How to Effortlessly Enter DEEP WORK on Command

Being productive is not about to-do lists and schedules. If you want to seriously improve how much you can get done in a day without burning out, you need to master the ability to do deep work.

Deep work is when you are focused and locked in. It's when time flies by and the work that you're producing is your best quality. If you're studying, this is when things just click. You can cover a lot of content very deeply and very quickly. Doing a deep work feels amazing and it makes being ultra productive much easier.

But after coaching tens of thousands of people to focus and learn more efficiently, what I've realized is that most people don't know how to enter into this deep work state when they need to. Sometimes they're focused, sometimes they're not. And overall, this means their productivity is unpredictable.

So in this video, I'm going to show you how you can activate deep work every time you sit down on command. And there are two parts that I'm going to focus on. First of all, I'm going to break down what deep work is at a cognitive level. Once you know this, you'll know how to trigger it when you need to. After that, I'll give you a practical deepwork toolkit with 20 evidence-based tools and protocols that you can start using straight away. These are methods that I use every day and I teach to my students and clients.

So, let's start by understanding what deep work is and why it happens to us. Deep work is basically when your brain is entering into a state of high efficiency. So if this is a human brain, you just imagine this. And there are different regions in the brain and they're all firing and communicating with each other. And so all the signals and neurons firing in the brain are not always going to be uh all productive. Some of these signals are just completely random. So for example, if you're sitting there daydreaming, uh that's not necessarily productive or goal orientated, but your brain is still firing off all these different signals. And so when you are just sitting there doing nothing at rest, your brain is actually sending uh lots of signals constantly. And so your brain activity is very high. Okay? So very high activity.

And here's the interesting thing. What scientists noticed when they were measuring the brain at rest is they realize that the human brain is actually more active in these rest states than when we're focused on doing something and accomplishing a task. And so at the time this state of high activity when we're not doing anything and just our mind is wandering and we're daydreaming and we're having these random thoughts that was given the term default mode network DMN and deep work is basically about suppressing the DMM.

When your brain is in this default mode network state, this is when it gets distracted. This is when you find it hard to enter into flow. This is when you cannot focus. You can't concentrate. The quality of your work is lower. To put it in a relatable sense, you might be sitting there trying to study for, you know, one or two hours. But if your brain is spending most of that time in its default mode network, you're going to finish that 2-hour session having accomplished basically nothing uh because you were so distracted and your mind was wandering so much that you just wasted your time.

And so the reason this is really the crux of all productivity is that even if you prioritize the right task, like okay, I know I have to study this thing or I have to complete this project. And then even if your time management is great, so yep, at 12:00 when you plan to start, you you always start and you're very consistent. If the way you're using that time is not productive in the first place, then it's kind of pointless. The output that someone can create in two hours of default mode versus 2 hours of deep work is like night and day. And so since the goal of productivity is not to just like randomly schedule things and you know go through the motions, usually the goal of productivity is to get stuff done that is actually meaningful. That is mostly tied to your ability to use your time in deep work. So trying to increase your productivity by focusing on time management or even task prioritization when you can't enter into deep work is like trying to read a book faster by flicking the pages more quickly but you don't know how to read.

So the question is how can we enter into this deep work state more consistently? How do we overcome and suppress this default mode network? And there are two broad things that influence your ability to enter deep work. The first thing are the tools that you use. There are methods and then there are techniques that you can activate to enter into deep work states more effectively. And I'm going to give you a whole bunch of some of my favorite most effective tools in a bit. But the other part of this is your actual distractability and attention span.

Your distractability or your sort of natural attention span is how much your brain is trying to get back to the default mode network. When you have a really really short attention span because you've like brain rot trained your brain to just exist in like 30 second real spikes then your brain is constantly trying to get back to being distracted and wandering. So if your distractability is really really high and so your focus is really bad, then you need to use more and more and more of these tools to overcompensate. It actually makes it harder for you to actually enter deep work more consistently because there are more things that you have to do to be successful. It's an uphill battle and it's an uphill battle that you're going to lose eventually because it is much more likely that one day you will become too tired or you just can't be bothered using all of these tools to create deep work. If you need to use 14 different strategies every single day to make the stars align and concentrate, that is not sustainable.

