Block out 1 hour a day, minimum.
Work on 1 meaningful project.
Aim for 1 vision for your future.
Take it 1 day at a time.
You don't need more motivation, you need more clarity.
You don't need more time, you need more focus.
If you want more of both, understand this:
Your mind is a supercomputer.
Your attention is the RAM.
RAM — or “random access memory” — is one of the most important parts of a computer, it determines performance.
More programs and browser tabs open = slower performance.
This is no different from your focus.
Humans can process around 50 bits of information per second with their conscious attention (compared to 11 million bits we unconsciously process from skills we have learned).
That adds up to 125 billion bits of conscious information in your lifetime.
That's your ticking time bomb.
You either invest those 125 billion bits into a better future, or you let distractions clog them up like browser tabs on your computer.
For most people, on an average day, that precious focus is chaotically bouncing between:
- Thoughts about the stressful future, boring present, and regretful past
- An internal cry to break out of their conditioned way of living
- A list of mixed-priority tasks that need to be finished
The list goes on.
The modern mind has its attention split in a thousand different directions the second they open their phone in the morning.
Do Your Best Work When Entropy Is Low
Before we continue, I want you to forgive me.
This "deep work routine that changed my life" isn't anything revolutionary.
It's actually quite simple.
I've tried all of the productivity hacks. The work block timers. Even wearing a hat to simulate narrowed focus and blocking distractions.
Like your favorite Notion template, eventually, all systems either fall apart or evolve to fit your newfound needs.
That's why I want to focus on the core principles that can help anyone accomplish 8 hours of work in 4.
To understand the first principle, you must understand entropy.
You must understand that by doing nothing with your life you choose to slowly drown in chaos.
You don’t stay the same.
You dig yourself deeper into a hole without trying.
Because the good life demands consistent effort toward your own goals.
Without getting too complicated, entropy is the measure of how messy, disordered, or random something is.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, in short, states that in any natural process, the total entropy (or disorder) tends to increase over time unless effort (or energy) is put into keeping the system ordered.
If you don't put effort into maintaining your book shelf, books will end up all over your house, at your friend's house, and small scale chaos will ensue.
If you don't put effort into cleaning your room, it will slowly get dirtier and dirtier until you live in a disgusting nest of filth.
Now, imagine the same process, but applied to your mind.
Or culture, politics, economic markets, or really anything else.
But I want to focus on psychic entropy.
The process of your mind tending to disorder.
If you don't clean your mental room, which most people don't, it turns into a disgusting little troll cave that your mom screams at you to clean every other day.
That leads us into a few points:
1) You aren't productive because you don't have clarity.
This may seem obvious.
You aren't productive because you focus on one distraction, don't correct yourself, and slowly become overwhelmed by the chaos you allowed into your mind.
Distractions are the start of entropy because they divert effort/energy from your goals.
There are 2 ways to identify distractions and correct yourself:
Boredom and anxiety.
If the challenge of the task you are completing is too low for your skill level, you will get bored.
If the challenge of the task you are completing is too high for your skill level, you will get anxious.
The boredom stems from self-centeredness.
Your focus breaks, a new desire pops into your head, and related thoughts start to fill your attention.
If you are bored of the task, you will start thinking of better things you could be doing.
The anxiety stems from self-consciousness.
Your focus turns inward and negative thoughts flood your mind about how you aren't good enough.
If you look in the mirror and spot a pimple, that can reveal more flaws in your appearance, thoughts about adopting a gym habit, eating healthier foods, and slowly your mind is overtaken.
The chaos induced by boredom or anxiety can only be cured with clarity.
You must refocus your mind not only on the task in front of you, but on the ideal outcome of your life as a whole.
When you have the skill and knowledge that matches the challenge of a task, life becomes a video game of quests that you love to play.
If you don't know what your ideal life is, try running through the Life Reset Map workflow in Kortex. It interviews you on key questions about your situation, skills, and interests and spits out a first iteration of your ideal like with your vision, skill development tree, long and short term goals, and the rest.
Just go to Chat > Plan > Life Reset Map
2) Treat your work sessions like quests in a video game
The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else.
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Video games are addictive for a few reasons:
- There is a clear hierarchy of goals of increasing challenge that demand an increase in skill (you know how to win and become someone in the process)
- There are rules and feedback loops that keep your attention within the game and minimize distractions (you focus on enjoyable progress)
Last week, we talked about how to apply this framework to changing your entire life, not just your deep work sessions.
