How to Regain Your Focus and Do Deep Work
Training your mind to ignore distractions
I was sitting in my living room late in the evening with the lights down low, doing something that I had not done for a long time: listening to music with no other distractions. I took a sip of wine and smiled contentedly. My change in lifestyle was paying off. I had just had the most productive day in living memory. I had finished all my planned tasks by 5:30 p.m. and managed to spend some quality time with my family.
This was a dramatic change to the preceding months of working late into the night, day after day, on a never-ending quest to keep up with slipping deadlines. For some time now, I’d had the feeling that I was losing my professional touch. Despite many years of experience as a technical writer, I couldn’t seem to stick to a deadline anymore. The quality of my work was slipping, and I had stopped taking the initiative.
Something had gone wrong, but now my life was back on track, and it was due to just one thing — focus. I had rediscovered my one core skill, the ability to think and work deeply.
Knowledge workers need to excel at Deep Work
Knowledge workers need the ability to think deeply about things. They must know how to delve into a subject and understand its…