And so the main issue that I see in my coaching practice is that most people who struggle with entering into deep work and and developing good focus have high levels of distractability. And this is higher than ever because of social media. But instead of working on improving the distractability, which is really what's going to make a difference, they just overcompensate for their poor focus with more and more tool usage. And what this looks like is like having multiple Pomodoro timers every single session, having these elaborate color-coded uh systems of task and time management and you know elaborate notion or obsidian templates or just like planning every single hour of every single day or having these really long deep work rituals that last longer than the actual deep work itself.

And so I'm going to share with you both sides. I'm going to give you the tools that you should learn and use and experiment with and figure out what works for you, but also teach you how to improve your distractability. And the winning game is to be able to understand how distractable you are right now on any given day and understand which tools you should use to activate that deep work. On some days you'll need more. On some days you'll need less. But the result is that you can consistently control your ability to enter into deep work anytime you need to.

And the way I'm going to present this is on a distractability spectrum. So this is your level of distractability down here. And we're going to divide this into low level of distractability, medium, and high levels of distractability. So in any given day you might be somewhere in here. So if you are in a high state of distractability on a given day you should use more of these tools. If you're in a low state of distractability you should use more of these tools. And it also means that if you find that most days you're constantly hovering around here that is a red flag. That's a losing game and it's not sustainable. So it's an indicator that you need to really work on training that distractability.

Now, before I get into the list, I will say that the tools and strategies I'm going to give you are comprehensive. They are 20 of what I think are the most effective uh ones that I would personally vouch for, but even then, it's not everything. There are more strategies and more tools and different types of nuance and context. And so, I'm not able to cover absolutely everything in this video. However, if you are interested in staying up to date and getting a few more of these tools and these techniques, learning some more strategies, not just about deep work, but also about learning and learning more efficiently, then I would recommend that you check out my free newsletter. It's an email sent to your inbox every single week, and I try to distill the insights and the strategies and takeaways that I think are the most helpful for someone trying to learn and focus more efficiently. Each email takes a few minutes to read uh and there's almost always a practical takeaway at the end of it. So it gives you something to to work on during that week. So if you're interested in signing up to that, I'll leave a link to that in the description below.

Now getting back to the list. So let's start with the first few. The first set of strategies is workspace optimization. Workspace optimization is all about making your working environment less distractionheavy. Now again, it's sitting here in this low distractability section, which means that on most days, whether you're feeling very distracted or not very distracted, this kind of sits as a foundation. So, if possible, you want to be optimizing your workspace every single session. And there are four very simple strategies as part of workspace optimization that I've used extensively.

The first one is setup. This is just about creating a dedicated physical space for you to work in. Now, here's a few tips to do this, right? First of all, you don't need to create some kind of workplace masterpiece. You know, I've got a a desk. You know, it moves up and down, which is nice. I've got some monitors. It's clean. I can do my work on here. It's enough as long as you just have a space and this is a dedicated space for you that you can associate with working. Which brings me to tip number two. Try not to do anything else on that same space. I used to be uh a bit of a gamer. Uh and so I used to work and game on the same desk. And so that meant that there was this crossing over between a space for me to relax and enjoy myself versus a space for me to be focused and concentrating. And that's not very good. It's going to make it harder for you to enter into deep work. And so what you can actually do is even if you are in the same space, let's say it's not possible for you to move to another room or to use a different computer or have a different desk somewhere else, you can at the very very least, by the way, if you can do that, you should. But if you can't, you can uh use little visual changes to your workspace that indicate to you mentally that this is relaxation mode versus work mode. So, it might look like, you know, using a different kind of desk mat and then rearranging where your computer or your monitor's face or where your keyboard sits. And then because you've changed how it looks like, you've made that clear break between focus versus play.

You can also apply the same principle to uh the area of your room itself. So, ideally, you don't want your workspace to be in your bedroom or in a leisurely room. So, I've, you know, lucky enough to have an office. Like, I don't enter into this room for anything other than work. But if that's not possible for you, then, uh, a tip that I'd recommend, which I used for years, and I recommend it to all my students, is to get a cheap screen divider, like a dressing room divider. You know, it's like those kind of folding panels, and you can just pop those up behind your desk to create a partition in your room and almost create like a mini cubicle for yourself. I've also got this portable lap desk thing. basically this plank of wood with a cushion underneath it. And I leave that in the car because I'm often working while I'm on the road. So it means whenever I need to, I can just pull over, jump into the passenger seat, get my little portable desk out, and I've created this mini workspace for myself. And I'm able to actually get some really good effective deep work done. So that's the first uh strategy in workspace optimization.

