5 Secrets to Managing Your

Time, Backed by Research

Eric Barker
12:01 AM ET

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Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
Its the problem we all face at the office: how to manage your time. Youre so
overwhelmed with meetings and email that you always wonder if youre really
getting anything done. And often, youre not.
But one expert has an answer to how to make sure youre getting ahead in your
career while being less stressed and enjoying your work more.
Cal Newport knows something about getting stuff done. In the decade after he
graduated college he published 4 books, earned a Ph.D. from MIT, published a
ton of academic papers and was hired as a professor at Georgetown University.
Cal leaves the office every day before 6 p.m. and rarely works weekends. Hes
also married with 2 children.
How does he do it? Cal prioritizes what he calls deep work. And in his new
book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, he explains
why this is key and how you can incorporate it into your own life.
This book deserves the kind of praise I offer very rarely: Its important.
So lets hear what Cal has to say on how to manage your time, how you can be
less busy and complete the kind of work that will get you raises and
promotions

Why Youre So Busy But Get Nothing Done

The one line answer: youre prioritizing shallow work. Youre making your
attendance at meetings, the speed of your email replies and looking busy a proxy
for real productivity. Its ineffective and its making you miserable.
Everything we do at the office gets called work. And thats a problem. Really,
there are two kinds of work:
Deep work is using your skills to create something of value. It takes thought,
energy, time and concentration.
Shallow work is all the little administrative and logistical stuff: email, meetings,
calls, expense reports, etc.
Shallow work stops you from getting fired but deep work is what gets
you promoted.
Heres Cal:
Deep work is to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task, and
shallow work describes activities that are more logistical in nature, that dont
require intense concentration. We just think of work as being any activity that
plausibly produces benefit. Once you realize there are different types of work and
some types have way bigger returns than others, it completely changes the
picture.
The problem is that were all drowning in the shallows while the world is valuing
deep work more and more.
From Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World:
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the
same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a
consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their
working life, will thrive.
How bad is it? Email and internet searches alone take up 60% of the average
knowledge workers hours.
From Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World:
A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends
more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and
Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a workers time dedicated to
reading and answering e-mail alone.
The CTO of Atlantic Media (the company that makes The Atlantic magazine)
wanted to know how much they were paying people just to respond to email.
When he ran the numbers, it turned out the number was about $1 million dollars
a year. Heres Cal:
He did all of this and found out that their investment was roughly the same as
buying a Learjet every year in terms of how much money they were paying
people to send and receive emails.
Now for some, like salespeople and senior management, emails and meetings
are their job. But for most of us our real work only begins when the email and
meetings are done. And these days those things never seem to end.
And theres another benefit to focusing on deep work. And its a big one: Deep
work makes you happier.
Spending time on deep work has been shown to make us more satisfied with our
jobs, while email and shallow work makes us miserable. Heres Cal:
We see at the neuroscience level, your world is what you pay attention to. When
youre doing deep work, your attention is really focused very concretely on
something thats very satisfying. Im creating something in the world. I have
some autonomy. Your world seems like something thats good. At the
psychology level, we have all the research on flow. We know its satisfying to
enter a state where youre giving full, rapt attention to something that youre good
at. Shallow work, on the other hand, fragments your attention and exposes you to
a lot of things that arent that nice. Youre going to see the Facebook post that
makes you jealous and the email that stresses you out. Someone whos based
mainly in shallow work, neurologically speaking, is going to eventually construct
an understanding of their world that is stressful and fractured.
Cals right. Were happier when were focused and immersed. As Daniel Gilbert,
author of Stumbling on Happiness, explained in the Harvard Gazette, a
wandering mind is not a happy mind:
People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other
than what theyre doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy.
I know what some of you are thinking: But the world will burn down if I dont
check email every 30 seconds.
No, it wont. And your work wont suffer. And your business wont lose clients.
Harvard Business Schools Leslie Perlow got a team at BCG (a leading
consulting firm) to spend one workday a week with no access to email.
They all thought the world would burn down. What happened? Heres Cal:
What happened was it didnt cause a problem. It increased the quality of their
work and the satisfaction of their customers went up after they started spending
more time disconnected.
(To learn how to stop being lazy and get more done, click here.)
Okay, so deep work is important. But how do we fit it into our insane schedules?

1) Dont Schedule Distractions. Schedule Deep

Work.
We use our calendars all wrong. Meetings get scheduled. Phone calls get
scheduled. Doctor appointments get scheduled. You know what often doesnt get
scheduled? Real work.
All those other things are distractions. Often, theyre other peoples work. But
they get dedicated blocks of time and your real work is an orphan.
If deep work is the stuff that really affects the bottom line, the stuff that gets you
noticed, the thing that earns you raises and gets you singled out for promotion,
well, let me utter blasphemy and suggest maybe it deserves a little dedicated
time, too? Heres Cal:
Start time blocking. Actually start scheduling out your day. What am I doing
during this hour? What am I doing that hour? Get in the habit of actually making
a plan for your day and a plan for your weeks. If youre actually making a plan for
your time, youre going to be much more likely to be able to proactively put aside
time for deep work.
Dont schedule distractions and hope to fit in work where you can. Invert your
schedule. Block out a few hours for real, deep work. Cluster your email and other
administrative shallow work into batches.
(To learn what the most productive people do every day, click here.)
So youre making deep work a priority and giving it dedicated time. But
interruptions happen and there are meetings you cant miss. How do you make
sure the week doesnt become a blur where no real work gets done?

