hey friends welcome back to the channel
let's talk about focusing now there's
this whole thing that goes around in
the productivity youtuber game of
some people acting as if they study for
longer than they actually do or they
work harder or they're more hustly or
they're more productive than they
actually are
and often you know when i meet people in
real life they always ask you know oh
you know i've got a question are you
actually as productive as you seem to be
in the videos
and i'm always a bit confused about that
because i don't feel like i spend a
large amount of time working at all in
fact most days i only put in about four
hours of work
each day but for some reason there's
this impression that some people have on
the internet that oh my god alibaba
works like 24 7. and i guess
you look at the vlogs you see the videos
you see that my desk right now looks
super clean
but actually you don't realize how much
of an absolute like the living
room is and so i think the important
question isn't how can we work
harder and longer but more like how can
we be more productive
in the few hours that we are working
because i'm not really a fan of like
working all the time
i am a fan of working efficiently so
that i can work less of the time and do
other things that i enjoy in the rest of
the time like playing world of warcraft
or like playing the guitar or like
hanging out with friends or whatever and
the bible on this topic is deep work by
cal newport and there's a lot of pretty
solid lessons in this and i want to go
over some of my most
um intriguing takeaways from this book
that i've sort of tried to apply to my
life and that i'm still trying to apply
to my life in this video let's go for it
so point number one is appreciating the
difference between deep work and
shallow work and recognizing that deep
work is generally better than shallow
work
so if you see a video of me being like
hey i studied 14 hours today probably
like three in a bit hours of that was
actually deep work like actually fully
focused and the rest of that time was
probably just kind of screwing around or
answering emails or doing little bits
and bobs here and there
deep work versus shallow work and
obviously like for me my best ideas and
actually like meaningful progress and
all the stuff that i'm working on comes
from all of the deep work that i do
rather than shallow work and this is a
problem because normally i don't have
empty blocks in my calendar these days
where i can just sit down and do some
deep work and i find that for me to
actually make
decent progress on something important
i.e deep work i need like three to four
uninterrupted hours and in fact since i
reread the summary of this book uh which
i often like to do with books that i've
already read
read the summaries of them there's some
pretty compelling evidence that even
like three or four hours isn't enough
you actually need like a whole day of
uninterrupted time to
kind of get that proper focused state
people like bill gates use this sort of
thing where you know he's got his think
weeks where twice a year he would take
like a whole week off go to a cabin in
the woods where all these meals are
prepared by a chef and like
his laundry is done and all that i'm
sure his laundry is done anyway but he
would like go to this cabin in the woods
for like a solid week at a time and use
that to just think
um and apparently back in the 90s this
was how microsoft's like you know
vision for how they're going to move
forward with the internet like came
about and so that's one thing i'm trying
to remind myself to do more often
uh like i was in oxford for the last two
days for my own like think two days
and ended up not doing very much like
work work and ended up just hanging out
with people mostly but i feel like
having that
recharge was quite nice point number two
from the book is that we want to treat
the ability to focus like a muscle now
anytime i ask on my instagram story or
twitter or whatever hey
what are your top struggles with
productivity broadly people split into
two camps camp number one
is i struggle with procrastination and
the motivation to get
started with doing something and camp
number two is people who are like i'm
okay at getting started with doing the
thing
but then when i start doing the thing i
can't focus and i get distracted and a
lot of people in camp number two like
the icon focus camp
almost wear their inability to focus as
a badge of honor that oh you know
there is this like perverse joy
in the sense of like oh my god i am i am
such a waste man i don't know how to
focus lol i get distracted every five
minutes on the internet
and sort of we build this identity that
we are chronic procrastinators we're
terrible at focusing we build that up as
a story in our heads and i think one of
the insights from the book is that like
you can actually train your focus and
focus is a muscle
and um you know these days i don't
particularly struggle with distraction
but i certainly used to back in the day
and i trained it out of myself over time
by kind of spending these bits of time
in focused work
two things i found helpful number one uh
like artificial deadlines so there's a
thing called parkinson's law that you
might be familiar with which is that
work expands to fill the time that we
allocate to it
so if i only give myself half an hour to
do something i will try my best to get
it done in that half an hour
whereas if i give myself a whole day to
do something inevitably is going to take
the whole day to actually do and the
second one that i find useful is
actually just get rid of distractions by
turning my phone on silent and chucking
it onto the sofa
which means it's quite annoying to
actually get to and since doing this yes
occasionally i may say whatsapp group
chat where a friend sends a meme or
something but i kind of just
give a polite lol further down the line
and it means that generally when i'm on
a computer and i don't have my slack
notifications on because i turn on do
not disturb on my on my mac whenever i
need to actually do some deep work
it means that i've just sort of over
time trained that ability to focus and
that is something that's very very
doable
and he's got some more tips in the book
if you want to check it out quick thing
if you can't be bothered to actually
read the book
and i won't blame you because it's quite
thick it is good but it's quite thick um
