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• Downtime aids insights
• It helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply
• The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important
It's important to have a shutdown ritual, to ensure that every incomplete activity has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either you have a plan you will follow for its completion, or it’s wirrten down and saved in a place where it will be revisited.
In order to have a deep work routine, you have to decide the following:
• Where you’ll work and for how long.
• How you’ll work once you start to work.
• How you’ll support your work.
• Monastic: isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed
• Bimodal: reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic (you need at least one day a week)
• Rhythmic: take 3-4 hours every day to perform deep work on your project
• Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work as it fits your blocks of time (not recommended to try out first).
Knowledge workers usually lack explicit indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable at work, so they turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing multiple tasks in a visible manner.
• Deep work means those professional tasks that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit done in concentration mode (no distractions)
• Shallow work relates to the tasks that do not require much cognitive work (logistical-style tasks) performed while distracted most of the time. They don't bring much new value in the world and are easy to duplicate.
Writing is not the outcome of thinking
Writing is the medium in which thinking takes place.
Writing does not begin when we start to put words on a page. It starts much earlier, as we take notes on articles and books, podcasts, conversations, and life experiences we have.
These notes build up as a byproduct of reading and is a way to organize our thoughts and to keep track of the information we consume.
Save contradictory ideas
A slip-box system will lead us to save contradictory or paradoxical ideas. These ideas become very valuable. It will be easier to develop an argument or pros and cons than with a string of one-sided arguments or quotes.
It will also go a long way to counteract confirmation bias - our tendency to take into account only the information we agree with.
Standardization enables creativity
Many people take notes in an ad-hoc fashion. They might underline a sentence or write a comment in the margin. If they have a good idea, they write it down in one of many notebooks. They might save an except from an article. In the end, their different kinds of notes in many places and formats creates a massive project to organize and become mostly unusable or forgotten.
A standardization of notes enables a mass of useful notes to build up in one place.
Taking Smart Notes
When we take notes, it should not become a stack of forgotten thoughts. Our notes should be a rich and interconnected collection of ideas we can draw on regardless of where our interests lead us.
A smart note is a reliable and simple external structure to think in - like a second memory. It compensates for the limitations of our brains while turning our thoughts and discoveries into convincing written pieces.
Explanation Of SAVERS From The Book
Some of the people are confused with the Hal Elrod's SAVERS formula as they don't know what to do exactly. Here is a simplified version or we can say examples for each.
• S is for Silence- Be Quiet, Show Gratitude, Meditate etc
• A is for Affirmations- Affirm about your purpose, confidence, priority, goals.
• V is for Visualization- Visualise your Goals or the Ideal Life you want.
• E is for Exercise- Here you can do Aerobics, Yoga, Dance, Streching, Other Workouts.
• R is for Reading- Read good Self-improvement books.
• S is for Scribing- Write Journal, Personal diary, answers to questions related to yourself.