The second strategy is very simple, ergonomic positioning. Once you enter into deep work, which by the way usually takes about 5 to 20 minutes for a healthy brain to exit out of that default mode network. If you have a really high distractability or your attention span is just fried or you're just feeling tired or fatigued, you didn't get enough sleep that day, then this amount of time can be longer. But once you enter into deep work and then you exit out of it, to enter back into deep work takes just as long. So if it took you let's say 10 minutes then coming out of deep work might only be 1 second. That brief interruption could just whip you out of deep work. And now you need to spend another 10 minutes to enter into deep work all over again. So once you're there, you want to stay there for as long as possible. And ergonomic positioning is just a very very simple change to reduce the chances of you being pulled out of deep work. This basically means sit in a way that's going to be comfortable for you long term. Try to have relatively healthy posture, sitting upright, not like hunched over like in a corner, you know, your neck jammed up against the wall. One really quick tip, and this is getting a little bit detailed, but I believe in this a lot, is actually monitor height. So, for me, I actually found that after doing long periods of deep work, my neck gets really uncomfortable. And this was actually because I used to have my laptop just on the the desk. And so, I'm actually straining down the entire time when I'm working. So, not only does this cause discomfort and strain, which pulls you out of deep work, but it's also just bad for your posture. And so, the ergonomic way of doing this is to have the top of your monitor at eye level. And that just helps to keep your spine in a more neutral position. So, that was the second part of workspace optimization.

The third one is visual decluttering. If you're really easily distracted by stuff on your desk, just clear, obviously, visually distracting elements. But here's the part that most people don't think about. Visual decluttering is also about what you can see when you are at your workspace. One of my students uh would always get distracted by their cat because their desk faces out into the living room and the cat is like roaming around inside the house. And so one change they made was to just flip the desk to face the wall. So next time you're at your workspace, pay attention to the things that you get distracted by and see if you can remove those. Now, as for the cat, cats being cats, it probably just ended up sitting on his keyboard or something, so I don't know if it made a difference, but anyway, the fourth strategy for workspace optimization is notification management. Your phone has a do not disturb mode. Please use it. Turn off all your non-emergency alerts. A phone notification is probably the most common reason people break out of deep work. You're doing some great work and then you check your phone after 5 minutes, okay? And then you get back to work and then you check your phone again after 5 or 10 minutes. Well, you're never entering into deep work because you're never letting yourself go uninterrupted for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Remember, it takes 5 to 10 minutes to enter into deep work in the first place. And that's if you have low levels of distractability. Chances are, if you're used to checking your phone every few minutes, you need up to 20 or even 30 minutes to enter into deep work states. So, that's workspace optimization. And again, these are strategies that you can use every single day. They're very sustainable.

The second one which is also in this low category that you can also use every single day is body optimization not body odor BO body optimization. In essence healthy body healthy mind when your body is in a good condition your mind finds it easier to focus. In fact fatigue or sleep deprivation is one of the most common reasons that you're going to find it hard to enter deep work even if you are typically someone that doesn't get distracted very often. And so the first strategy within body optimization is just sleep hygiene. Have a regular sleep schedule. Have a windown routine. Avoid your screen time. Don't have coffee between the 5 to 6 hours before you go to sleep. Get enough sleep in an environment that is dark enough and quiet enough. If it's not dark enough, put some blinds up. Get an eye mask. If it's not quiet enough, get some earplugs. Play some white noise. Turn on your brain FM sleep sounds. I feel like I say this every video, but sleep is so important. And I am sick of hearing all of these toxic productivity gurus talking about how, you know, you don't need sleep or minimize your sleep or whatever it is like hustle till you die. Just sleep. A life in sleep deprivation is not a good time and it's really counterproductive. And also, if you didn't know, sleep deprivation increases your risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's. So, I guess in a way, sleep is really productive for getting Alzheimer's.

