How to Create Long Hours of Deep Work - PhD Student

Hi, today in this blog I will tell you about the concept of deep work. So when we look at artists’ presidents and also scientists we really see that they craft dedicated time to put in the hours for Deep work. I find it personally a really interesting concept and I've seen it in my own work. When I really put dedicated time towards deeply working into my science and into my craft I get better a lot faster. And then I get results quite fast and today I want to give you some tips tools and techniques to really allow for this deep work to happen. So deep work was kind of introduced by Carl Newport under the name deep work but I've known it for a little bit longer under the name of the flow.

According to top essay service USA, I think that when we look at different schedules of people we can really see that most artists. Moreover, most scientists usually have this dedicated time to look for deep work so I personally really like the book daily rituals by Mason Curry. He really Dives deep into these daily rituals of famous people so I want to show you one that I really like and it's the first one by Benjamin Franklin. He demonstrated his schedule that was first in the morning to wake up and do the question what good shall I do today? So we've talked about doing one thing every day and I think that kind of amplifies this then there's a noon afternoon. In the evening he has another question which is what good have I done today and I really like his schedule. But today I want to give you the tips and tricks to kind of design your own schedule such that you may optimize your workflow for deep work.

Know thyself

The first thing is to kind of know yourself and I think knowing yourself and knowing your own optimal working hours are really important. Because when I read the book of Mason Curry on daily virtual. I really saw that different artists or different scientists have different Peak moments. Some of the artists he describes say that they work best at night. So they always craft in a few hours every night that they work on writing their book. For example or painting whereas other people in this book are really early morning people and they dedicate their time in the morning.

So every morning they have a block of around three hours where they work and I think in general it's not really important. When you work although all the morning people on YouTube would say differently I think it's more important to be consistent every day. You have a couple of hours every day where you are alone without friends and distracted by your phone or computer. When you really dedicate your time towards that one project or one goal that you want to go towards.

the second thing I find personally really important is to optimize your space for deep work so for example I have my desk behind me and I usually only do work at this desk so I don't really do leisure time or I don't do gaming I don't watch YouTube videos at this desk I only do work and I personally also like going for example to different spaces like a library or Cafe when I'm kind of stuck or when I want to work on another dedicated project so personally I really like writing in cafes and I think it's kind of your task to find a space in your house that's dedicated to deep work and maybe some of you will have only a one spacious bedroom but even then I think you can dedicate a tiny corner of your room or even a space in your bed where when you sit there you will only do deep work and I think this slowly kind of rewires the way we think about that space and once we enter that space we will automatically go into this flow of deep working

Clear goals

The third thing I find really important is to have a clear goal so in every deep working session I would have one goal. Or one thing I kind of wants to finish so for example it could be making a YouTube video but it could also be a dedicated programming practice that I wanted to do that day or having something finished for my science right. but every day could be different but I think it's quite important to have this one goal quite clear for yourself that you would work towards that during your deep working hours because I think if we go into deep work without any goal or any direction we usually just end up kind of twiddling our time away so it's really nice if before each session you set a clear goal

Be flexible

The fourth thing I want to talk about is to be a little bit flexible with your time. So sometimes we set in two hours and then immediately after these two hours we plan in something else but one thing I've noticed a lot is that sometimes. I just have really good sessions and I kind of want to keep on working all day or all evening.

Then if I have something immediately planned after that's just kind of a sad thing right because you're finally in this flow and this amazing deep work mindset. So what I would do is to be a little bit flexible with your schedule so I personally don't really over plan things. I usually set dedicated time blocks for things I want to accomplish that day but the rest of the time is usually a little bit freer such that if I want to continue my two hours of deep work to the rest of the day that this is possible.

Mind-body connection

The fifth thing is just something I personally find really important and that's the Mind-Body Connection I've talked about this a lot. But I want to keep emphasizing this so I think personally for myself I'm usually pretty jittery and pretty high energy throughout the day .so if I don't move I get really stuck in my thoughts sometimes so I think it's really important to also when you do deep work you can also move around like some of us think when we do deep work.

We have to be really focused and really intensely scheduled in one place but I think it's also okay to bring in movement throughout these deep working sessions. Because I think once you are stuck in a little problem for example walking around or going outside or taking your work to another place it kind of brings new energy to your thought process. And I think this kind of movement of flexibility in your body kinda allows your mind to sometimes relax and really solve the solutions a lot faster than if you just stay dedicatedly at your spot for six hours.

 so yeah these were my tips on deep work, for now, I would also highly recommend reading the book he really goes into how he schedules deep work and how he has different opinions on how to schedule it. and I learned a lot from this book it's still one of my favorites and I revisit it a lot of times.