Truly Deep Work

Have you ever heard of the term deep work? That's what I'd like to talk to you about in this video. You may have heard of it because of Cal Newport's book called Deep Work. And if you haven't read it, I'll just quickly give you a basic definition of what is deep work. And hopefully by the end of this video, you'll have an even deeper perspective about what is deep work and be able to apply it so that you will procrastinate less and actually bring more of your depth of presence to your work. So that's my goal in this video. I. I look forward to seeing what kind of difference it makes for you. So Cal Newport basically defines deep work as deliberately focusing on purposeful tasks in order to maximize creativity, learning, productivity. And I'll just break that down a little bit and then I'm going to go even deeper with you on what I believe is truly deep work. So deliberately focusing means to do what you can to cut out distractions. So notice, for example, I'm in my office, I work from home, My door is closed behind me, so it helps to keep distractions at bay. My windows closed. I'm looking at my garden right now. My windows closed so I can make this video with, with less noise. I have turned off my notifications and other things that might pop up and distract me. And so those things are essential because the human mind, especially these days, is so easily distractible that anything that pops up we. It instantly drains some of our energy and our attention and it's easy to start going down some rabbit holes that way. Right. So deliberately focusing and, and on purposeful work, purposeful tasks. So things that are not just, you know, and sometimes you have to do administrative work, but sometimes you might be putting off more important work that actually moves your business forward. Things like creating a product or an offer or some important piece of content or doing some outreach or something that actually moves your business forward that you might be putting off that takes deliberate focus and has the risk of failure. I think this is important to mention because if, if some work does not have risk of failure, like, oh, this is no big deal, this is some kind of very mundane admin task that if I did it or didn't do it, it probably doesn't matter that much. Okay, versus I'm going to create and launch this offer. And if the offer succeeds, it's going to be great for my business. I'm going to be working with clients I love. If the offer does not succeed, there will be no money And I won't get to work, do the work that I love. See, those kinds of purposeful work has risk attached to it. There's high reward when something works well and there's. There could be discouragement if it doesn't work well. Right? And you, the it may feel like you're wasting time and effort if it doesn't work out. Truth of the matter, of course, is when you do focus on purposeful work, even if it doesn't have the results that you fantasized about, just doing the work gives you learning and develops the muscles of focus and courage and, you know, diving deeper into what is most meaningful to you. You learn about yourself, you'd probably learn about your market, etc. Etc. So purposeful work is not just for the results, it's also for your creativity, your growth, your learning. Right? And so I want to go even deeper here about what deep work is. You. I appreciate Cal Newport's definition deliberately focusing on purposeful tasks to maximize your learning, your creativity, your growth. But here's the thing I've noticed about myself, and maybe you can relate to this too. I noticed this about my clients. We tend to procrastinate because not. Not okay, so notice, notice that work when. Notice that any work segment has sort of a multiple stages to it, right? Sometime during your work hour or two hours or however long you work on something, you get into flow eventually, right? So for example, I started this video, I had to figure out how to get into it, but now I'm into the making this video for you. You know, I'm five minutes into it and it feels flowy. I feel like I'm able to keep continue on. There's momentum. So you notice that when you get into any project, eventually you get to the momentum time and then you're into it. It's almost like as you get into flow and momentum, it's almost like you're no longer conscious of every act, isn't that right? Like you're no longer going every 10 seconds, all right, I got to do this. Oh, I got to bring my willpower to doing this. No, you're just writing or you're speaking or you're, you know, you're in flow with your planning or, or whatever it may be, okay? And the flow period, the momentum experience is what we all wish work was more about, right? You want that, that experience of, you might say, effortless action or you know, kind of like mindful non action, right? The Taoists call it Wu Wei W U W E I, you know, is how sometimes it's spelled. But work, your work period doesn't usually start right away with momentum and flow. Right? There's that beginning period of kind of like pushing the boulder. Imagine you're at the top of a hill and you're pushing a boulder that's quite heavy to push, but you can, you know, you can push it if you just give it some willpower and strength and focus. So you're pushing the boulder, you're pushing the boulder, you're pushing the boulder and eventually the boulder starts rolling down the hill and it rolls by itself. Effortless non action, right? It's like being. Instead of a lot of doing. And so my theory, what I present to you here is that work is actually, is actually just the moments of pushing the boulder at the top of the hill before the boulder starts rolling down on its. That's really what work is. Because once the boulder is rolling down on its, once you're in momentum, you're, you're just being, oh, those things didn't work. This one seems to be working. And you're, and you're going, you're researching whatever you're doing. Like it's, it's going, it's flowing now. So therefore what we tend to procrastinate on are the moments of work in the beginning of the period, work, period, before the flow gets going. Okay, so I want to introduce a quote to you by Khalil Gibran. You may have heard this. It's called work is love made visible. Work is love made visible. So I want you to apply that to the moments before the flow is where love actually is needed. Okay, so let me explain. Let me describe to you what I believe love is. I'm curious to know, what do you think love is? You can comment below. I think love is bringing willpower to the transformation of a situation for the higher good. I'm just going to briefly describe that, describe it that way. This, I'm borrowing this from Scott Peck, the book the Road Less Traveled, one of the books that really had a profound impact on me. And