How I Dig Deeply into Things That Matter Most
Every Friday I give my overarching focus to deep work. Deep work consists of the things that matter most to me, both at work and at home.
There’s one way that I am able to dig deeply into those things: I eliminate as many unnecessary decisions as I can.
Giving themes to my days helps. Creating specific morning and evening routines helps too. Doing things like setting up my clothes the night before – based on what the next day’s theme is – makes short work of getting ready in the morning. The same goes for preparing my breakfast shake the night before.
I try to create as much systemization as I can, so that when I review my to do list, I can see the deep work that needs doing and know that I can dive into it with little to no interruption. I also try to make it not too rigid and not too fluid. I focus on making it feel just right.
This has been an ongoing process. There will always be things that I need to make decisions about. It’s been cited that the average human makes around 35,000 decisions every day, many of which are unconscious. Once I become conscious about a decision I need to make, I try to figure out a way to make it more automatic. The less friction I have in my day, the better. Friction is the enemy of deep work.
By this point you’ve probably realized that I’ve mentioned that I ‘try’ to do this. After all, I’m human. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. But the more I try, the more often it does and the more deep work gets done. In turn, the things that really matter to me the most get done.
That’s the thing about deep work: when you take the opportunity to focus on it consistently, it gets done. And it gets done decisively.
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Mike Vardy is a writer, productivity strategist, and the creator of TimeCrafting. He is the author of the upcoming book TimeCrafting: A Better Way to Get The Right Things Done. Mike is also renowned speaker and has taught productivity on CreativeLive, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning where his courses are among the most popular in the business category.