2) Scoreboards Arent Just For Athletes

As Peter Drucker once said, What gets measured gets managed. Keep a
running tally of hours of deep work. This is how Cal makes sure hes making real
progress on things that matter. Heres Cal:
One of the ideas that I found really useful was having a scoreboard. I keep a tally
so I can see every day how many hours of deep work Ive actually performed. It
seems like a simple thing, but without it, its so easy to go through a week and
just say, Well, I was busy and I think I did some deep work in there. Once you
start keeping score, you look at it and say, I did one hour out of a 40-hour week?
Im embarrassed. A compelling scoreboard drives you to action.
Believe it or not, this was one of Jerry Seinfelds secrets to becoming a great
comedian. He recorded progress visually on a calendar. If it worked for him, it
can work for you.
(To learn the schedule very successful people follow every day, click here.)
I know what some of you are thinking: But people keep asking me to do stuff like
to go to meetings or help them with projects!
Cal has a one-word solution to this problem

3) The Most Dangerous Word When It Comes To

Productivity
And that word is, Yes.
You have to limit your use of it if you want to get things done. I know it can be
hard but something has to give. You need to prioritize deep work and you need to
prioritize your work. Heres Cal:
The people who tend to do things that have an impact say no to a lot because
what theyre really interested in is, I want to do the deep things, the things that
require my skills and create new value, and I cant do that if Im constantly going
to meetings and jumping on calls and checking email.
Still skeptical about telling people no? Dont trust me. Dont trust Cal. Trust a
billionaire. Warren Buffett once said:
The difference between successful people and very successful people is that
very successful people say no to almost everything.
(To learn the 6 things the most organized people do every day, click here.)
So youre setting aside time for deep work, youre keeping a tally and saying
no. Youre way ahead of the game. But how do you actually get started once
youre ready to roll your sleeves up?

4) Have a Deep Work Ritual

Rituals are powerful. Getting focused can take time. You can make things easier
and train your brain to get ready for some fierce concentration by having a
personal ritual that helps you shift gears. Heres Cal:
One way to more consistently achieve a state of real concentration is to have
routines and rituals built around deep work. It can be as simple as clearing your
desk, or shutting your door. That ritual tells your brain, Im now entering deep
work mode. You might have a set routine like getting your coffee and doing a
ten-minute walk to clear your head. These type of things can actually help your
mind much more easily shift into the right state.
Research shows rituals like these can help you be better at your work and even
help you overcome procrastination.
(For more on how rituals can improve your life, click here.)
Im sure there are still some naysayers out there. And I know what theyre saying:
The only thing these tips are definitely going to do is get me fired.
Heres why youre wrong

5) The Question You Need To Ask Your Boss

Yes, if you stop going to a bunch of meetings and stop replying to email quickly
and then use the time you gain to better curate your Pinterest page, yes, youre
going to get fired.
But if you use that time for deep work, stuff that really moves the needle, and can
show that to your boss, you may very well end up as their favorite employee.
Its a vicious circle: everyone is busy with meetings and emails so little real work
gets done. So the measure of productivity becomes email and meetings. When
you break the cycle and deliver real results, those false metrics arent as
important.
But you want to be sure, right? Okay, so talk to your boss. Get an idea of how
much time they really do want you spending on meetings and email and how
much deep work theyd really like you to be doing. Heres Cal:
Explain the concept of shallow and deep work. Then say, We need to
communicate with our clients, but obviously I need to be doing deep work so I
can produce good things for you. Im tracking my time, so what percentage
should I be aiming for? Get your boss to actually try to commit to a vision like,
About 50% of your time should be unbroken and 50% should be doing these
shallow tasks. When theyre actually confronted with how much time youre
spending trying to produce real results with your skills, they have to start thinking,
Okay, we need to change some things.
Looking busy ceases to be important when you can show results that make it
clear youve really been busy.
(For the morning routine experts recommend for peak productivity, click here.)
Okay, weve learned a lot from Cal. Lets round it up and learn the final secret to
success in the 21st century
Sum Up
Heres what we learned from Cal:
Dont schedule distractions. Schedule deep work: Block hours for what
really matters, not just for anything with a designated start time.
Keep a scoreboard for deep work: And make it visible. The point is to shame
yourself if youre not up to snuff.
Stop saying yes if you want to get things done: Want an example of how
this works? Email me and ask me to jump on a call.
Have a Deep Work Ritual: Whatever gets you ready to crank. Hiding in a
conference room and throwing your phone into an abyss is a good one.
Ask your boss how much time they want you spending on deep vs
shallow work: If they say 100% shallow, feel free to ignore everything
above.
Real craftsmen are proud of their work. Just because youre not a stonemason or
a painter doesnt mean you cant be proud of yours.
We get that feeling of real accomplishment when we make things, not when we
attend pointless meetings and reply to endless email chains. Heres Cal:
In the book I quote some well known philosophers from Berkeley and Harvard
who talk about how theres a sense of sacredness that you uncover when you
get really good at doing something. That touches something deep in the human
condition that can be very rewarding. No matter what discipline you come at it
from, deep work is a type of activity thats going to be mentally satisfying,
especially as compared to a fragmented attention thats divided up in all these
shallow activities.
The world is changing. Were surrounded by distractions but those distractions
matter less than ever. Heres Cal:
If you can train your ability to focus and then fight to make time for real intense
focused work in your schedule, you are absolutely going to thrive in this economy
while the people sitting next to you are going to look up one day from their
Facebook feed and realize theyve been left behind.
Want to be the smartest person in the room in this new world of work? Cal sums
it up simply:
Focus is the new IQ.