Deep Work By Cal Newport

Main takeaways:

- Main difference between successful people & normal adults is the ability to master hard things

- High Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

- In absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive & valuable, many knowledge workers do the 'visible things' like emails as one may not have anything to show for working on complex problems for hours on end

- Brains construct out world view based on what we pay attention to: Rewire your brain to ignore negatives & savour positives to be happy (do not focus on urgent things in your life)

- Most assume that to be happy one must be relaxed but it actually occurs when our body and/or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult yet worthwhile

- The Monastic Philosophy: Maximise deep work by minimising shallow obligations. All focus goes into what you're working on

- The Bimodal Philosophy: Time is divided into 2 specific chunks. For Deep Work & for Shallow Work.

- The Rhythmic Philosophy: Generate a schedule/routine for your deep work to conserve energy needed to decide when & if you will do deep work. Plan an allotted time for deep work daily & mark an X on a calendar after completing your deep work

- The Journalistic Philosophy: Devote all free time for deep work (takes considerable willpower to build this habit)

Ethan Schwandt - The Mind Map Guy's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bzk9ndLfA8&list=WL&index=16&t=0s