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For me personally there are a number of areas that affect my ability to do deep work: - General internet/news consumption patterns - Availability of social/ne

For me personally there are a number of areas that affect my ability to do deep work: - General internet/news consumption patterns - Availability of social/news apps on my phone + computer - Sleeping at least 8.5 hours a night - Exercising at least every few days - Meditating for a few minutes in the morning - Level of burnout eg. have I been overworked or working on unrewarding things for long periods of time If I do all of these consistently my ability to do deep work increases notably. If I slack in any area it reduces my capacity by some degree. Sleep and burnout are probably the largest contributing factors here. I've found that I just can't cheat on sleep long term without negative consequences, and that if I'm burnt out the only fix is to basically stop working/pushing myself for at least a week until I feel recovered. I find also that having intention to my day rather than starting out in a reactive mode is key to getting deep work done. If I spend most of my day reacting to things I have trouble doing deep work later in the day, but if I start out with deep work it comes naturally throughout the day.

fosstrack 8y ago
This is sage advice. You have basically boiled down tons of self help material into a single comment. Thanks.
- apatters 8y ago
  Yep, favorited this post solely for this reply. Excellent job
GoToRO 8y ago
Coffee machine in the office with 90+ people. Bad. Bad. Bad.
kalkaran 8y ago
I completely agree with this. I think the important thing is to focus on the long term. Pacing yourself. My ability to focus used to be terrible. But as with a lot of things, what you practise you get better at. Meditation can help you practise this, and also give you a reset when you're running low on focus. I recommend being preemptive, and getting in mental shape, getting in shape, and not over extending yourself. I can easily focus for 2-3 hours, but then I will be trashed, instead I pace myself and work for 45 minutes then enforce a 15 minute meditation session. If I'm feeling burnt out, I might go outside or take a longer meditation session. My meditation style is: I focus on moving my attention back to my breath every time it wanders off, while listening to white noise.
pthreadses 8y ago
This is exactly it. I had burned myself out to the point that I was almost completely unable to work, to the point that I actually was concerned I might need to find a new type of work. Getting all the above in line (or at least to varying levels of better) were key to getting me back to being productive. I still, like everybody I think, have good days and bad days, but I'm back on a sustainable level of productivity overall.
beaconstudios 8y ago
just to expand on the meditation side, I recently had a huge breakthrough with my focus from regular 10-minute morning meditation sessions. After a couple of months of attempting to focus on my breath while dealing with a rapidly fluctuating train of thought/attention, eventually that part of my mind "detached" from the attentive focus that I control during meditation. I can still "see" it if I pay attention to it or don't have anything to actively attend to, but there's a higher level focus which I'm in strong control of. Since then, a 10-minute meditation in the morning leaves me in near-total control of my attention for most of the working day. This is just from a couple of months' regular practice, so this just goes to show you can achieve revolutionary as well as evolutionary progress from meditative practice.

fosstrack 8y ago

This is sage advice. You have basically boiled down tons of self help material into a single comment. Thanks.

apatters 8y ago
Yep, favorited this post solely for this reply. Excellent job

GoToRO 8y ago

Coffee machine in the office with 90+ people. Bad. Bad. Bad.

kalkaran 8y ago

I completely agree with this. I think the important thing is to focus on the long term. Pacing yourself. My ability to focus used to be terrible. But as with a lot of things, what you practise you get better at. Meditation can help you practise this, and also give you a reset when you're running low on focus. I recommend being preemptive, and getting in mental shape, getting in shape, and not over extending yourself. I can easily focus for 2-3 hours, but then I will be trashed, instead I pace myself and work for 45 minutes then enforce a 15 minute meditation session. If I'm feeling burnt out, I might go outside or take a longer meditation session. My meditation style is: I focus on moving my attention back to my breath every time it wanders off, while listening to white noise.

pthreadses 8y ago

This is exactly it. I had burned myself out to the point that I was almost completely unable to work, to the point that I actually was concerned I might need to find a new type of work. Getting all the above in line (or at least to varying levels of better) were key to getting me back to being productive. I still, like everybody I think, have good days and bad days, but I'm back on a sustainable level of productivity overall.

beaconstudios 8y ago

just to expand on the meditation side, I recently had a huge breakthrough with my focus from regular 10-minute morning meditation sessions. After a couple of months of attempting to focus on my breath while dealing with a rapidly fluctuating train of thought/attention, eventually that part of my mind "detached" from the attentive focus that I control during meditation. I can still "see" it if I pay attention to it or don't have anything to actively attend to, but there's a higher level focus which I'm in strong control of. Since then, a 10-minute meditation in the morning leaves me in near-total control of my attention for most of the working day. This is just from a couple of months' regular practice, so this just goes to show you can achieve revolutionary as well as evolutionary progress from meditative practice.