Deep work Vs. Shallow Work
Deep work is the secret to success in the 21st century. While shallow work might pay the bills, deep work is where true innovation and growth happen.
It’s kind of the equivalent between bailing water out of a bucket if it’s got holes in it or repairing the holes. One might take longer and require more work and maybe a little bit more risk, but ultimately it’s going to pay off in the long run.
Deep work is a really interesting topic to me because it’s when you solve your biggest problems, but you are also delaying the result the most.
I have a process and my friend Mark told me about this, where I literally just give myself 45 minutes to just think. Something like that seems like a huge risk because it doesn’t seem like you’re progressing in the right way.
If you sit down and do shallow work it can sometimes seem like you’re doing much more work than you really are, and it feels like you’re progressing more than ever.
We are barraged with shallow work, and shallow work can be everything from just doing work that gets jobs done. If you’ve seen my other video on the four layers of value or all the way over to things like browsing YouTube or browsing Facebook watching this type of video stuff, a lot of that can be shallow work.
Deep work is essentially where you apply your best and most focused brain power to a problem that basically identifies the biggest thing that you can solve, pushes that over and everything else becomes easier.
In the past, Tim Ferriss has kind of equated it. The big domino or the big thing that you can push over, but also deep work is about applying yourself or periods of time to do something that genuinely matters and pushes the needle and pushes everything forward within your life or within your business.
Saying No to Shallow Work
So, I think the first thing to understand is how to say no to shallow work. Now, I’ve got really very good at this, but it didn’t come easy to me, and it wasn’t like I suddenly realized, “Oh, I need to do better deep work.”
By the way, the term Deep Work comes from the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, which I highly recommend. But it’s not just a case of saying, “Well, I know that I need to do this really important task, or I need to think about this problem in a really meaningful way.”
Then going and doing, it actually first starts with you saying no and learning how to say no to shallow work.
To me, the number one killer of productivity and making progress is meetings. My calendar has almost no meetings in it whatsoever. I’m sure you’ve seen this on LinkedIn where people send you requests and then they say, “Hey, let’s get a virtual coffee and just get to know each other.”
Personally, that to me, is an enormous waste of time.
People like to talk about networking and growing your network. Let me tell you now as someone who actively avoids having calls or conversations with anyone and my calendar, first of all, it’s almost impossible to get hold of my calendar. Secondly, I qualify you before you can even book a call. My call slots are 15 minutes at the most, unless I decide it needs to be longer and I don’t have a problem building my network.
If anything, the problem is I need to start qualifying more of my network to work with the right people. The problem is that saying no to shallow work can seem lazy or rude, like responding to every single email. It’s an enormous waste of time. There are systems and people that you can put in place as well as processes that allow you to stop doing that kind of shallow work.
I don’t have any social media apps on my phone whatsoever for that exact same reason. You know how your parents told you that if you don’t take care of your money, it just sort of fritters away. It’s the same with time and productivity and energy. If you’re not careful with the amount of time that you use and just do it on loads of different task, other people’s tasks take over your productivity.
So you need to learn to say no, and if someone gets offended or thinks it’s rude, that’s actually their problem. It’s got nothing to do with you. If they decide that you being in control of your time, your energy and your focus upsets them. They’re the ones with the problem.
2 Types of Deepwork
The second thing that I want to talk about is that there are two types of deep work or allocation of deep work.
So I am in my conservatory for a reason and this is because there are two types of deep work. There is seclusion and there is periodic.
Seclusion
The first one I want to talk about is seclusion. Seclusion is a bit like I was talking about with my meetings. I actually make it very difficult for people to take up my time, so I actually make it difficult for shallow tasks to even happen.
I don’t have social media apps on my phone. , that makes it difficult for me to do shallow work. I don’t have any of my web browsers automatically logged into any websites, so I can’t just randomly go there.
I make it hard to do shallow work. I know that I should be working on deep work, which is why the process of seclusion means removing yourself from any chances of shallow work kind of creeping in.
For example, when I need to work out, I come here to work out, or I go to the gym. . It’s a kind of a bad example because not everyone has the space to be able to just have a private work area.
I’m lucky I have a private office here, got an office down the road. I’ve got this area here, I’ve got the gym. But finding and carving out those initial spaces, or at least the processes of getting people to take your attention away is extremely important.
Periodic
The second piece, Periodic.
Periodic basically means you have a set time that you are going to do deep work.
It doesn’t have to be loads. I think the mistake that a lot of people make is saying, “Well, I’m going to do five hours of deep work a day.”
