office door, put on white nose or ambient music in your headphones and fucking go.
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That's how to get ahead.
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Not to think about when you're relaxing, like, oh, I shouldn't be relaxing.
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Nonsense.
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Good athletes don't do this.
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Good executives don't do this.
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And you only hear about the executives that do the opposite because it's glorious and it's tempting.
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All right, but what if you get hungry?
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Only weak people eat, never eat during teamwork.
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I almost had that without laughing.
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All right, for real.
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What sort of eating and sleeping schedule best helps support your deep work?
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Because you're going to fuel a machine.
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I'm not going to linger on this much because it's insanely straightforward.
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If you'd like to consume any of our other nutrition and sleep stuff, RP Strength YouTube has like more than that and more than you can shake a stick at.
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The best diet for focus for most people is one that is at caloric maintenance.
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Fat loss diets can enhance focus in some cases, but small deficits here work best, 250 kcal daily deficit, losing half a pound per week kind of diet.
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And what you gain in focus, you can lose in deep brain horsepower, so maintenance still wins.
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Like you're focused, but you're not as smart as usual.
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Maintenance calories still win.
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Enough protein and healthy fats are non-negotiable.
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Same advice as for most of my fitness stuff.
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Basically 0.75 to a gram per pound of protein per pound of body weight per day.
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So if you weigh 200 pounds, 150 to 200 grams of protein.
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Half a gram of fat per pound of body weight per day.
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So if you weigh 200 pounds, it's like 100 grams of fat.
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Protein is mostly from lean meats, dairy, and vegan sources.
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Ideally less processed food than not, but bars, shakes, and powders are totally fine.
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For fats, mostly plant fats, fats from fatty fish, so nuts, nut butters, olive oil, canola oil, avocados, fatty fish, etc.
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Carbs are a bit of a mixed bag.
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Most people will respond best to moderate amounts of carbs that are slow digesting.
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Veggies, fruits, and whole grains dominate.
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Some folks prefer lower carbs, just like mostly veggies and a few fruits, but healthy fats have to rise to keep you close to maintenance calories or you'll zonk out.
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You drop your calories low enough, your brain runs out of fuel, throws up two middle fingers.
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Meal timing and size can be a big deal for the best focus because big meals can make you sleepy as hell, and that's a bad deal.
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And meals that are too small can make you run and empty for too often.
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You eat a teeny tiny meal and you go to four hours of deep work, and by hour two, you're like, uh, I'm only thinking about French fries.
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What the hell's going on?
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For the best focus, I think in many cases, four roughly evenly spaced meals per day work best.
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Roughly evenly sized as well, with one exception, dinner.
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Let me put it another way.
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The meal you eat after your deep work for the day is done and before you intend to do most of your relaxing can be a bit bigger than the other meals, like 25% or 33% bigger.
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Why?
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This both helps your brain recharge because you just spent and moved around a ton of substrate.
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You emptied a bunch of vesicles in your neurons.
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You need a recharge, recharge.
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You need a lot of food.
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00:25:46.132 --> 00:25:46.352
And...
331
00:25:47.495 --> 00:25:52.679
Notice I said that when you eat too much food, quote unquote, a bigger meal, you can feel like kind of out of it because you're super relaxed.
332
00:25:52.699 --> 00:25:54.561
Well, that's exactly what we want after work.
333
00:25:55.741 --> 00:26:05.749
So a bigger dinner or whatever meal you have that's the last meal after deep work is going to be awesome because it puts you into the relaxation mode as bigger meals tend to do.
334
00:26:06.029 --> 00:26:09.332
And literally the extra nutrients are going to recharge you more for the next time.
335
00:26:10.962 --> 00:26:18.805
For the other meals, eat them evenly throughout the day, but with one caveat, wait about 30 minutes or so after a meal to begin your deep work.
336
00:26:18.825 --> 00:26:27.587
Initial digestion can zonk you out a little bit, but once you're well on your way, you'll feel the calm, steady stream of mental energy that will power your deep work session.
337
00:26:28.848 --> 00:26:35.130
And as for sleep, get you your seven to nine hours of restful sleep daily, and don't even futz with that.
338
00:26:36.090 --> 00:26:38.571
You need to do deep work,
339
00:26:39.901 --> 00:26:41.503
After bad or limited sleep sometimes.
340
00:26:42.083 --> 00:26:42.704
That just happens.
341
00:26:43.705 --> 00:26:48.869
Show up to the office on shit sleep and the boss is like, we need to redesign one of those fan blades for the engine.
