Instead of allowing surface tasks to weigh him down, Newport focuses on getting in deep work – truly cognitively taxing tasks – everyday. He has being a scientist down to a science. Newport is a proponent of fixing his work schedule and limiting his work time to that schedule. Impressive, undoubtedly, but all of these accomplishments become exponentially more impressive with the inclusion of the last detail of Newport’s success: All of this was done between 8:30 a.m. Concurrently, he wrote a few books about productivity and maintained an incredibly successful blog. Bottom line: it’s not working.Ī friend recently suggested I check out Cal Newport’s blog, “ Study Hacks.” My friend told me the author got his PhD from MIT, did a postdoc there, and now has a job at Georgetown. Progress is slow and I find myself checking my Gmail constantly, which I diagnose as an attempt to escape the cognitive overload I’m trying to impose on myself. Simultaneously, I’m realizing that my habit of constantly “working” is so fatiguing that my work time is watered down. My discontent with my time management has led to a borderline obsession with contemplating improvements. Sprinting without a change in distance gets old really fast. “Tempus fugit,” I think the ancient Romans would say. The weekdays are really chopped up with classes and meetings, and I haven’t been maximizing the time that isn’t spent doing an obligation. I’ve been “working” most of my waking hours, but it’s distracted work that leaves me feeling like all I’m doing is spinning my wheels. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I reflect back on what I accomplished (or more likely, didn’t) and feel downright bummed. But the “something” of note was that for the first time, seamlessly and effortlessly managing my time has not been coming naturally. Actually, almost every aspect of my life changed. I’ve always juggled the various components of my life with relative ease, intuitively knowing how to get everything done in the time I have without stressing (much). Time management has always come naturally to me.
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