Jumping into Deep Work
Jon Johnson (he/him)
jrjohnson
jrjohnson_
Plain Text and Slides At:
https://www.jrjohnson.dev
UCSF Educational Technology
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Deep Work
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.
-Cal Newport https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/
- I named this talk after this book
- It gave me the vocabulary to talk about something I'd been messing with for years
- I remember it being a good book, and I'm not going to summarize it here, other than this quote you probably shouldn't think of anything I'm saying as being from this book
The Problem
Urgency culture has us believe it's "selfless" to be on call, always available 24/7. It's actually a form of self neglect. time away is needed. Boundaries are needed. so many of us are exhausted, burnt out, or in chronic pain because our bodies...👇
— Dr. Nicole LePera (@Theholisticpsyc) November 5, 2022
The problem is us. We all want to be seen as busy, as important, as helping. There's nothing wrong with wanting to feel appreciated, but when you say yes to everything, when you fail to take care of yourself, when you don't take time to focus, it is impossible to be truly effective at the really impactful interesting work we all want to do.
The Problem
Taking Control of My Calendar
and by extension my focus
and discovering deep work
I've approached this in phases, today I'm talking about mostly where I am now, but that's not the whole story. I've experimented with a lot of ways to be productive developing software, managing a team, and supporting education.
Taking Control of My Calendar
Better Meetings
Not only did focus time become more productive, but squashing all my meetings into specific slots made it easier to focus on those meetings. I didn't need to be halfway present, I could be all-in because I knew I'd have time to finish my work.
Taking Control of My Calendar
Better Meetings
Planning Stacked Work
Not only did focus time become more productive, but squashing all my meetings into specific slots made it easier to focus on those meetings. I didn't need to be halfway present, I could be all-in because I knew I'd have time to finish my work.
Stacking work like this allowed by time to plan what work I would stack. Instead of reacting to the idea de jour I was able to work on what was most important and know I could finish really big projects.
Deep Work Achievement Unlocked
- By blocking off huge chunks of my calendar (All day Wednesday and Friday) I was able to guarantee time to focus.
- It isn't that I never have events on a Wednesday (for example I'm here today!) I strictly avoid recurring meetings on those days as they tend to be the most disruptive.
- The goal of deep work is to find your "sweet spot" to think and process and do critical work while still understanding that communication is critical to this work and deserves it's own time and prioritization.
- Like meditation the more you practice this the more you can do in one sitting, but even after several years I'm nowhere near to sitting down and doing 8 hours of continuous work blocking off the time to know that I can do that work is what is important.
All In
bringing in the team
My privilege allowed me to experiment
- as leaders we need to give explicit permission for our teams to do this
- those with less privilege may be seen as lazy, unengaged, or criminals stealing time
- While everyone's deep work day doesn't need to be the same, we did have to agree on what days we reserved for meetings. For our team that's Tuesday and Thursday.
Making Deep Work Our Policy
Making Deep Work Our Policy
Block off calendar time
Making Deep Work Our Policy
Block off calendar time
Establish, and socialize, a communication policy
Our Deep Work Friendly Communication Policy
The entire text is in these slides, free for the taking. However, I think writing this as a team helped everyone buy into it more than bringing the text fully formed.
Communication
To foster deep work and allow the most flexibility in scheduling meaningful work, the following guidelines apply to any communication within our group and as much as possible should be the default for all internal and external communication.
Asynchronous Decision Making
Give meaningful discussions a meaningful amount of time to develop and unfold. Allowing time for everyone to take part in any decision allows time for new ideas as well as reducing the stress from missing out if you're not plugged into chat at the exact time decisions are unfolding.
Response Times
Messages should be answered within two working days if a response is required. It's OK to not respond to every message. It is also OK for your first response to be "I need to think about the implications further". When you need more time to respond, let everyone know. We're a very small team and everyone having time to fully digest and consider information is critical for avoiding many types of issues. When you are engaged in meaningful deep work, you should ignore all communication channels and focus on your work knowing you will have time to read and respond later.
Saying I need more time doesn't mean you're bad at your job. It means I respect you, and what you're asking and need to give my full attention to this.
Checking in to say hi
It can get very lonely working in isolation. These requirements are not meant to cover casual conversation. Reach out, be around, say hi, we're a team only as long as we all take part in a community.