342
00:26:49.350 --> 00:26:50.331
It needs to happen today.
343
00:26:50.351 --> 00:26:51.412
Oh, shit.
344
00:26:52.653 --> 00:26:53.513
Caffeine can work.
345
00:26:53.574 --> 00:26:58.018
I personally like something called parazanthine because it's caffeine without the anxiety stuff.
346
00:26:58.977 --> 00:27:00.898
Caffeine plus L-theanine is really good.
347
00:27:01.898 --> 00:27:10.682
20 grams, I said that right, 20 grams of creatine monohydrate also tends to make the brain perform better when sleep deprived and tired.
348
00:27:10.702 --> 00:27:18.226
So get you 20 grams of creatine, get you L-theanine, 200 milligrams of L-theanine, and get you some caffeine or get some paraxanthine instead of that caffeine.
349
00:27:19.066 --> 00:27:23.728
You won't be at your best because sleep has no equal, but you'll be way better than not and then plow through it.
350
00:27:24.488 --> 00:27:27.910
But if you're always getting bad sleep, that ain't it.
351
00:27:29.045 --> 00:27:31.147
Let's talk about passion and challenge in your work.
352
00:27:31.407 --> 00:27:40.977
One of the biggest sources of focus, and one that especially makes a huge difference if you're struggling with attention, is how much passion you have in your work and how much challenge the work gives you.
353
00:27:42.058 --> 00:27:43.780
Look, we all have to do mundane shit.
354
00:27:44.682 --> 00:27:55.753
But if you really buy into the work and you really care, sometimes by trying to care, at least at first, about the work, your ability to focus will skyrocket.
355
00:27:55.773 --> 00:28:00.758
When I'm doing something I'm passionate about, I'll soil myself before stopping and sometimes just for fun.
356
00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:07.966
I've had to get rid of like five work chairs this year because they're covered in urine and feces, you guys, and earwax.
357
00:28:09.237 --> 00:28:10.418
Oh, the earwax, Dylan.
358
00:28:10.779 --> 00:28:11.780
It baffles the mind.
359
00:28:11.860 --> 00:28:13.782
Does it fall out of my ears onto the chair?
360
00:28:14.363 --> 00:28:17.206
Are you doing it like gum or you like take it out of your ear and then put it under the chair?
361
00:28:17.226 --> 00:28:18.928
I definitely do that.
362
00:28:19.008 --> 00:28:20.490
I also try to taste my earwax.
363
00:28:21.551 --> 00:28:24.494
It works as a good chapstick if you don't have chapstick.
364
00:28:24.514 --> 00:28:25.295
Yeah, I don't need chapstick.
365
00:28:25.335 --> 00:28:25.876
I have earwax.
366
00:28:25.916 --> 00:28:29.480
You go on a first date like that, the girl like sits down and just gets up and leaves and you never see her again.
367
00:28:31.133 --> 00:28:34.479
All jokes aside, passion goes a long, long way.
368
00:28:34.760 --> 00:28:39.950
So whatever you can do to kindle passion is going to make deep work 10 times more productive and easier.
369
00:28:41.352 --> 00:28:42.775
Challenge has an effect as well.
370
00:28:44.432 --> 00:28:50.073
It's tougher to focus on something easy and like when it's rote, when it's routine.
371
00:28:50.573 --> 00:28:51.333
Your mind will wander.
372
00:28:52.173 --> 00:28:55.374
It's also tougher to focus on things that are super out of your depth difficult.
373
00:28:55.854 --> 00:28:58.294
Frustration is a poison to attention.
374
00:28:59.255 --> 00:29:01.915
It's almost literally evolution telling you like, bro, you can't do this.
375
00:29:01.955 --> 00:29:03.155
Just go put your focus elsewhere.
376
00:29:03.895 --> 00:29:06.376
Like it's like you're trying to pull a bone off a mammoth and it's not working.
377
00:29:06.636 --> 00:29:10.477
Your brain is like, stop, go get meat off another part of this animal.
378
00:29:10.577 --> 00:29:12.357
You're doing something just wasting calories.
379
00:29:14.312 --> 00:29:20.314
The Goldilocks zone that we're looking for ideally is challenging but doable.
380
00:29:20.794 --> 00:29:21.734
That is mint.
381
00:29:23.575 --> 00:29:30.957
Get in there, do your deep work, and you'll move mountains while time passes by like it was never even there.
