How I Focus for Peak Productivity (My Deep Work System)

in this video we're going to be talking about how I focus for Peak productivity using my deep work system so we're going to start off by talking about the philosophy of deep work and why it is particularly important and why building your own deep work system will completely change your life and then I'm going to go over my personal fairly simple four-step system that I've evolved over time on how to actually Focus if you are new to the channel hello my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and I'm the author of The New York Times bestseller Feelgood productivity which is a book about how to do more of what matters to you in a way that actually feels good and since 2017 on this channel pretty much every week I've been do M menting my journey from a broke medical student to working full-time as a doctor to now being an entrepreneur and author and none of the success I've ever had would have been possible without having some sort of deep work system to actually focus on something for an extended period of time so if you are in a stage of your life or your career where you would benefit from having more time in the day to actually Focus then building some sort of deep work routine or deep work system for yourself I think will absolutely move the needle and so I hope you enjoy this video let's get to part one where we start by zooming out a little bit all right so let let's start by defining shallow work versus deep work so Cal Newport defines shallow work as non-cognitively demanding logistical style tasks often performed while distracted these efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate and then we have the definition of deep work which is professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit these efforts create new value improve your skill and are hard to replicate and there's a few key phrases here so for example shallow work he's arguing is often performed while distracted and distracted is unfortunately the state that most of us find ourselves in most of the time shallow work tends not to create much new value and tends to be fairly easy to replicate whereas deep work is a state of distraction free concentration this is often what we call Focus now crucially deep work pushes our cognitive capabilities to their limit I. E it is hard it is effortful deep work does not feel easy and deep work tends to create new value and tends to be hard to replicate now these definitions give us a little bit of a hint as to why deep work is so important if you are anything like most people in my audience you are somewhere along the freedom path what is the freedom path well the freedom path is the path from where you currently are to a place of Freedom often defined as Financial Freedom and time freedom and location Freedom basically where you have the freedom to do what you want with who you want and have a good time and work on your own terms and work from anywhere and you know all of that sort of stuff now as it relates to work there are actually three paths I'm going to argue that get you to this kind of dream life Freedom me type situation you've got path a you've got path B and you've got path C boom boom and boom path number one or stream number one as I like to think of it is the career stream stream number two is the side hustle stream and stream number three is the entrepreneur stream now what's interesting about this is that all three of these streams could take you to this version of Freedom that you're aspiring to where you have time Freedom Financial Freedom location Freedom flexibility you can do what you want that sort of stuff but each of these three streams have different characteristics the career stream can get you there Tim Cook for example the CEO of Apple has never started his own business but he's pretty rich and he got there by working his way up through the ranks at IBM and then getting hired into apple as like their operations guy and then like working his way up and you can get to the freedom that you want through being an employee through being part of a career it tends to be slower and it tends to be less risky and Cally there is nothing wrong with being in the career stream if that's what you want to do then some people go from the career stream into the side hustle stream where you're trying to keep a career going at the same time and also building some sort of side hustle with the hope that that's side hustle makes an extra 5K a month 10K a month eventually you know makes enough money that you can go part-time in your career or maybe quit the career allog together after a while in the side hustle stream you often when it's about making 5 to 10K a month you could jump to completely to the entrepreneur stream try and build your own business etc etc that tends to be a FAS path to the freedom that you aspire to but it tends to be a riskier path now in this video we're not going to go into the differences between these three three streams we're going to do more videos on that later but the crucial thing to remember is that for all three of these streams there is a key thing that you have to do in order to get to this Freedom that you want and that key thing is two words create value within the context of a career if you are trying to get to Financial Freedom there is no way you will succeed at that unless you are creating value in some way for Society for your employer for your boss for your customers whatever that might be when you start your own side hustle when you become an entrepreneur there is no way to actually make money unless you are creating value in some way because the only way to make money is to create value and then find other people who are willing to pay you for for that value that you've created oh by the way if you are interested in sustainable routes to monetizing a side hustle then you might like to check out Circle who are very kindly sponsoring this video now as a Creator one of the most common questions I get is how to actually earn a sustainable income online and sure there are plenty ways of doing this like ad revenue and sponsorships and Affiliates and selling much but in my experience one of the most fulfilling ways and most sustainable ways is by building a community now when you set up your own Community you basically create a dedicated space around whatever your passion is and that's a place where like-minded people can come together to learn grow and support each other and you can and make money doing this which is where Circle comes in I found circle in my experience to be the absolute best platform to create and manage your own online community we've been using it since 2020 for our parttime youber