Now, the second strategy in body optimization is just exercise. So, there's actually a few interesting parts of this. First of all, uh regular aerobic exercise not only increases your health and improves your sleep quality, uh but it also increases your cognitive function. So there is a direct link to exercise and your ability to concentrate, focus, and perform. Exercise also seems to have a direct positive influence on the suppression of that default mode network, which means that sometimes you can go from high distractability to lower distractability by doing nothing else other than just adding exercise into your routine. And this also seems to work on a smaller scale. So in a single session, let's say that you're losing focus, it's been one or two hours, you've done some great work, and your deep work is sort of naturally fading away. You can actually use a movement break to get back into focus more quickly. So instead of just you know scrolling on your phone for like one or two hours which doesn't improve your ability to enter into deep work later you can actually go for like a 15minute walk and then when you come back you'll feel that you're able to enter into that deep work state much more effectively than if you were just sort of sitting there doing nothing. So that was exercise and the third and final part about body optimization is hydration protocols. So here's something interesting. You're probably dehydrated right now. I am almost certainly dehydrated right now. Here's some crazy information for you as a former medical doctor. Dehydration impairs your entire body and your brain. It affects how nutrients are delivered and how waste is cleared from your cells. And your brain tissue actually shrinks physically in dehydration. And so this causes brain fog. It causes fatigue. It causes headaches. It makes it harder to concentrate and focus. And all of this can happen with just a 1% loss of body water. And you know what the symptom of a 1% drop in body water is? It's literally just feeling thirsty. Just the feeling of thirst is already an indication that you're entering into the early stages of dehydration. And by the time you have a dry mouth and your lips are dry, you're already into moderate dehydration. So here's a hydration protocol I recommend. Have a big drink bottle next to you and aim to have a big mouthful of water every 10 to 15 minutes. Try to get through about a cup of water every hour. Obviously, if you're like really hot and sweating or you're exercising, you're going to need more than this. You can't uh batch this. You can't have just like one liter chugging it down, you know, once every few hours. Your body can actually only absorb so much water in one go. So, if you just have a huge amount of water, you're going to pee most of that out and your body's not really absorbing most of it. So, big gulp every 10 15 minutes is best. Now, if you're properly hydrated, uh you're actually going to end up going to the toilet much more often than you normally would. But that's very normal and that's actually a sign of hydration. That means your kidneys are nice and healthy.

Okay? So now we're in the medium distractability column. And there are two categories of optimizations in here. These are focus protection and focus restoration. For most people who say they struggle with entering into deep work consistently, in these categories of strategies, you're going to see that it starts becoming much easier. So starting with this first one which is focus protection. There are five strategies that you can use within this.

The first one is noise control. It is really hard to focus if someone is having a heated argument next to you. And so especially if you are needing to focus in situations where you can't control the noise in your environment, you should use some kind of noise control system. So obviously there are things like earplugs or ear muffs, uh noise cancelling headphones. What I'd recommend that you do is you add on a layer on top of that which is using white noise. White noise generally means a constant steady repetitive sound usually uh with a sort of hissing kind of characteristic. So if you imagine the sound of rain or a river flowing by. These are sounds that can drown out the noise around you without being distracting. Now, if you want to take this a step further so that the sound actually forces you into a state of deep work, there are actually certain sounds that can stabilize your brain's electrical activity. This is a phenomenon called neural phase locking. And for those that struggle with focus, uh, entering into deep work, especially if you have ADHD, this can be incredibly effective. And the easiest way to get these sounds, and this is what I use, is to use Brain FM. And they're actually the sponsor of this video as well. Brain FM specializes in this scientifically backed focus music. And the cool thing is that when you sign up, it actually personalizes the sounds you hear depending on your own preferences and the type of work that you need to do. And so if you want to do some deep work or if you want to go to sleep or if you want to do something creative, it will give you different types of sounds. I definitely recommend checking them out. Uh, you can use my code brain.fm/justinssung and you'll be able to get unlimited access with a 30-day free trial. Just give it a go, see if it works for you. If you don't like it, you can always cancel, but it is actually surprisingly just very effective for most people. So, that was the first part of focus prediction, noise control.