External Communication Requirements
You should check external communication channels (email) once per day to be responsive to external emergencies and information requests from important campus partners. Even for critical requests from important constituents, an 8-hour delay in responding is acceptable. We have very few true emergencies, but waste a significant amount of our potential when monitoring email is a top priority. I would much rather us do very good work every day and occasionally have a delay in responding, than to waste time every day on the off chance there is an emergency.
Emergencies
Critical response is rarely needed, but you should leave team members a way to break into your work for emergencies only. If this communication channel is used more than once a year, then we should re-tool our process to have fewer emergencies. Phone, text, or Slack (breaking Do-Not-Disturb mode) are fine. Use whatever you need, but make everyone aware of how to reach you in crisis.
- May 2021 was the last time we had an emergency of this type and needed to break in, text worked fine
- Every time we squash an issue that causes emergencies we free up more time and we spend that time squashing the cause of more emergencies.
Along Came Covid
Untethered From Time
To quote Dr. Ford last night: "When the world started giving us control we learned to accept it and follow a path of ease."
First time working fully remote for many
- Freedom to merge personal and work schedules and optimize both
Deep work isn't just about work. It's about balance:
It's about finding time to:
- take that yoga class
- or swim
- coach little league
- or take ballet. It's about family game nights, and eating healthy
because you have the time to live your life the way you always dreamed you could.
How's it Going?
Ilios
First to Meet AAMC Curriculum Inventory Standards
Fully Deployed in Containers
Perfect Siteimprove Accessibility Rating
Improving Performance on Low Cost Devices
Ilios
I love that Dr. Ford talked last night about EdTech on a Kindle.
You can get a useful Android tablet for $60. When you think about equity I challenge you to think about that device. If you can support education on a $60 tablet you will remove a lot of barriers for a lot of people. It should be possible to use everything we build with that device on a crappy internet connection.
There are a lot of things you have to get right to make that work and a lot of it isn't in our control. Deep Work has given my team the time to contribute to open source efforts, to participate in the standards process for web technology, and to test changes as they're made.
How's it Going?
Ilios
First to Meet AAMC Curriculum Inventory Standards
Fully Deployed in Containers
Perfect Siteimprove Accessibility Rating
Improving Performance on Low Cost Devices
Moodle
Up To Date on v3.11.11
Significant Deployment Automation
Removed 80K Unneeded User Accounts
Shorter Maintenance Windows
Zero Unplanned Downtime in more than a Year
Ilios
I love that Dr. Ford talked last night about EdTech on a Kindle.
You can get a useful Android tablet for $60. When you think about equity I challenge you to think about that device. If you can support education on a $60 tablet you will remove a lot of barriers for a lot of people. It should be possible to use everything we build with that device on a crappy internet connection.
There are a lot of things you have to get right to make that work and a lot of it isn't in our control. Deep Work has given my team the time to contribute to open source efforts, to participate in the standards process for web technology, and to test changes as they're made.
Moodle
- Contributing to Moodle (the worlds most popular LMS by a significant margin) allows us to meet UCSF's mission to "advance health worldwide" in a very real way.
Organizational Limits
such a thing as too productive
Just because you can doesn't mean you should!
Kelly (this morning )
- It's a weird thing to say, but you can be too productive.
- An organization, and it's users, can only absorb so much change.
What Will You Do With More Time?
Hard To Prioritize Yourself When Our Mission is So Critical
If you have as much trouble as I do throwing off your capitalist conditioning
Remember:
- You're an incredibly expensive and difficult to replace asset and it's your job to take care of you
- Keep track of your hours and accomplishments. You'll find work is getting its fair share.
- I solved a long standing performance issue while walking my dogs on the beach, taking care of yourself takes care of your job
Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't, do something else.
– FDR
Get Started Today
- It's a perfect time to schedule some deep work time for 2023
Action Items:
- Block off some time for deep work, even if it's every other week for two hours. Find Some time.
- If you don't take anything else from this talk do this one weird trick find the cause of your most frequent emergency and fix it even if it's really really hard. Then take the time you freed up to fix the next thing. As you remove these distractions re-capture that time to do impactful work.
- Pet More Dogs :)
Thanks!
Jon Johnson
jrjohnson
jrjohnson_
Plain Text and Slides At:
https://www.jrjohnson.dev