Academy we're also using it for our productivity lab and we've even migrated all of our online courses over to Circle so whether you're running courses or hosting Live Events or offering premium memberships absolutely everything is all in one place they've now even introduced built-in email marketing so you can grow your audience you can nurture them over time and you can invite them to join your paid offerings all without juggling a bunch of different tools the cool thing about building a community like this is that you can see these connections forming amongst people online and then those connections often translate like for example for our YouTuber Academy and even for productivity lab we've hosted and our members have also hosted in real life events and it's all because everyone is together on these communities hosted on Circle if you're looking to build a community full of people who share your interests and you want to invest in your content then do give Circle a try it is quick and easy and affordable and you can test it out completely free for 14 days using the link in the video description if you like it Circle might just be the next step in turning your passion into a thriving and supportive and potentially even profitable community so thank you so much cirle for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it now coming back to our definition of shallow work versus deep work overlaying all of this on here shallow work tends not to create much new value whereas deep work tends to create new value and so if we can create a system a routine for being able to do more deep work and create more value than whichever of these three streams we happen to find ourselves in we are going to be working towards our goal of Financial Freedom time Freedom location Freedom the freedom to do whatever you want all right now I'm going to double click on this create value because this is this is worth understanding this is a video about deep work system you can skip to the Deep workk system in the time stamps if you really want to but my personal recommendation would be that if you understand the why behind this it makes the motivation to build and maintain your own deep workk system way stronger because to be honest if you're watching this channel you've probably seen some of my videos in the past you've probably seen some self-help videos on YouTube you've probably tried to solve the problem of focus and like distraction before but unless you've had a compelling reason to solve it unless you understand the why behind why we are even bothering to do this it's really hard to sit down and just like Focus for an extended period of time not get distracted when amongst like Tik Tok and Instagram and social media and all of the other things you could be doing with your time so that's why we are double clicking into this stuff anyway let's double click into the create value thing what the hell is value okay well there's various different ways of thinking about this but the way I think of it is that you take raw materials which might be worth I don't know $1 you then do stuff to the raw materials and then it creat creates output which might be worth I don't know $2 so in the process of the stuff of doing the stuff you have basically transmuted $1 worth of raw materials with the stuff that you are doing and created $2 out of it therefore you have added $1 worth of value crucially this output is only worth $2 if someone else is willing to pay the $2 for it and so this is not like a subjective thing it's not like hey I've created this piece of poetry and it's super super valuable it's valuable in so far as people are willing to pay for the thing this is not the only definition of value there are all sorts of other definitions of value but if you're trying to get to Financial Freedom then we have to be creating the sort of financial value that the market in this capitalist world that we live in that the market values now whatever your job is you are probably not really converting actual raw materials into actual output if you're a baker for example you are converting the raw materials of flour and sugar and milk and water and stuff you're doing stuff to it and then you're transforming it into bread which you then sell at a bougie Bakery for like $7 a pop but I suspect if you're watching this channel you probably don't have a physical manufacturing type job whether that's what you do I suspect if you watch this channel you are doing some sort of knowledge work where for the most part you probably don't have too many raw materials for the thing that you're doing and the key stuff that you are doing is using your brain you are essentially using your brain this why it's called knowledge work you're using your brain to your skills and your knowledge and stuff to transmute probably pixels on a screen into more pixels on a screen and then you're trying to sell those extra pixels on a screen for something this is how management consultants make money they transform a blank keynote slide or PowerPoint slide into with a bunch of research and a bunch of knowledge work and all this sort of stuff into a PowerPoint presentation that they present to a client and they charge stupid amounts of money for it but they have created value at least in the eyes of the client oh by the way quick thing if you are watching this before the 4th of January 2025 then you might like to check out the completely free 2-day productivity Workshop that I'm hosting on the 4th and 5th of January 2025 it is called productivity spark and it's essentially a two-day series of work shops that are hosted by me and also my wife and also a couple of guests that I aim to help you reflect on 2024 figure out where your work and life are heading and set active goals and quarterly Quests for 2025 it is completely free you can check it out with a link down below and I hope to see you there potentially so what does any of this have to do with deep work well on this Freedom path in order to get to the freedom that we desire we need to create value and the way that we probably you and me create the value is by using our brains and in order to use our brains effectively we need the skill of deep work or Focus where essentially we need to sit still for an extended period of time and we need to do cognitively demanding things that use our brain to try and create new value in the world crucially this deep work and focus thing is sort of like a muscle in that it can be trained and you're doing it in a sort of reflective sort of way where you can improve the strength of that muscle over time and improve the strength of that system over time fundamentally what all of that contributes to is that you are able to create more