Deep Work - Cal Newport

Question 1

what deep work means?

Answer 1

professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

Question 2

Are social networks affecting our ability to concentrate?

Answer 2

Yes. According to the tyranny of email or the distraction addiction.

Question 3

What does the book “the race against the machine” say about the gap between the machines and humans and how does this affect working dynamics?

Answer 3

The gap between machine and human abilities shrinks. This produces that companies tend to hire more “machines” than “people”. On the other side, remote work is more and more common, producing companies to hire the best for the role, leaving the local talent pool underemployed.

Question 4

What are the 3 groups that will get the more lucrative jobs in the actual and near future?

Answer 4

Those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do and those with acceso to capital.

Question 5

What means a high skilled worker?

Answer 5

People that are good at working with intelligent machines. 100 years ago where car production machines, (hardware), today are machine learning, big data, intelligent search engines, programming, etc

Question 6

What means the superstars?

Answer 6

Best and passionate people that are above the common players. This profiles tend to be highly specialized. Sherwin Rosen states “hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance”. Talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels. There is a premium to be the best.

Question 7

What menas be the owners?

Answer 7

Those with capital to invest in the new technologies that are driving the great restructuring.

Question 8

What are the skills needed to be a superstar or a skilled worker?

Answer 8

The ability to master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level (quality and speed).

Question 9

What key insights do we need to master hard things?

Answer 9

Technologies change rapidly, this process of mastering hard things never ends: you must be able to di to quickly, again and again. If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.

Question 10

What is the core tactic to lean hard things quickly?

Answer 10

The ability to perform deep work!

Question 11

What says the book “ the intelectual life” about men of geniuos?

Answer 11

“That they are formed by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure”. Focus all the energy on one dimension.

Question 12

What is myelin and how affect newrones and learning agility?

Answer 12

Is a tissue that is built around neurons that are constantly used. It allows neurons to work faster and cleaner. You get better at any skill is reduce down to have more myelin around specific path of neurons. Constant deep work help this myelin path’s being built in stronger ways.

Question 13

What is residue attention?

Answer 13

When you change from a task A to a task B, your attention doesn’t fallow immediately. Part of that attention stays for a while with the first topic. The more intense this residue, the worst you perform at task B.

Question 14

Does the brain responde to distractions?

Answer 14

Yes

Question 15

Why responding to emails is a great distraction against deep work?

Answer 15

Leslie Perlow, from harvard, found that people tend to spend between 15 and 25 hours a week (outside the office) monitoring the email. The need for constant check helps our mind to jump from deep work to distractions.

Question 16

What states the principle of least resistance?

Answer 16

That between two tasks presented, the chosen one will be the easiest to achieve. On the workplace, for example, between coding a complex algorithm or chat with a co-worker about game of thrones, the 2nd will be chosen.

Question 17

Bussyness as a proxy of productivity. What means?

Answer 17

In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in an over-visible manner. Attending constantly to meetings, responding e-mails at all hours, adding every little detail to a complex plan are examples.

Question 18

What means the phrase: “The idle mind is the devil’s workshop”

Answer 18

Means that when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong in your life instead of what’s right.

Question 19

What are examples of things that our mind tend to focus as a distraction?

Answer 19

Eating, sleeping and sex.

Question 20

Do we have an infinite or finite amount of willpower per days ?

Answer 20

Finite. It gets down as you use it.

Question 21

How can we take the most advantage over finite willpower?

Answer 21

Building routines and rituals that helps you use that willpower into deep work.

Question 22

What is the monastic philosophy of deep work?

Answer 22

eliminating or radically minimizing the shallow obligations. (Ej. 0 email responses, full weeks offline, etc)

Question 23

What is the bimodal philosophy of deep work?

Answer 23

Split your time into shallow and deep. The deep must have the amount of time to get into cognitive work.

Question 24

What is the chained method means?

Answer 24

Build a habit until you eliminate the need of willness to perform a deep work. You build an habit by repeating hard work constantly over a long period of time.

Question 25

What is the journalist method approach?

Answer 25

Constant switching between trivial and deep work several times per hour. Not for novice.

Question 26

How does the grand gesture method works?

Answer 26

Rowling wrote HP 7 on a 5 star luxurious hotel. This method suggests that changing your enviroment or invest a good amount of money will help to enhanve deep work. You are loosing something if you don’t.

Question 27

Is leazy or brain rest important?

Answer 27

Fundamental, let time to rest and do nothing.

Question 28

Constant switching from low-stimuli/high-value to high-stimuli/low value trains the brain muscles to what?

Answer 28

To keep looking for news, novelties and distractions.

Question 29

Keep the shallow work in check is key?

Answer 29

yes

Question 30

How to deal with email responses?

Answer 30

Just response those mails that are concrete and complete. When you respond, add all the information important to avoid the other party respond back. Give information about the question and how to fallowUp without sending another main.