Deep Work
If you’ve been following the Market Mamas podcast for long, you’ve likely heard us mention our guy Eddie Pinero, whose content is truly inspirational, artistic and thought-provoking. Today’s episode blossomed out of a book he mention in a few of his Your World Within podcast episodes. And when one of my (Becky) favorite creators recommends a resource that positively impacted them, I take note! So in this episode/blog, Becky will be discussing the book Deep Work by Cal Newport.
In this modern age with constant distractions surrounding us in many forms and intensities, this is really a very valuable lesson. Cal Newport, the author, is an associate professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and has written prolifically about the influence of technology on culture. In this book, Newport strives to press the importance of working deeply, harnessing boredom, taming or quitting social media, and managing the balance between shallow work and deep work much more intentionally. Deep work, referring to the concept and the title of this book, is a skill that requires you to focus and master complicated work on a demanding task to obtain results at a quick pace. This skill will undoubtedly make you better at what you do and bring more meaningful satisfaction. But going deep consistently is like a muscle in that it needs to be trained. And in this fast paced world full of all kinds of distractions at our fingertips, this style of focused work is very worthy of our attention and study. This book was a mix of mild current cultural criticism, but also actionable advice that occasionally had me side eyeing it but also definitely taking notes. So, it’s lessons warrant a valuable discussion for me.
“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
When I have recently felt a bit overwhelmed about everything I wanted to accomplish, I needed to have a heart to heart with myself regarding priorities. I needed to be clear with myself on my intentions for my life right now and that would help me schedule where I could place my time and energy. Protecting our most valuable asset is key to longevity and success, I believe, and time is truly the most important commodity that we have. You never truly know how much you have and each moment comes and is gone in a flash. So, his comments about being clear in your life on your priorities before allotting your energy and focus to a body of work were poignant for me. And absolutely actionable advice when I plan out my days and weeks for sure.
Check out the full discussion in the podcast below, including more of my favorite quotes and how I’ve adapted the advice into my own trading and entrepreneur journey and life.
In reference to managing balance in life, a powerful quote from this book reads: “Regularly resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done. Your average email response time might suffer some, but you’ll more than make up for this with the sheer volume of truly important work produced during the day by your refreshed ability to dive deeper than your exhausted peers.” I just loved this. It speaks to an important benefit of really focusing on what you have to do in the time that you have allotted to doing it. Because when you can bust out an important but potentially complex project in a reasonable amount of time and then check it off your to do list, that will create more space in your day for some down time to then rest your mind and spend some time with other activities, such as family.
Versus if a project that you could get accomplished in 3 hours with focused, hard work instead stretched out over 6 hours and 3 days, think of the time waste really? 2 of the 3 sessions you spent on it could have otherwise been spent doing something fun or knocking out other tasks. And as a mother of 3, this is really very important to me. When I spend time in my office working on trading, studying or this podcast, there is generally 1-4 boys in my house outside my office hoping I am done soon and can come play, cook, or go do an activity with them. The sooner I can knock out my work, the happier my whole house is. So, this skill is truly so personal for me!
Ok, so this deep work concept makes total sense, right? Right. But what I especially appreciated about this book was that he did get into the meat of some ideas on making it your reality. For example, Newport wrote: “The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.” Now this is a great point! We can wish and have the best intentions for results all day every day and never see any change. But, building routines into our lives to make the necessary changes - that is what actually drives notable results! Its like being grey on a priority or intention versus black and white on it.
For me, I find that I am more successful if I write out to do lists for each day and then let my family know about them. Specifically, tell them that I am so excited to watch the new movie with them tonight, but that in order to be free to do that, I have to work in my office for 2 hours relatively uninterrupted in order to truly be able to relax with them on the couch later. And create a plan for my time to get to the line items from my to do list. Just listing 15 hours worth of work for one day sounds painful and ineffective. It would overwhelm me and knowing it was likely impossible, I would probably get less done in the end because it would be stressful and distracting just prioritizing in the moments. But if I approach a day with a decent 6 hours of hard work in a whole day. Well, I can schedule that around school time, nap time, and after my kids go to bed. And then knowing that at the key times when it is designated work time, this is when I make it count!