value in less time that is ultimately in many ways the definition of product productivity increased productivity is creating more value in less time now let's imagine two different people one person is really good at doing deep work and really good at focusing the other person is not very good at do doing deep work and not very good at focusing and let's imagine that both of these people have a day job maybe they're working night5 or whatever and they both want to start some sort of side hustle that makes them an extra 5 grand a month 10 grand a month so that they can get to Financial Freedom location Freedom time Freedom all of that sort of stuff they're on the freedom path both of these two people have a job and therefore that let's say they only have 5 hours a week to devote to their side hustle which of these people do you think is going to be quicker at getting to their goal of side hustle making 10 grand a month obviously is going to be the person who's going to deep work right because the guy who sucks at Deep work is going to get home and is going to be super demotivated and they're going to sit down and they're going to have to figure out their business plan and figure out the business strategy and actually do the cognitively demanding things that it takes to get a side hustle or a business off the ground and they're trying to do those things and they're all over the place they're unable to focus they're like getting distracted they have their phones on they're browsing Instagram reals and trying to answer emails while trying to do the work and this person is still spending 5 hours a week on the side Hustle but the amount of value they are creating in that 5 hours a week is pretty low whereas this person spends the same 5 hours a week they're not working anym they're not working any harder they're just fully focused they're like less distracted in that time they have discovered the power of a deep work routine they have it scheduled into their calendar they've got a system that they're following they block off whatever distractions they can they don't allow social media and the phone and Instagram reals and stuff to affect them while they're in that 5 hours of deep work this person might well be consuming TV or entertainment or reading books and like you know having a life and all that kind of stuff but they're just not doing that in their 5 hours a week and yeah even though money is not everything money is like a pretty important thing if you're trying to get to the goal of Financial Freedom or even Financial Security like for some people the goal of Financial Freedom is I just want to be free from the stress of paying the mortgage for some people it's I want to be a Dubai boy and have a yacht and all that kind of stuff but whatever the thing is like this person is creating way more value in those 5 hours than the person who sucks at doing deep work and so coming back to our freedom path figuring out some sort of deep workk system whether you use mine or whether you use anyone else's or whether you figure out your own to be honest what I would recommend you do is actually figure out your own the point of this video is to just give you some ideas the point is that when you figure out a deep work system you are creating value in less time which means whether you're doing the career stream or the side hustle stream or the entrepreneur stream you're able to create the value that gets you to your goal of Freedom a lot faster and a lot more likely the final thing I will say on this front which is I think I think is also important is that on the freedom path freedom is the destination that lots of us are aspiring to but there are two other things as it relates to work that are more underrated and those are what I think of as Journey goals and those two things are fun and fulfillment yes everyone is striving for freedom but generally what you realize when you get to Freedom you know by the grace of God in a position where I am financially free I don't need to work another day in my life if I don't want to I can do whatever I want I can do it whenever I want I have time location and Financial Freedom but what you realize when you get there is that freedom is a currency kind of like money and freedom itself has no intrinsic value Freedom only has value when it is exchanged for other things like if you for example had 168 hours completely free you would be depressed pretty quickly if you had nothing to do with that time the point of freedom is to be able to cash it in for fun and fulfillment and the other things that make life worth living the freedom to spend more time with your kids for example gives you fulfillment and fun the freedom to read or to play video games or to go on that walk in the middle of the day or to play squash in the evenings that gives fun and fulfillment it's not really about the freedom it's about what the freedom can get you which is ultimately fun and fulfillment now what's interesting is that on the freedom path on your journey to Freedom you can in fact and I would recommend you should find a way to experience fun and fulfillment because whether or not you get to the destination you will realize that the journey was what always mattered in the first place but even when you do get to the destination you realize oh like the destination is worthless on its own the destination is only worthwhile in that it gives me fun and fulfillment what does any of this have to do with deep work well when you speak to people who have achieved Freedom time for Freedom location Freedom Financial Freedom you tend to find something fairly common which is that firstly these people still want to work work as in do something that uses their skills that feels like it is providing a meaningful contribution to someone or to society or something which I would argue is the definition of work they still want to be useful in some way but if you ask these people like what sort of work they would want to do they never ever ever say shallow work they only ever say deep work like in your case for example let's say you had all the money in the bank and all the time in the world and you could do whatever you wanted you might sit p colad on the beach in Thailand for about 2 weeks before realizing that makes you miserable and depressed and you and you're going to want to find some sort of work to do what sort of work would you like to be doing you're probably not answering I'd like to answer emails while getting distracted on Tik Tok your answer is probably related to deep work to some degree I'd love to have 4 hours free every single morning to just focus on writing I'd love to have hours each day where I can just focus on expanding my creative Pursuits