The second part of focus prediction is time blocking. Time blocking is when you just have a block of time in your schedule where you have dedicated that to doing something. In this case, you want to schedule in deep work as a time block. So, between 2 to 4 p.m., you're going to have a deep work study session. But here's the key about time blocking. Just because you put it into your calendar doesn't mean it's going to happen. If you create a time block, you need to protect that time. So, once you've added it into your schedule, ask yourself, what might stop me from being successful with executing on my plan? A great example is I used to schedule things at like 5:30 a.m. So it's like I'm going to wake up early in the morning and then I'm going to do this really focused, you know, period of work and then I'm going to go, you know, go to work or go to uni. And that was a terrible idea. I had a very very low success rate because I hate waking up early. I also had to work late into the night a lot of the time. So I wasn't getting enough sleep. So as a schedule, that is a terrible idea to put it in somewhere that is so high risk. If I was committed to making that time work, I need to take steps to protect that block. So that would mean going to sleep earlier, which means rearranging my work, changing my work meetings and my work schedule. And if that is too difficult to do, do not schedule it here because you cannot protect that time. The analogy I give is like a baby. A baby is an incredibly precious thing. Just like your time is incredibly precious. You wouldn't just, you know, put your baby on the floor and then just go for like a 3-day holiday. you would think about, okay, how can I protect and take care of my baby? Hire a babysitter. Make sure the knives aren't just like all over the floor. Have a little gate in front of the stairs so your baby doesn't fall down. And if you can't protect your baby sufficiently, you're not just going to be like, "Oh, well, I'm sure it'll be fine." And just go on your holiday anyway. So, think about your time like that. If you've blocked something out, it's precious for you. It was important for you. That deep work means something for you in your life. So, protect it. And if you can't protect it, move it to somewhere else where you can protect it. So that's time blocking.

The third strategy is using app blockers. This one is very simple. There are lots of different app blockers. Figure out which apps are distracting you. Block them. If one app blocker isn't working enough for you, use a different one. Also, most likely those same apps are probably training your distractability to become worse over time. So blocking them might actually help you to reduce your innate distractability.

Strategy number four of focus protection is single tab working. Now based on the screen share of some of my colleagues, I know that this is going to be really hard for some people, but try not to have so many tabs open at once. Only have essential apps and tabs open when you're working. The reason this is important is that deep work is actually quite a fragile state and there are lots of things that can break you out of it. And one thing that is very strong at breaking you out of deep work is context switching. That's basically when you're working on something and then you have to work on something that's very different. Like you're writing an essay and then now you have to check an email. Well, when you have lots of different tabs open, you now need to make the decision about which tab you need to get to and navigate between. And that is actually a context switch. you're going from being in this great deep work flow state to now changing to navigating state. And so that can actually be enough to pull you out of deep work. Another thing that happens is that each open tab, especially if you've opened a bunch of them recently, creates this open loop within your brain and it unintentionally activates something called the zygenic effect. The zygenic effect basically says that when you start something, it's easier to come back to finish it. Now, this can be very positive for developing new habits. You can start a project, you know, last thing before you go to sleep, just a few lines, but it means that tomorrow morning, it's easier for you to just roll back into the task and keep going. But there's a negative aspect to it, too, because your brain is holding on to cognitive resources, ready to jump back into this task. It means that that open tab is using up unnecessary cognitive resources that aren't productive for what you're trying to do right now. This creates a sort of cognitive tension within your brain which makes it easier for your mind to start wandering thinking about other tasks and then boom now you're back into that default mode network. So that's the fourth one single tab working.

The fifth one within focus protection is cognitive offloading. To enter into deep work you want to have as much of a singular focus as possible. Everything your brain is doing is for a specific task or a specific goal. And ironically, one thing that makes it really hard for your brain to maintain that singular focus is actually trying to remember what your goal is in the first place. If your brain is working really hard to try to solve a problem, you don't want your brain to stop doing that to then say, "Wait, what was the problem again?" That very act of trying to remember the point of what it's doing can actually break you out of that deep work state. And so cognitive offloading is actually about writing down what your goal and objective is for that session or the or the mini session. You can have multiple goals in a single session and actually writing it down and then putting it next to you. So every time you're wondering what was the goal, what do I need to be focusing on, you don't have to break out of your thought pattern to remember what it was, you can just look at your note to remind yourself. This is a really simple strategy that I especially recommend if you have ADHD. So that is focus protection if you use those strategies. And again, you shouldn't need to use all of them, but these are the ones that allow you to enter into that deep work state and then stay in that deep work state.

