Prof.Dr.

Aung Tun Thet

LFH#22/9/12/2020
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DEEP WORK

• Professional activities performed in state of

distraction-free concentration
• Push cognitive abilities to limit

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DEEP WORK

• Create new value

• Cannot be replicated
• Purposeful practice

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SHALLOW WORK

• Non cognitively demanding logistical style tasks

performed while distracted
• Not create much new value and easy to replicate

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DEEP WORK

• Valuable
• Rare
• Meaningful
• In today’s fractured ‘winner-takes-all’ world

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ATTENTION

• So fractured
• Accomplish very little genuinely deep work
• Shallow work and distraction long-lasting negative
affect on ability to focus attention
• Rare moments of stillness allow us to “get some real
work done”
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PRACTICAL TIPS

• Identify and eliminate existing bad habits

• Build new good habits
• Implement ‘quick-wins’
• Train and improve attention

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DEEP WORK

• Doing more of things important

• Less of things which aren’t
• Focused not just on “getting things done”
• But on “getting valuable things done”

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DEEP WORK

• Efficiency and effectiveness requirements
for meaningful and purposeful action
• Lead to productive life
• Filled with energy and balance

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ACCESS TO NETWORK TOOLS

• Physical: open plan offices, meetings

• Digital: email, instant messaging, social media etc…
• Greatly increased
• Ability to pick selectively among and effectively use
them has not

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ACCESS TO NETWORK TOOLS

• Adopt tools without carefully weighing benefits

against opportunity costs
• Wrong side of Pareto’s 80/20 principle

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SURROUNDED BY DISTRACTIONS

• Fierce active competition

• Effective at capturing attention (advertising,
messaging, social media, mobile apps, television,
internet etc…)

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SURROUNDED BY DISTRACTIONS

• Willpower finite resource

• Bias for instant gratification
• Shallow work cognitively easier than deep work

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SURROUNDED BY DISTRACTIONS

• Attending meetings
• Human email router
• Ticking off shallow ‘to-dos’
• Momentary satisfaction
• Illusion of busyness
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SURROUNDED BY DISTRACTIONS

• Expense of deep thought, value creation and wider

sense of meaning
• Shifted culturally into habit of making work centre of
our lives
• Spend more and more time working

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INTO THE DEEP

• 3 to 4 hours of continuous undisturbed deep work

each day
• See transformational change in productivity and
lives

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INTO THE DEEP

• Focussing on one initiative at a time

• Having patience
• Slow process of habit forming and increasing
mental fitness

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INTO THE DEEP

• All personal change demand time, effort,

persistence and discipline
• Temporary discomfort of changing own mindsets
• Changing expectations and mindsets of those
around us

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1. CATEGORIZE TOOLS AND
TASKS
• Deep or Shallow
• Identify desired ‘big-picture’ outcome in life (family,
friends, health, wealth, work etc…)
• Identify 2 or 3 activities that contribute most
towards outcome

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1. CATEGORIZE TOOLS AND
TASKS
• Ask: “Is this tool or task integral to make progress
towards desired outcomes?”
• Spend hours catching up on life developments of
FaceBook friends, or
• Go out with one or two close friends for dinner

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2. MAKE CHANGES THAT
ENCOURAGE DEEP WORK
• Become hard to reach
• Quit social media
• Work in quiet place
• Work at quiet time
• Limit internet access during deep work time

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2. MAKE CHANGES THAT
ENCOURAGE DEEP WORK
• Gather everything needed before beginning session
of deep work
• Alternate on and offline work time

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3. GET VISIBILITY ON DEEP VS.
SHALLOW TIME
• Minuting the day
• Keeping honest record of how time actually being
spent during each day
• At end of the day get sense of how much time being
spent on deep vs. shallow work

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4. DETERMINE FIXED END POINT TO
WORK DAY
• Stick to it
• Reframe toward free-time instead of work

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5. TRAIN ATTENTION

• Strengthen ability to effectively direct attention

• Meditation
• Become friends with boredom
• Practice thinking whilst walking

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PRIORITIZE WITH 4DX
FRAMEWORK
• 4 Disciplines of Execution
1. Focus on wildly important - small number of
extremely essential goals
2. Act on lead measures - “what gets measured gets
managed”
3. Keep compelling scoreboard
4. Create cadence of accountability
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35 Deep Work Practice
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DEEP WORK PRACTICE

• Develop new skills faster

• Leverage current skills
• More meaning and satisfaction
• Minimize distraction
• Cultivate deep work routine
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1. RITUALIZE DEEP WORK

• Establish routine
• Define where are you going to work and for how
long
• Find place free of distractions
• Remain focused

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2. EXECUTE LIKE BUSINESS

• Focus on widely important: small set of goals

maximize deep work efforts; challenging and
intimidating, motivating to work deeper
• Businesses key performance indicators (KPI’s)
• Track productivity

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3. SCHEDULE WHEN INTERNET
ALLOWED
• Constantly connected to Internet
• Restricting access to web
• Do more serious work
• Advert distractions

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3. SCHEDULE WHEN INTERNET
ALLOWED
• Instead of having break from distraction
• Break from focus

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4. QUIT SOCIAL MEDIA

• Consider positive and negative impacts of social

media on personal and professional goals
• Use social media only if supports your goals

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5. SCHEDULE EVERY MINUTE OF
YOUR DAY
• Planning our day in advance
• Adapt it to any unpredictable activities
• Appreciate and respect how valuable your time is
• Prioritize depth

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6. BECOME HARD TO REACH

• During deep work sessions

• Precious state of deep work

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Prof.Dr.Aung Tun Thet
LFH#22/9/12/2020