or my art or my music or my this that or the other the reason I'm saying all this is because deep work is not just the means to an end it is not just the way to create value monetize that value and then get to Financial Freedom that's not the only thing that deep work is good for deep work is also the way you get fun and fulfillment from your work and again this is something that I don't think enough people talk about like the skill of focusing the skill of being able to sit down and just work on something for an extended period of time that skill buys your financial freedom but it also gives you fun and fulfillment you feel way more fulfilled when you're in the Flow State when you're working on something that's hard but that's within your limits maybe at the edge of your limits you feeling like you're growing you feeling like time is absolutely flying you get to the end of that session having done deep work having been in the Flow State and you get that glow of fulfillment you probably do not get that glow of fulfillment while you're distracted watching Instagram re and answering emails and trying to do a zillion things at once so that is why deep work is important I hope if you're at this point in the video that you agree with me that deep work is really important and cultivating the skill building that muscle of focus being able to deep work is vitally useful for fun fulfillment and Financial Freedom let's now move on to part two where we talk about my personal deep work routine which I've built over the last several years of trying to get really good at this okay so there are four steps to the Deep work system and what I would recommend you do which is a philosophy that I talk a lot about in my book Feelgood productivity which is now out I think on paperback it's also hardback Kindle audiobook paperback I recorded the audiobook so if you haven't read it yet you should check it out cuz it's a guide on how to enjoy your work and we find that when we enjoy our work it makes us more fulfilled more creative less stressed more productive etc etc anyway a key philosophy that I teach teach in the book and that I'm keen on sort of making obvious on this channel is that building your own productivity system is a very personal thing yes you can copy and paste my system you can copy and paste someone else's templates but really by experimenting with what works for you and seeing what happens and then tweaking your own system by building your own system that is what will ultimately get you to the result that you want and so in this video I want to tell you what the four steps of my own personal deep work system are so that hopefully you can get some ideas for how to apply them to yours all right so step number one is to actually schedule the Deep work into the calendar I have two methods of doing this the first one is that I have an ideal Week calendar more details in that video up there about the Trident system of managing your time basically I've got a separate Google Calendar which is my ideal week where I block out in a dream world what does my ideal ordinary week look like now here I want to talk about four different types of deep work now this is from Cal newport's book deep work and he defines there being basically four different ways of scheduling deep work into your calendar deepwork method number one is monastic this is monk mode before it was called monk mode before it was cool method two is bodal method three is rhythmic and Method four is journalistic now the stuff around this stuff is very interesting if you haven't yet read deep work by Cal Newport I would recommend reading it you could also get yourself the summary of the book deep work on short form there is an affiliate link down below if you want to sign to short form it's the world's best service for reading summaries of books they even have a summary of my book and I read the summary of my own book and I was like damn this is an annoyingly good summary of my own book so there's a link down below if you want to check it out but let's talk about these four different ways of scheduling deep work into your calendar monastic is the monk mode thing where it's like you you have you carve out an extended period of time to just do deep work this is like going on a writing Retreat for a whole week probably not suitable for most people because most of us can't take a whole week off to just do deep work in a focused fashion we can maybe do it some of the time I occasionally do the monastic thing if I you know when I was on deadline for my book I went to Bali to give a talk and I just stayed there for an extra like week just focusing on the book that's just not feasible for most people for most part of life so I generally ignore the monastic approach then you have the bodal approach which works for some people which is basically where you have some days that are entirely deep work days and some days that are entirely shallow work days then you have the rhythmic approach which is trying to build a daily Rhythm for yourself as it relates to deep work this is what I do I focus on the first 4 hours of every day being focused on deep work usually making videos or working one of my courses or working on one of my books because that is the key way in which I add value and then finally you have journalistic which is kind of named after I think journalists where they're just sort of sort of doing so much random that they're just trying to squeeze in random small amounts of time of deep work work here and there because they literally don't have any other choice back when I had a real job working as a doctor I was really unable to do a lot of these things because I had an unpredictable schedule based on on call rotos and work and that kind of thing so while I was at work I had a sort of journalistic approach to deep work where I would squeeze in time in the middle of the day or like an extra 20 minutes on my lunch break that that sort of thing to be able to work on videos or for example if I happened to be on night shifts for a week and then I had 3 days off I'll be like all right in those 3 days I'm going to be absolutely laser focused on deep work in the monastic sort of Camp cuz I'm like in those three days I can bang out so much stuff for my for my videos or for my course or whatever the side hustle thing I was working on when my side hustle of this YouTube channel and the business around it was enough to be able to quit my day job as a doctor suddenly I had free time to be able to do whatever I wanted essentially and I experimented with all the different types of deep work and I landed on rhythmic so the first 4 hours of every day are focused on deep work so that's like 9:00 a. m.

till 1:00 p. m.