Steinbeck was productive, writing 33 books and winning a Nobel Prize for his efforts. But he wasn't busy. After writing in the morning, he'd spend afternoons fishing or chatting with other writers. Maybe we understand "busy" in the wrong way.

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come. — C.S. Lewis At some point, we need to "get down to our work" even if the favorable conditions never come.

Cognitive work is a fragile endeavor; environment matters. When we pass the laundry basket outside our home office (a.k.a. our bedroom), our brain shifts toward a household-chores context, even when we would like to maintain focus on our work.

Deep Work - 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.

A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.

Do less. Do better. Know why.

Do fewer things. Work at a varied pace. Focus on quality.

Work schedules brimming with emails, Slack messages, and calendar invites cannot support the form of thought that moves the needle in your field. But how many of us are serious enough to protect the time to do nothing but think?

Put relationships first. Give non-trivial time and attention to other people. That's the net that is going to allow you to get through anything.

The right question is not whether new, rapidly spreading technology is useful (it often is), but instead, how we should use it. For example, email is clearly better than fax machines, but does this mean we should check our inbox every six minutes?

The "open office" is up there with Slack as representing the peak of early 21st century distraction culture — a period which the knowledge sector disregarded the reality of how human brains actually go through the difficult task of creating value through cogitation.

Here's a reminder for the rest of us, nervous about slipping into digital oblivion. What ultimately matters is the fundamental value of what we produce. Everything else is distraction.

ChatGPT is amazing, but in the final accounting it’s clear that what’s been unleashed is more automaton than golem.

Move your focus away from finding the right work, toward working right, and eventually build a love for what you do.

The happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.

Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to.

Creating things that are too good to be ignored, regardless of the setting, is an activity that almost without exception requires undivided attention.

When work was done at work, and there was no chance of continuing your labors at home, your job didn’t seem nearly as onerous. There’s a lot about early 2000s culture I’m not eager to excavate, but this idea of the constrained workday certainly seems worthy of nostalgia.

Busyness is not the engine of production. It can, in many cases, instead be the obstacle to accomplishing your best work.

The rhythms of our professional lives are not pre-ordained. We craft the world in which we work, even if we don’t realize it.