382
00:29:31.817 --> 00:29:32.997
You're passionate about something.
383
00:29:33.257 --> 00:29:35.438
It's challenging, but it's possible.
384
00:29:35.718 --> 00:29:36.278
It's doable.
385
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:40.039
Can you always do passionate and challenging things in your deep work?
386
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:40.259
No.
387
00:29:41.100 --> 00:29:42.420
Sometimes it just has to get did.
388
00:29:44.265 --> 00:29:49.627
Can you lean into any work and care about it more and see it as a challenge?
389
00:29:49.787 --> 00:29:50.067
Yes.
390
00:29:51.187 --> 00:29:53.528
If the work is easy, speed up to challenge yourself.
391
00:29:53.748 --> 00:29:55.549
If it's hard, slow down to keep it doable.
392
00:29:56.349 --> 00:30:04.072
If you don't care about it, think about how it's making you smarter to do it, training you to do things you don't love to do, which is an enormous asset, by the way.
393
00:30:04.694 --> 00:30:05.354
I'll say this again.
394
00:30:05.755 --> 00:30:16.341
The way to motivate yourself to do work you don't want to do is to realize that after you do it, as you do it, you're going to be training yourself to do things you don't want to do, which is a huge unlock because you become a work machine that can do anything if you do that enough.
395
00:30:17.502 --> 00:30:20.124
And it's helping you and it's helping society get the work done.
396
00:30:21.285 --> 00:30:21.525
You're like…
397
00:30:22.250 --> 00:30:26.352
People degrade like McDonald's, like, oh, you want to get a job being a burger flipper?
398
00:30:26.472 --> 00:30:27.052
Well, guess what?
399
00:30:27.112 --> 00:30:31.454
When hungry people need burgers, they're so goddamn thankful that McDonald's employees exist.
400
00:30:31.694 --> 00:30:33.815
How am I supposed to eat a burger if no one's going to do the shit?
401
00:30:34.436 --> 00:30:40.859
It is an absolutely critical, essential, amazing job that very directly helps someone right away.
402
00:30:41.339 --> 00:30:42.139
You're a therapist.
403
00:30:42.219 --> 00:30:43.100
Listen, you're doing great work.
404
00:30:43.120 --> 00:30:43.880
This is just a joke.
405
00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:44.841
But, like, you could be there.
406
00:30:45.601 --> 00:30:49.943
therapy-ing someone for days and weeks and nothing happens.
407
00:30:50.243 --> 00:30:53.104
You give someone a cheeseburger, that for sure makes them happy right then and there.
408
00:30:53.524 --> 00:31:00.027
Every job that is determined to be a good thing to do is a good thing to do, so remember that.
409
00:31:00.147 --> 00:31:07.210
Over time, if you care, you can focus your education on career more and more into the stuff that's both challenging and passion-inducing.
410
00:31:09.177 --> 00:31:13.420
A lot of folks that work on missions they love say that deep work is almost automatic for them.
411
00:31:13.781 --> 00:31:14.621
Can you imagine that?
412
00:31:15.082 --> 00:31:15.702
It's possible.
413
00:31:16.403 --> 00:31:16.943
It's possible.
414
00:31:20.246 --> 00:31:25.250
Taking all of this together, what can getting better at deep work do for you?
415
00:31:25.450 --> 00:31:31.375
Because I'm ranting about how to do deep work because for us ADHD people, we kind of need all the help we can get.
416
00:31:32.055 --> 00:31:34.978
For us, deep work is the only way we're going to get much work done at all.
417
00:31:35.018 --> 00:31:36.639
It's either deep work or it just doesn't happen.
418
00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:38.781
But no matter who you are,
419
00:31:39.737 --> 00:31:49.640
doing months and years of deep work with more and more of the tips that hopefully you've learned in these last two videos will change you and it will make you better.
420
00:31:50.980 --> 00:31:51.560
Better at what?
421
00:31:52.521 --> 00:31:53.721
Well, a few things.
422
00:31:55.041 --> 00:31:59.323
Over months and years, diligent two to four hour sessions of deep work can do the following.
423
00:32:01.903 --> 00:32:07.085
First, it can dramatically increase the amount of valuable work that you produce.
424
00:32:08.792 --> 00:32:12.994
Most people spend so much of the day responding, scrolling, switching tasks, warming up.
425
00:32:13.674 --> 00:32:18.717
Two or three genuinely focused hours can produce more meaningful output than an entire distracted workday.
426
00:32:19.117 --> 00:32:21.478
I see this happen all the time to people.