there's a great website called short
form which is my favorite way of reading
book summaries they're not sponsoring
this video in fact no one is sponsoring
this video
but i have a link shortform.com forward
slash alley it's in the video
description and if you hit that link
you'll get a free trial and i'll think
you'll get a bit of a discount off your
of your subscription something like that
i'd recommend it it's really good um
it's good
if you a you don't know if you want to
read a book yet and you just want to see
the summary and then decide if you want
to read a book so i do that quite a lot
and also for me if i've read a book like
deep work or the four hour work week or
whatever
and i want to revisit the ideas from it
uh i don't reread the book generally i
just read the summary on short form so
yeah i would recommend all right tip
number three from the book that i'm
trying harder and harder to apply to my
life which again i still struggle with
is this idea that we should chase only
the goals that are most meaningful
quite often these days i'll get to the
end of the day and i'll be like you know
what what
what did i actually do today that like
made meaningful progress towards a goal
that i care about or something that i
care about
and often i was like well i was just
kind of zoom calls all day and answering
emails all day and trying to sort out
this random admin all day
and if i think like which goal in my
life did any of this stuff propel me to
words i think
i really find it hard to to to point to
that
and i think a big part of that reason is
that you know these little bits of time
you know 20 minutes here half an hour
here an hour here and there
that's time that's only really suitable
for shallow work rather than deep work
and what kanupo talks about is that a
lot of the difference between
shadow work and deep work is that deep
work is the the work that moves us
towards our goals
and shallow work is though sort of those
little bits like answering emails and
replying to messages and like the zoom
calls and all that sort of stuff one way
that i like to help combat this it
doesn't work all the time but i i try is
that every day i set myself a daily
highlight where i'm like okay what is
the one most important thing i need to
do today
and then i schedule it into my calendar
i literally have a block in my calendar
for my daily highlight
and then i try my best to do it in that
time and on the days where i actually
set my daily highlight and
schedule in the time block around eighty
percent of the time i then managed to
get it done i know at the end of the day
i'm always like yes i did my daily
highlight i made progress on something
that was meaningful to me
at some point in the day and that feels
really good tip four from the book is to
get into a routine
now when it comes to deep work i sort of
have a routine whereas each morning
from like 10 a.m till like 1 p.m
i've sort of got that blocked out in my
calendar where no one is allowed to book
any calls with me or anything like that
and most of the time in those slots i do
manage to get some amount of deep work
done
having reread the summary of this on
short form i've realized that three
hours is also probably not
quite enough time and in an ideal world
i would have like the whole day
so now what i'm trying to do is kind of
block out all of tuesday and all of
friday
just for deep work where i'm not allowed
to do anything else but if you've got a
job or if you're a student or whatever
and you don't quite have that capacity
to literally just block out a whole day
for deep work
i think this thing of having a recurring
ritual where either every morning or
every morning on certain days of the
week for a few hours you've got this
time blocked out to
work on things that are meaningful so
for you that might be i don't know
preparing for a university exam or it
might be
learning how to code or working on your
business or like learning a hobby or
in my case it's actually making progress
in writing my book which is something
i've been struggling with for the last
couple of months and he talks about here
that like apparently the scientific
consensus is that the
our our overall capacity for deep work
is about four hours a day
and so if we try and do more than four
hours a day of deep work
it's really not going to be very deep
and our brains broadly can't like
focus for that amount of time in a given
day and so don't feel bad if you get
recommended one of my videos on the
sidebar that talks about how i study for
14 hours a day because it's not actually
true i went through my old like study
with me videos from my university days
and even though it looked like i was
studying the whole day i like added up
the amount of time where i was actually
doing
focus work and it ended up being around
about four or five hours each day
and some of that was procrastination as
well so i think we all need to be a
little bit more realistic about what is
an achievable amount of productivity or
deep work to do in a day
and the goal that i'm personally
shooting for is four hours finally point
number five that really resonated with
me is to embrace the satisfaction of
deep work like
shallow work is satisfying in that if it
feels good to reply to an email and tick
off like little things from the to-do
list and i get into that
um and i often like convince myself that
i'm being productive by doing these like
shallow worky type things
but it's only really at the end of the
days where i've done a decent chunk of
deep work i'll keep on plugging the name
it's good
it's a good title for a book it's only
on the days where i i've done
a solid sesh of deep work and made
progress on something
that feels like genuinely satisfying and
like fulfilling and nice
and then i think to you know like
yesterday i spent most of
most of the day replying to emails it
didn't really feel particularly
satisfying i got to the end of the day i
was like
i'm not really sure what i've done with
my time today if you're interested in
more tips on how to focus i'd actually
recommend the book or reading the show
the summary on short form if you haven't
got the time to actually read the book
and if you're interested in more tips on
time management i have a video here
that explains how i manage my time as a
doctor and youtuber so thank you so much
for watching
have a great day and i'll see you in the
next video bye