The next category is focus restoration. Focus restoration is about if you've come out of a deep work state, how do you enter back into another deep work session more easily? And there are three strategies we can use here.

The first strategy within focus restoration is one that I've already touched on before, which is attention restoring activities. Exercise was the one that I gave you before. You can use a movement break. If you're feeling a little bit distracted, go for a walk. This helps to regenerate that focus. But there are other things outside of exercise that can also help to regenerate that focus. There's a concept of a productive break, which is when you do something that is somewhat productive, but not mentally stimulating. You're letting your brain rest while keeping it in this flow state of concentration. Great example of this is like housework. cleaning the house, doing the dishes, organizing your room, maybe even just preparing for your next session, cleaning a few things up. The main thing about this is that you want to disengage from anything that will draw you back into that mind wandering default mode network state. You want to give your brain a break without giving your brain a distraction. So, it means no scrolling on your phone or playing games. So, how long should these breaks be? I normally recommend a 3:1 or a 4:1 ratio. So if you've been focusing and doing some deep work for 45 minutes, you might take a 15minute rest. That would be a 3:1 ratio. If you've been doing 3 to 4 hours of focused concentrated work, you might take 1 hour break. That's a 3 or 4:1 ratio.

Another thing that you can do during this break is the second strategy within focus restoration, which are breathing techniques. Breathing techniques are an incredibly effective strategy that I actually think every functioning adult should learn how to use. Some people teach this in a way that gives very hippie vibes. Uh but it's an incredibly scientific evidence-backed way of improving your focus, restoring your energy, and regaining concentration. The reason breathing techniques work is that there is a direct neural connection between your breathing and your brain. Your vagus nerve which directly connects to your diaphragm and controls diaphragmatic breathing is also a major nerve involved in relaxation. So the act of deep diaphragmatic breathing forcibly activates a relaxation response in your brain. In addition, deliberately trying to create rhythmic controlled breathing patterns forces you to have a clear goal and focus in mind that your brain can anchor onto. This in itself creates a mini deep work state that takes it out of that default mode network. Instead of wandering, it is focused on slow controlled breathing. In fact, that uh neural phase locking I talked about before where certain sounds can actually stabilize your brain activity. Well, this type of neural entrainment can actually happen with your own breathing. Your own rhythmic breathing can actually synchronize your brain waves into a calmer, more stable state. And this is the reason why breathing techniques are used not only as a treatment for conditions like anxiety, but also trained in almost every high stress, high pressure industry in the world. And there are two very easy uh breathing techniques that you can use. The first one is called box breathing. It means you breathe in for four seconds, you hold it for 4 seconds, you breathe out for 4 seconds, and then you hold that for 4 seconds. Another one is called 478. This one is personally my favorite. It means you breathe in for 4 seconds. Deep big breath, 4 seconds in, and then you hold it for 7 seconds and then you breathe out very slow and controlled, relaxing out for 8 seconds. So give those breathing techniques a go. Learn to use them, master that as a technique. And I'd recommend using them immediately before and after deep work states. So before you enter into a session, do a few rounds of that breathing and then as you enter out of it, do a few rounds to bring your mind back to stable.