427
00:32:22.098 --> 00:32:22.598
All the time.
428
00:32:23.079 --> 00:32:25.000
There's work and then there's quote unquote work.
429
00:32:26.020 --> 00:32:28.961
Just checking emails and doing Instagram something or other.
430
00:32:29.021 --> 00:32:29.562
Pretend work.
431
00:32:30.942 --> 00:32:32.263
Deep work makes you go to real work.
432
00:32:34.942 --> 00:32:39.765
Deep work lets you solve problems that are literally inaccessible in shallow thinking modes.
433
00:32:39.805 --> 00:32:43.427
Some problems have too many interacting parts to fit into your mind immediately.
434
00:32:44.288 --> 00:32:55.294
Deep work gives you time to load the whole system into your working memory, turn it around, futz with it, test possibilities, and finally see relationships that were invisible just 20 minutes later of you just randomly thinking about it.
435
00:32:56.232 --> 00:33:01.035
When I'm on calls with my engineering team at RP, sometimes big questions will be like, guys, let me get back to you on that.
436
00:33:01.095 --> 00:33:02.476
I don't think about them on the call.
437
00:33:02.817 --> 00:33:04.518
After the call, I clean my plate.
438
00:33:04.618 --> 00:33:05.578
I write out a couple to-dos.
439
00:33:05.839 --> 00:33:07.360
I try to intellectually grapple with a problem.
440
00:33:07.380 --> 00:33:09.301
And then 30 minutes later, I call them back.
441
00:33:09.321 --> 00:33:10.742
I'm like, fellas, one, two, three.
442
00:33:10.762 --> 00:33:11.663
They're like, wow, okay, sweet.
443
00:33:11.703 --> 00:33:12.223
That works.
444
00:33:12.423 --> 00:33:12.843
Thank you.
445
00:33:13.584 --> 00:33:15.685
Because I need to go back on my own and do deep work on it.
446
00:33:16.466 --> 00:33:17.827
I can't just vibe off everything.
447
00:33:18.663 --> 00:33:20.224
You guys have seen me on podcasts before.
448
00:33:20.404 --> 00:33:23.146
I'm pretty goddamn good at vibing on the spot, but that's nonsense.
449
00:33:23.386 --> 00:33:24.247
This is good for vibing.
450
00:33:24.447 --> 00:33:26.208
It's not good to that next quality standard.
451
00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:32.973
The thing about Deep Work Next is it converts raw intelligence into applied intelligence.
452
00:33:34.154 --> 00:33:36.615
Being smart gives you potential processing power.
453
00:33:37.376 --> 00:33:45.141
Deep Work teaches you to aim that power at one target long enough to generate a useful answer or a product or a strategy or a skill.
454
00:33:46.528 --> 00:33:51.573
Intelligence without application is an extremely expensive sports car idling in the driveway.
455
00:33:51.593 --> 00:33:52.614
You ain't driving that shit anywhere.
456
00:33:53.735 --> 00:33:58.820
I remember back in my school days, some folks would really brag about how little they worked and how much they could get done.
457
00:33:59.140 --> 00:34:04.526
And the only thing I thought of, like, well, imagine if that person really tried to work a long time, they wouldn't have to be in school anymore.
458
00:34:06.768 --> 00:34:09.771
Another benefit of deep work is it accelerates difficult learning.
459
00:34:11.462 --> 00:34:20.648
Focused immersion allows you to build richer mental models, connecting new information to old information, which is massive.
460
00:34:21.769 --> 00:34:25.772
It lets you identify precisely what you don't understand and correct mistakes later.
461
00:34:26.665 --> 00:34:28.065
correct mistakes faster.
462
00:34:28.125 --> 00:34:31.686
Over several years, this can create an absurd knowledge advantage.
463
00:34:31.806 --> 00:34:34.767
All the stuff that I know real well, I did a lot of deep work on.
464
00:34:35.327 --> 00:34:38.668
I go on podcasts for exercise science like, damn, you can just explain this offhand.
465
00:34:38.688 --> 00:34:39.708
Like, that's my job.
466
00:34:40.148 --> 00:34:43.669
But it's not because I just read a few books and I was like, yeah, okay, maybe that makes sense.
467
00:34:44.029 --> 00:34:45.249
Deep work is the key.
468
00:34:46.290 --> 00:34:50.711
It's going to make you deeply familiar with your subject in a way that makes you unlock new stuff.