One, that’s just not sustainable. Your energy just can’t take it. But also you are missing the point. You are better off finding one half-hour slot three times a week to do deep focused work than trying to do five hours and five hours and five hours.
Consistency and doing it at a periodic level and a specific time is way more effective at getting the work done. For example, when I write any of my books, I set aside time between 9 and 11, which is admittedly a two-hour slot, but I actually do two 45-minute slots in that to get the work done.
That’s all I do. I just write I don’t turn my wifi on. I don’t have any of my phones or anything available. Olivia knows I’m not contactable during those periods.
Now, I actually don’t do that a huge amount anymore cause I’m not writing as much. But any time that I know that I need to do deep work, I have them set aside for me.
It’s the morning. I have a 45-minute period in the morning where I sit down and I do the work that needs to be done. Now in my case, it is actually spending time thinking.
I spend an enormous amount of time thinking, but that doesn’t mean I have any distractions. It doesn’t mean that I also take my phone in with me just to check, or I’m just chilling out watching tv.
It means I don’t have anything in the room. So periodic means having a consistent time that you stick to do that work, and it becomes a habit and it becomes a routine.
So right now you’re probably wondering how on earth you could also achieve those same levels of success as the people around the world who seem to have absolutely everything figured out.
The one thing all those people have in common is they apply deep work to their working lifestyle. If you want to achieve those same levels of success, now is the time to do it.
The Youtube channel here that I created, Sell Your Service, is specifically designed to help entrepreneurs, agency owners, business owners like yourself get into that frame of mind and understand that there is a better way of working and a better way of selling, making money and living a better life.
My team produces new videos on this channel every single week. I want this to be known from now on. I have a team of people behind me to help produce these videos.
So if you’re watching this thinking, the editing, the timing, the amount of time it takes to go into it. There’s a lot of work that goes into this. It’s not just me.
Ad Hoc
So the last piece that I want to talk about is ad hoc. Ad hoc means as and when. So if we have secluded work and periodic work. The other area is ad hoc.
I’m in kind of two minds about ad hoc, frankly, because first of all, if you ever feel out of sorts or if you’ve ever thought I’ve got so much going on that I’m weighed down.
The difference that alone in a quiet room can make for 20 minutes and just thinking is outstanding. It’s a really good way to kind of let things sort yourselves out.
What I tend to do if I’m struggling to either get into the deep work state of mind, or if I feel there’s a lot going on and I need to kind of process it. I’ll sit in a room, I’ll take my phone in there. I’ll open up the voice recorder and I’ll just talk to my phone.
I’ll basically have a conversation with myself and it’s staggering the types of insights that you can come up with and the things that your brain will process as you are having a conversation with people and that counts as deep work.
Processing all of those ideas and getting them out on paper and talking them through can often lead to some really powerful conclusions.
The second half, and this is something that I see in like other books and other vlogs, is stuff like if you’re ever away with your family, if you’re ever out on holiday or something, then you can find time to do deep work.
I personally am of the mindset that if you’re on holiday, be on holiday. If you’re at a speaking event, be at the speaking event. I actually believe it’s more important to focus on the thing that you’re there to do, and don’t use it as an excuse.
Having said that, when times are overwhelming, deep work doesn’t just apply to your business. It can apply to your life. The ability to sit down and think through a problem and make sure I am solving the biggest and most effective problem, and how would I do that is vastly more important than just applying it to your business.
We’ve got tons of travel coming up in the next sort of few months, and it was really important for me to sit down and just give myself 45 minutes to plan it and work it all out, and now it. Super happy with it.
We’ve actually saved a ton of money. We’re being paid to the kind of go around the world and go to all these different events and stuff, which is amazing. But it probably would’ve been a bit more stressful if I’d just left it right now.
You probably think that deep work is impossible because of all the distractions in your life, and I’m here to tell you that if a customer came to you and said, “I’m looking to spend 20 grand with you, I would just like 45 minutes to talk it through with you.”
I promise you you’d find that 45 minutes.
So I want you to think of this as a $20,000 customer. Would you be able to find even 45 minutes this week, once a week and regularly to be able to go through and just apply your knowledge to that deep work?
My first piece of advice would be to actually spend 45 minutes in silence just talking to yourself and talking to a camera or talking to your phone, and that’s actually a pretty good way of figuring the types of deep work that you should be doing.
There is time out there. You just have to make it. It’s not going to be given to you.