Now the third focus restoration strategy is meditation or mindfulness meditation. And again, this is one of those things that has I think a lot of misconception around it. People think about meditation and they think about head shaven sitting in a temple in the middle of the mountain somewhere you know levitating off the ground where they think it's something that you should do only after your Sunday morning hot yoga class but mindfulness meditation is actually again one of the most scientifically evidence-based methods for not only restoring your focus but actually training and reducing your distractability and actually it is one of the most effective strategies for someone who has a high level of distractability to eventually get lower and lower over time. So, you can find some YouTube videos about how to do mindfulness meditation. You can use apps like Headspace or Calm or Insight Timer to teach you. But if you're going to give this a go, I'm going to tell you three things about this. The first thing is that it takes time. If you keep doing mindfulness meditation, your distractability will improve. Your attention span will improve. Your concentration will get better. These things will happen, but it takes time. Often, if you are really highly distracted, it can actually take months. And so it's one of those things that you have to believe in and continue doing consistently for a long time to really stack up that benefit. Most people will not see it through for that long. And I just highly recommend that you give it a go. The second thing is that the point of meditating is not to be in a state of peace, calm, and tranquility. The point is to get distracted. The point is for your mind to wander. The point is for your brain to enter into that default mode network and start daydreaming and having all these random thoughts. And when it happens, you bring your attention back to whatever you're doing, whether it's your breathing or your walking or whatever uh mindfulness kind of attention anchor that you're using. And it is that act of actually being distracted and then coming back that trains your brain. So don't be put off because your mind is wandering every 1 to two seconds. It just means that you're getting one opportunity to bring your focus back every second. And the more reps of that that you can get in, the faster your brain will retrain itself. In fact, the evidence for this is so clear and I'm such a believer in this that if I had to recommend only three things within the entire middle list of middle distractability techniques that you should use, it would be mindfulness because it trains your distractability to become better. the noise control because sometimes too much noise is just impossible to focus through and app blocking because social media apps are so engineered to hack our brain and our distractability that it's going to undo all the good that our mindfulness meditation is doing.

So those are the two uh focus protection and focus restoration groups of strategies for if you have a middle level of distractability. So most of the time on most days you should be hovering within this kind of band. On some days you may need to use the strategies in this high level of distractability band. Some of you may be operating within this level most of the time in most days and if that is the case you need to do some more mindfulness meditation and bring yourself back to the lower end. So let's look at what the high distractability strategies are. Again there are two different categories of uh high distractability strategies and the first one here is urgency strategies.

Urgency strategies are about creating a sense of urgency that forces your brain to try to focus in. And the reason this works is that urgency creates a mild stress reaction. And that stress reaction actually helps to shut down some of the unnecessary mind wandering which makes it easier to shift away and suppress the default mode network. And so there are three different types of commonly used urgency strategies.

The first one are pomodoro variations. So this is just any time where you have a timer and that timer counts down how long you have to work for and then usually it's followed by a rest time. So the classic one is 25 minutes of work and then 5 minutes of rest. But there are all sorts of different variations of timing. So using something like a Pomodoro timer and setting a time that is actually literally counting down as you work can be great for creating that sense of urgency and entering into that deep work. However, if you look at how top performers usually enter into deep work on most days, you'll find that a very small percentage of those people are regularly using things like Pomodoro or variations. And the reason for this is that it's not very sustainable and it also shouldn't be necessary. Like I mentioned before, the reason urgency creates focus is because it creates a mild stress reaction. And so, if we're relying on this to create focus every single time, it creates a prolonged chronic stress state. Not only does this eventually increase your risk of burnout and attention fatigue, but it actually becomes counterproductive when you maintain prolonged states of frequent constant urgency. It actually reduces your critical thinking and your creativity. It reduces the flexibility in your thinking. It increases the accumulation of fatigue. It can damage the the quality of your sleep as well, which creates this, you know, negative spiral. And it can actually just make it harder to concentrate in the first place. So now you're dependent on urgency to concentrate, which remember it's getting harder and harder to do. As a bonus, uh it can also reduce your immune system, which means you're more likely to get sick. And you know, getting sick is not particularly productive. And so if you find yourself constantly needing Pomodoro timers to get any work done, uh for me, I would view that as a clear red flag. Yes, you can use these strategies, and I will use these strategies on a bad day, but it should be reserved for a bad day. And this is kind of the trend for everything in this red column, which is that they're all things that you should reserve for when you really need them.

The second strategy with an urgency is accountability or focus buddies. What I'm referring to here is having someone next to you, either physically or digitally, to sort of keep you on track. And you're replacing the urgency that you feel from a clock ticking down like with Pomodoro with the social pressure that someone is watching you with certain expectations of you and basically it creates a very similar kind of stress response. Now the caveat here is that you can certainly have accountability and focus buddies and it can be very healthy. It can offer a lot of social and psychological support. It can actually just make what you're doing more enjoyable in the first place. Where this becomes unhealthy is when you feel like you need this person in order for you to do deep work and focus. And without this person, you don't feel motivated or you feel incapable of concentrating. If that's the case, then again, that's a red flag and you need to work on training your baseline distractability.