Scott Peck says, love is to extend yourself for the well being of the well being and growth of another person. Love is to extend yourself. So to exercise your willpower and energy on behalf of the growth and well being of another person. I love that. Right, so that's like love in a relationship, in a friendship, in a family, etc. So I'm going to bring the word love to our work, which you probably do every day or most days if you're a solopreneur you're working all the time. And so how do we bring love into work? Well, I've just proposed to you that work is the moments before flow begins. Because once flow begins, you're more or less unconscious. You're just being. You're just in the momentum, you're just not really. You're not efforting much. The efforting happens in the minutes before, and sometimes it's half an hour, sometimes it's quite long of boulder pushing before it starts to flow, which means even more love is required, you know, if it takes a lot of efforting before the flow and the momentum begins. But that's where love is needed. Love, as I present to you here in this framework, love is the extending of your willpower. It's the exert exerting of effort in order to transform a situation for the higher good. So in our, in our situ, in our case of bringing love to work, love is to. Is though, is the purposeful willingness to bring your higher self to the moments of efforting before flow and momentum begins. Right? It's the. I know it's going to take effort and I know it's going to be probably stretching outside my comfort zone for at least a few minutes, sometimes dozens of minutes before the flow begins. In a particular work period, whether you know you're working for an hour, you're working for half an hour, you're working for two hours. Let's say you're working for half an hour on something that efforting might take 5, 10, even 15 minutes before you experience 10, 15, 20 minutes of flow. Perhaps if you're working for an hour, that efforting might take 15, 20, even half an hour before you get to have an experience of flow and momentum for half an hour. Right? And then you take a break because you don't want to. I, I always say to rest before you need to because it's important to train the ability to take breaks so that you don't burn out. You know, even if you're in momentum and flow and you don't take breaks, that is also a formula for burnout. So it's important to both train the beginning phase of a work period to bring love to it as you're efforting to push the boulder down the hill so that you can experience momentum and also to let the boulder, you know, to, to have the boulder rest at the, the bottom of the hill so that it doesn't just keep rolling, rolling and destroy the village. Okay, so this is what I encourage you to do going forward today. Tomorrow for the rest of the week, or if you're watching this in the weekend for next week, is start to think about the fact that every single project and task you do has a beginning period of efforting, I.e. stretching outside your comfort zone before you can experience the bliss of flow and momentum. And to not expect, to not expect flow and momentum. Right. When you're working on something. All of us need to put some effort and willpower and stretching outside our comfort zone in order to then have the clarity, the energy, right. The creativity of flow. You know, I always tell my clients, instead of waiting for inspiration and flow, let's practice generating inspiration and flow. So I'm hope, I'm hoping that this concept will help you to dissolve procrastination. Because what is really happening with procrastination, in my opinion, is that we are avoiding those beginning moments of the work period. We're avoiding the first few minutes or the first 15 to 20 minutes where we are getting into the project. We may be a little bit confused by what we're supposed to do. We may be feeling the fear of failure about this project. Maybe that, oh, it's like, am I taking the right steps? Is this going to work out? You know, the self doubt that may happen at the beginning of a, of a work period, all of the inner critic, all of the things that you need to practice, you know, setting aside the inner critic, setting aside the self doubt, working through the confusion, confusing part of the beginning of a work period of a project, you know, willingness to just keep things simple or whatever it may be, right, like, or finding the information that you need in order to do a work project, whatever it is. The beginning of a work period always takes effort compared to once you're in flow and momentum. So I'm, I'm hoping that with this perspective now you understand that you are not procrastinating about the entire project. You're only procrastinating about the beginning moments of a work period. And that's where love is needed. I believe that you are a loving person, right? You want to grow more in love. Well, how do you grow more in love? By exercising love, by practicing love is how you grow in love. You grow in your muscles of loving. So here at work, with your tasks, with your projects, with your purposeful tasks and projects, things that can have a high reward for your business, but can also be discouraging if it doesn't work out, but it really gives you learning and growth with your purposeful tasks. You need to bring love to it because the beginning period, that work is going to be working through confusion, working through how to do something, and working through your self doubt. Bring love to those moments. This is the love of your higher self, the love of your purpose, the love of your mission, the love for your clients, the love for your own growth. Right? You need to bring love in those moments and so perhaps if you think of it this way, work is love made visible. Particularly in the first moments of work when you're still pushing the boulder before the boulder starts rolling naturally. Work is love made visible. Bring love to your work and I hope that with this video you have the perspective of where you're bringing love. It's just those first few minutes and so perhaps what will be helpful is you have some kind of start of work ritual that will help you to bring love to those first few minutes of efforting. Right? For me it's doing my energy reboot before I start any task which reminds me to connect with my divine source to re energize that connection to higher love so that it can I can channel love into the first few minutes which is where love is most needed before I find that flow and momentum again. I hope this is helpful. I look forward to seeing if it does spark anything for you. What will you do as a result of this? Feel free to let me know below. I'd love to hear from you. I wish you well and may you bring love into your next moments of work. Take care. I'll see you in the next video.