But what if you are a creative, you ask? Not a type A structure, to do list person like myself, but still have massive goals for you life. One quote from Newport that was so good reads: “Great creative minds think like artists, but work like accountants.” You can be wildly creative and your work can be abstract and unique. That is such a gift to this world! With that avenue of work, you can also achieve incredible successes in your given medium. It’s the working like an accountant part that you would want to dial in to merge those two needs. Create the work, but also set aside time to require the work to get it done and out to the world! So your gifts can be appreciated by the masses!
Now, you’ve heard me mention meditation before as a practice that I am working on improving in my personal life. I absolutely believe that there are tremendous benefits to quieting my monkey mind intentionally so that I can get it to more effectively focus when I need it to. Well, in this Deep Work book, Cal introduces the idea of productive meditation. He says: “The goal of productive meditation is to take a period of which you’re occupied physically but not mentally - walking, jogging, driving, showering, and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.” Now I loved this idea so much!!! He advises us to constantly bring our minds back to the task at hand, the problem you are working through and that will essentially kill two birds with one stone. You get your drive to a destination done or your steps or miles in for the day, but then also are training your mind to stay on task at the same time. And he advised it will be a practice to improve over time, as for me at least, my brain definitely so easily gets distracted.
This was a killer idea to improve focus & your ability to think deep, by taking advantage of times that could otherwise be mentally wasted, such as the shower or a drive. When our mind wanders instead of staying focused on the idea or project you are trying to work out, you simply and kindly return your focus as many times as it takes. With practice, this choice will sharpen concentration and improve our ability to resist distractions. For me, this was one of his best specific recommendations in this book for improving concentration and I am definitely going to keep working at this productive meditation.
So, Market Mamas is a podcast. But, not a fancy, established podcast on a network or with a crew of any kind. But as part of putting the show out there, I need to cross post content on different outlets that drive traffic and viewers that might find benefit in the show back to our full episodes. So, that means social media management is a literal part of the gig daily. But, it can suck you in!! You know! Another quote from this book reads: “Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated. And its importance vastly overestimated. This type of work is inevitable, but you must keep it confined to a point where it doesn’t impede your ability to take full advantage of the deeper efforts that ultimately determine your impact.” I felt like he was talking directly to me on this one.
Social media is a part of owning a podcast. It just is. Our shorts are cross posted and I try to engage with other traders in all kinds of ways, with that being really a great one for meeting people with similar interests. But I also can’t afford to loose an hour on instagram right now. My priority list at this point in my careers (yes, careers plural) is just too long. To mitigate this exact situation, I specifically limit my time there to the pre-planned postings so people know when our episodes are coming and previews on what we cover on the show, responding to comments and messages, and otherwise no more than 20 minutes of engagement time. Building a career as a day trader and a podcaster requires a lot of effort, but I love them both. So, it is a choice and discipline of mine to minimize and contain “shallow work” so that I can deepen my efforts on the work that brings the greatest impact to my loves.
The core of what I most appreciated from this Deep Work book was the literal functional benefits to my busy, full life. I am driven to be successful in a few different ways as an adult, but it is not easy. In fact, it has periods that are very hard. So if an expert offers me hacks, I am going to listen and take notes. Newport said: “To maximize your success, you need to support your efforts to go deep. At the same time, this support needs to be systematized so that you don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.” This is on point. From that chapter, I gathered tips for us, including: tweak your system, personalize it, plan ahead for possible interruptions, create routines. These simple tips are actually really effective when put into practice and have helped me tremendously over the past couple years as I got deeper into day trading, had my 3rd child, and then started a day trading psychology podcast! Organizing my life to keep up with it all has been invaluable. Unbroken concentration is critical to really moving the dial. Whether I am back-testing a trading strategy and taking notes as I go, or writing ideas for or editing a podcast episode, concentration will make every session more productive and powerful for my growth in that area.
One last quote to drive the concept of deep work home is: “Your ability to concentrate is only as strong as your commitment to train it.” Engaging and improving at deep work does require commitment. This book offers awesome strategies for training our minds and tweaking our schedules to be our most effective selves, so check it out! Within this blog page is a link to the book to make it simple to find!
And thank you to Amazon and Audible for having Market Mamas as Associates! So cool, as I literally use both services pretty much every day! If your life is anything like mine, being so busy with multiple loves of my life that I am dedicated to, such as family, trading, and this podcast, then you will undoubtedly find value in any tips to get to a more effective state of deep work more frequently each week! I hope you all found value in this subject and book recommendation. If you have any book recommendations, please send them to me at https://www.market-mamas.com/contact. I love getting tips on killer books so much! Thanks for being here!
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