And the third urgency strategy is energy budgeting. Energy budgeting is like treating your own mental energy and your focus and your concentration like you would treat money and you're distributing it strategically throughout the day. So you might have some deep work you want to get done early in the day and you frontload that. So you spend a lot of that mental energy there which means that afterwards you spend a little bit less. So you might have a period of rest and then you might have uh some shallow work that doesn't require so much mental energy and you're basically trying to schedule in your deep work blocks in the times where you know you are likely to have that peak window of energy and concentration. Now so far that overall is not a bad practice and there's actually nothing you know unhealthy or unsustainable about doing that. But what I found in reality from coaching people that use this sort of energy budgeting strategy is that there are some red flags and it can seriously backfire. And so if you're using energy budgeting, then this is what you should try to avoid doing. First of all, don't tie your deep work exclusively to these peak windows. I find that people that do a lot of this energy budgeting uh can become quite rigid or fixed in understanding when they can do deep work. And sometimes it's actually more important to be able to trigger and enter deep work whenever you can rather than strictly budgeting it up front. It can also lead to overguarding of that mental energy. You basically hoard this energy for when it really matters for that really great deep work block. But then sometimes that deep work block never comes or something unexpected pops up. And so actually your overall productivity tanks because you're just trying to wait for the perfect moment rather than just making use of the moments you have available. So while it's great to try to do meaningful deep work earlier in the day when you might have more energy and less distractions, sometimes you might need to do an hour of deep work at 5:00 p.m. and you just need the flexibility to do that. And the third issue, and this is actually the most serious, is that if you're really really obsessed about your mental energy budgeting and you feel like it's super super important, I've often found that that's actually just an indicator that you have overloaded yourself too much. If you need to distribute your energy that strategically every single day, you're probably taking on an unsustainable amount of work. What I recommend, and this is what works for me, is to have a very general sense of energy budgeting. You can have deep work in times where you feel really effective by all means, but don't go to the extent of overoptimizing for it. Just like with money, you can only get stuff by spending it. There's no point just hoarding it for the sake of it. So those were the three urgency strategies.

And the final category within the high distractability segment is emergency restoration. And there are two strategies in the emergency restorations. And you might need to use either or both of these strategies once in a while. But again, if you feel the need to use this regularly, there is definitely something going wrong.

The first one is offline work. This means actually disconnecting from the internet entirely in order to get your deep work done. So what that might look like is going out, you know, to a retreat with just a pen and paper to do some writing and thinking. And that's great. And it can create a a great environment for deep work. And you should certainly do that once in a while. However, if you need that to do deep work and you need that regularly, your innate level of distractability is at a point where it is incompatible with basically just living in society and trying to achieve whatever goals you're trying to achieve.

And the second one which is very similar is a dopamine detox. Dopamine detox basically means again you're basically disconnecting from all the things in modern society that tend to give you that quick dopamine hit. You know like flashing lights, TV shows, games, uh social media, these things that have been artificially created to produce an unnatural dopamine spike. Our brain is not really good at dealing with that. And so when you have lots of these dopamine spikes, it creates addiction. It reduces your attention span. And so every now and again, we need to just disconnect from all of that. Let our brain just come back to its natural state. And I'm personally a great fan of dopamine detoxes. And I do a dopamine detox like at least every single year for one or two weeks. It's pretty much unavoidable because you're online, you're communicating, you're doing stuff. You're going to get these dopamine hits whether you like it or not. And so everyone probably needs a dopamine detox once in a while. The problem is when you feel like you need it all the time. You come back from a dopamine detox and literally one or two weeks later you're back to where you were before. What that means is that you are probably overexposing yourself to dopamine. And so the dopamine detox isn't really going to help you here. It's like sisophus rolling the boulder up the hill. As soon as you let go like it's just going to roll back down again. The problem here is the amount of exposure you have to dopamine and the effect it's having on your attention span.

And so that's it. That's your toolkit for creating deep work. And if you enjoyed this video and you want a similar kind of breakdown about how to improve your learning and increase your learning skills, then I recommend checking out this video here where I go through all the components about how to build a learning system. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.