You can think of your life as the entire game, with deep work sessions being quests in that game which result in experience and trait development.
The simplest way to accomplish this, in my opinion, is with the following:
1) Quantify your 2-3 "most important tasks"
This doesn't mean that you only do 2-3 things throughout the day.
We'll get to that soon.
For now, your most important tasks are the ones which demand the most mental energy. Deep work is for deep tasks. Shallow work is for things like emails, admin, etc that can be batched and done outside peak focus periods.
Your most important tasks are the opposite of maintenance.
They most move the needle toward the life you are trying to build.
These are the tasks that, if not completed, will cause you to stagnate or move backward.
Something like building a meaningful project before your 9-5 in the morning that will give you more time and financial freedom.
Or, for a creator, it could be building a new product, writing promotions, or pulling the levers that lead to distribution and sales.
If you can, quantify these tasks.
Instead of "writing some of my newsletter," have "write 1000 words."
This creates a feedback loop. You can see the progress you are making, and that prevents your mind from leaving the task.
2) Set a challenging deadline with an important reason to obey it
Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on. ― Cal Newport
Our brains have limited capacity for deep, focused work each day.
By limiting your top priorities to 2-3 tasks, it forces you to be ruthless about what truly matters and aligns you with your bigger goals.
That is level one of narrowing focus to keep distractions at bay.
Level two, to narrow even further, is by creating a deadline in the form of a time block for each task.
This is nothing novel. We all know how a deadline can force even procrastinators to kick into flow and get all of their work done last minute. But you can replicate this every morning to make more progress in the next month than you have in the last year.
There are two ways I like to ensure deadlines:
- Working in challenging time blocks. Usually 60-90 minutes.
- Having an important non-work related task in between time blocks.
If I'm writing 1000 words for my newsletter, I give myself 60 minutes to do that.
That usually isn't enough time, but for a good reason: I don't have time to think about what to write. I just need to write because the clock is ticking. And if I don't finish, even better, because that invokes the Zeigarnik Effect (your mind wants to finish open loops) which makes it easier to get back into deep work in the next block.
In between work blocks, I add small tasks that need to be done, like eating breakfast, because if I don't, my gym session later in the day will suffer, and my health is extremely important to me.
If you don't value your health, relationships, or other areas of your life, your productivity will suffer because you have no reason to stop working, leading to unfocused work.
Most hustlers working 16 distracted hours a day (even if they think they're focused) can't fathom that with a responsible and prioritized life, you get more effective work done in 4-6 hours.
3) Prioritize mental metabolism
So far, here's what my deep work routine looks like:
- Structure time blocks from low to high entropy – the world is quiet first thing in the morning. No emails. No communication with others. No phone. Nothing that can send your mind spiraling and silently impact your work.
- 2-3 most important tasks over 2-3 time blocks – it doesn't matter if you finish 1 task per time block, as long as you feel the pressure from the timeblock that narrows focus.
- Shallow work only once deep work is complete – do not, and I repeat, do not check emails, social media, or the rest until deep work is done. You can go on and post, but only if you are posting and leaving to get back to work.
But what about the rest of the day?
Well, if you think of your mind like your body, you just spent a few hours training to failure in the mental gym. You spent 95% of your mental energy and need to eat, recover, and do what's necessary to show up in peak condition tomorrow.
In my case, most of my work depends on the quality of my ideas and strategy.
With that, most of my "work" is done before I even start working.
I have absolute clarity on what I need to do when I sit down first thing, because the second half of my day is spent leisure maxxing.
I fill my mind with nutritious food.
I carb load the psyche so it can perform its best.
I go on walks, read books, talk to smart people, relax with my loved ones, and try to learn or do at least a few new things each week. New places, new experiences, new trends or skills. Something that keeps me fresh.
To come to an end:
Understand that as a creative, and heading into the future of work, the people who "work" the least will end up on top, because your story, synthesis of ideas, and experience are the only moat when AI can do almost anything.
Thank you for reading.
– Dan
When you're ready, here's a few ways I can help further:
- The latest paid post is an AI prompt you can use before each deep work session to plan your priority tasks and be guided into the flow state.
- Every Saturday, I send out a high-signal summary of all my writing to 175,000+ people on my personal list. If you’d like to receive it, you can join here.
- If you want all AI models in one place, the ability to reference documents and PDFs fast, and 25+ prebuilt workflows for learning, writing, marketing, and planning – sign up for Kortex free here.