469
00:34:52.251 --> 00:34:56.252
And really importantly, deep work trains your ability to stay with discomfort,
470
00:34:57.785 --> 00:35:09.288
Deep work frequently produces confusion, frustration, boredom, and like the real temptation that you might just want to go to your phone because something on your phone is important, right?
471
00:35:10.268 --> 00:35:11.348
Them hoes and the DMs.
472
00:35:12.648 --> 00:35:17.410
Remaining engaged even when you don't want to teaches your brain that discomfort is not an evacuation order.
473
00:35:18.770 --> 00:35:22.651
And over time, you become radically more effective and less distractible.
474
00:35:23.151 --> 00:35:23.771
Deep work,
475
00:35:26.232 --> 00:35:30.338
increases your professional rarity because most people don't do deep work.
476
00:35:30.919 --> 00:35:36.447
You can just become more productive than most people that are even more talented than you because you go off and make amazing things.
477
00:35:37.897 --> 00:35:44.361
The way it does that in some sense is improving the quality and originality of every idea is because you're really focusing on the task.
478
00:35:44.701 --> 00:35:45.301
Let me ask you a question.
479
00:35:45.582 --> 00:35:49.664
How much smarter is ChatGPT Pro on thinking mode than ChatGPT Instant?
480
00:35:49.844 --> 00:35:50.805
Like, I don't know, a trillion?
481
00:35:50.905 --> 00:35:51.125
Why?
482
00:35:51.385 --> 00:35:52.446
Because it's doing deep work.
483
00:35:52.506 --> 00:35:53.466
That's what it's doing in there.
484
00:35:53.827 --> 00:35:56.408
If it just vibes an idea off, it's never as good.
485
00:35:57.709 --> 00:35:59.270
It's never as good if you just vibe.
486
00:36:01.596 --> 00:36:03.578
You do this long enough and you get good at deep work.
487
00:36:03.598 --> 00:36:04.919
You begin to trust yourself more.
488
00:36:04.959 --> 00:36:06.861
You're the kind of person that can do deep work.
489
00:36:06.881 --> 00:36:07.983
You get things done.
490
00:36:08.563 --> 00:36:09.985
You have an expanded sense of agency.
491
00:36:10.005 --> 00:36:11.947
Someone's like, hey, can you do this project by next week?
492
00:36:11.967 --> 00:36:15.270
You're like, yeah, probably because you've done it before.
493
00:36:17.506 --> 00:36:21.827
And it can make your most ambitious ideas and projects psychologically manageable.
494
00:36:21.967 --> 00:36:27.328
Because like writing a book, building a company, building an app, mastering a technical field, you don't do that on vibes.
495
00:36:27.348 --> 00:36:30.389
You don't do that just by like, oh, I seem to be able to do that.
496
00:36:30.689 --> 00:36:32.450
That's hundreds of deep work sessions.
497
00:36:32.490 --> 00:36:37.291
If you know you can do deep work well, you're going to do amazing things.
498
00:36:38.111 --> 00:36:43.772
And the last thing I'll say for today is that deep work does this magical, magical thing.
499
00:36:48.211 --> 00:36:51.633
it erases your dependence on motivation.
500
00:36:53.134 --> 00:36:59.979
You're not always going to be motivated to work, but if you're good at deep work, just like if you're good at training, you warm up and you get in and you do it.
501
00:37:00.939 --> 00:37:03.061
And what needs to get done gets done.
502
00:37:04.202 --> 00:37:07.604
Whether or not you felt like it, that is the huge unlock.
503
00:37:08.843 --> 00:37:15.791
In my own time with deep work, this is where I get my most transcendent Buddhist experiences of mindfulness.
504
00:37:15.991 --> 00:37:17.573
I love deep work.
505
00:37:17.613 --> 00:37:19.995
It's my favorite thing to do by a mile.
506
00:37:21.277 --> 00:37:22.138
Sometimes it's tough.
507
00:37:22.958 --> 00:37:24.420
With ADHD, it can be real tough.
508
00:37:25.475 --> 00:37:32.782
If you integrate all of the tips that we talked about for the past three lectures, especially two, on this topic, it's going to give you an advantage.
509
00:37:33.703 --> 00:37:34.444
Thanks for tuning in.
510
00:37:34.464 --> 00:37:43.012
Guys, next time we talk about ADHD in the last video, it'll be talking about all the medications you can potentially take for ADHD to give yourself an edge.
511
00:37:43.533 --> 00:37:44.754
And I'll see you in the next video.
