Achieve Your Goals Faster By Balancing Deep Work, Shallow Work & Brain Drift More Effectively To Become Way More Productive

If you’re reading this, you are most certainly not in deep work mode, and my guess is that you’re not in shallow work mode either, this is what I call ‘brain drift time’, and here’s the thing, there’s a necessity for making time for all 3 if you desire to become more efficient and productive.

At the end of this article I am going to invite you to look back at your day and week and calculate the number of deep work hours, and then compare that with your productivity, but before I do I should take a moment to explain what I mean by deep work, shallow work, and brain drift time.

Have you ever been intensely immersed in a task that you forget about the daily clamors of the world? If you answered YES, then you have experienced what Cal Newport calls Deep Work.

Cal Newport, a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University and the author of the bestselling book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World defines deep work as “Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

Based on this notion, Deep Work isn’t a task that you randomly do to kill time, it requires effort and concentration. In contrast to this, Newport also coined the idea of Shallow Work — “Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.”

Shallow Works such as responding to emails, looking at notifications, or arranging documents make you feel busy which in turn creates a sense of productivity. However, being busy is not synonymous with productivity. With that said, making time for shallow work still needs to be part of our workday.

This, leads to the question: is Deep Work essential? The answer is YES, even if your job role does not necessarily need Deep Work time, here’s why: Neuroscientists found out that concentration during deep work upgrades the tissues on the brains. Hence, allowing you to formulate and innovate ideas more efficiently. Furthermore, even if you are bombarded with numerous tasks every day, deep work serves as an avenue for you to produce quality outputs despite being busy.

So, how can you integrate Deep Work in your daily life?

First, Schedule Time for Deep Work: You don’t need to be like Bill Gates who spent eight weeks being alone programming the foundation of software. You don’t have to go the extremes, just allocate a specific time in your schedule to do Deep Work. If you’re new to Deep Work, start with 20 minutes uninterrupted time, then expand to one hour and then to longer time periods. For some, this can be excruciating and difficult, but remember that you are doing this to exercise your concentration and focus to become more productive over time.

Second, Make Deep Work a Habit: Many of us tend to be addicted to shallow work, so much so we’ve formed entire habit patterns around our shallow work. There’s also a false sense of productivity in the busy-ness of shallow work activities. Our objective is to make Deep Work a habit, and we do that through consistency, and one way we can make Deep Work consistent is through scheduling and accountability.

Third, Make Time For Shallow Work and Brain Drift: Even though you may want to incorporate Deep Work into your day and week, we need to be practical. Make time for shallow work during which you can allow for Brain Drift, the type of activity that might have even got you to read this article. It the equivalent of a ‘brain walkabout’, borrowing from the Aboriginal concept. In the type of work-culture we live in, it is normal that you will get distracted: it could be a notification from social media, a text message, or email notification. During shallow work time, allow yourself to be distracted, but during your Deep Work time, minimize as many distractions as possible. Also, schedule in downtime, to catch up on your favorite Netflix show or catch up with friends on social media.

Forth, Have a Healthy Sleeping Habit, I know what you are thinking, “How can I have a healthy sleeping habit when I have piles of work that must be finished on time?” The best way is to give it your all during the day, do the necessary tasks during office hours. When you leave the office, even if you have not finished everything, be at peace knowing that you have done a great job, and it is now time to have dinner and have a sound sleep. What this does is it relaxes your brain, enabling you to be ready for another day of work.

Fifth, Take a Power Nap: Numerous studies have proven that the midday power nap can help you become more alert, reduce stress, and improve cognitive functioning. If you want to improve alertness and motor learning skills like typing and playing the piano, take a 20-30 minute nap. However, if you want to boost memory and enhance creativity take a longer nap. However, a nap should not be used to compensate for not getting enough sleep.

Sixth, Incorporate P.O.W.E.R.S. Into Your Day: The sixth and final tip is actually the first coaching acronym I created in 2005.

• Photosynthesis: make sure you get a good dose of sunlight
• Oxygen: make time for deep and conscious breathing
• Water: the importance of good hydration
• Exercise: don’t skip over daily exercise. The physical Yoga that is practiced by so many around the world was developed to keep the physical body in good health for the purpose of meditation.
• Relaxation: as discussed earlier, get adequate rest
• Sustenance: consume healthy food and fats to fuel your brain.

Follow these six steps and you will be one of the rarest people who acquired the benefits of Deep Work to make increase their productivity and thus, their results.

Beejel Parmar
Founder of BeeEPICdaily.com