💬 Q&A: Hyperfocus Through Deep Work
Arjun Madgavkar (Creator of Winston)
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Hi curious minds 🧠,
+1 to the power of the internet.
When I shared my post Work Like A Lion, Not A Cow (three frameworks to maximize productivity) on Twitter, I connected with a software engineer building a neat deep work tool, picked his brain on video conference, and tested it out.
P.S. It’s effective.
Read on to discover deep work, with an exclusive surprise at the end of this post.
Meet Arjun.
Guest: Arjun Madgavkar is a software engineer at CoinList (and formerly PayPal) who builds profitable online projects outside of work. He went to NYU, has practiced Vipassana meditation for six years, and plans on traveling the world while working remotely in 2021.
Fun Fact: I used to be the world’s least efficient studier. In college, I’d regularly go to the library for 8-12 hours and get next to nothing done. I’ve seen the power of deep work and that’s why I’m committed to getting more people to practice it.
Q&A Time.
Question #1: What does being more productive mean to you?
A highly productive person focuses on important, challenging goals and makes scarily fast progress on them. To be more productive, you must improve your effectiveness and/or your efficiency. To improve your effectiveness, you need to make sure that you’re prioritizing the right things. To improve your efficiency, you need to make sure that you’re focused while you work.
Question #2: What is your method to being more productive?
The most useful method I’ve found is deep work. This idea behind it is that you should work on difficult, high-value tasks in a distraction-free state. Hemingway would write for ~6 hours every morning without distraction. Jerry Seinfeld hyper-focuses for an hour each day while he writes comedy. Paul Graham talks about how programmers’ need to work this way. There are many other examples, but I’ve found that almost every highly productive person does deep work, even if they’ve never heard the term.
Question #3: What advice do you have for someone who gets easily distracted while working?
The best things for improving my focus have been:
Practicing 30-60 minutes of Vipassana meditation every day.
Keeping my phone off until 12pm each day and removing notifications as well as distracting apps such as Safari.
Practicing deep work where you choose a specific time you’ll work for without any distractions (I generally go for 1-2.5 hour sessions).
A lot of improving your focus while you work comes down to what you do (and don’t do) while you’re not working.
Question #4: What is your typical daily routine?
Morning:
Wake up between 7-8am
Shower
Meditate for 30-45 minutes
Deep work session for two hours on my highest priority items
Afternoon:
Lunch
Read the news, admin tasks, undemanding meetings
Deep work from 2-4pm
Exercise
Evening:
Dinner with family
Deep work from 8-10pm
I’m super specific about my routines (my friends call me “The Amish Robot”) because they remove the need for willpower. I could never will myself to run, meditate, and do deep work every day. I’m just used to it.
Question #5: What is something you believe people misunderstand about productivity?
There are so many answers to this, but I’ll limit myself to two:
Focusing entirely on time rather than quality of time.
Failing to understand the cost of context switching.
When I was growing up, I thought the only thing that mattered was the number of hours you put in. I remember bragging to people that I’d spend nine hours practicing at the golf course, only to later realize that I was focused for three of those hours. So many people in the workplace continue to brag about their long hours, yet half the time they’re in pointless meetings or are working without focus. Time definitely matters, but the quality of that time is so important as well.
When I started working in an office, I started to realize that almost no one seems to understand the cost of context switching, which is incredibly high. You wouldn’t just go up to your friend and turn his computer off for ten minutes while he’s working, would you? But we often bother people that are really focused and it often takes longer than that for them to re-focus. Most don’t do this maliciously, they just don’t realize how expensive context switching is.
Question #6: Regarding your deep work tool, Winston, tell us about a memorable customer experience or feedback.
There are two stories that have always stuck with me:
One customer told me that the simple act of tracking his deep work completely changed his life. Without tracking his data, he always assumed that he was doing around the same level of focused work each week. Once he started using Winston, he saw that his hours would swing wildly from one week to the next. He realized that his productivity would fall when he’d hang out with a certain friend group because of the heavy drinking they’d do together. Once he saw this pattern emerge, he stopped hanging out with them regularly. Now he’s happier, healthier, and his productivity is incredibly consistent.
The other story is a user, Jim, that told me about his experience with his accountability buddy. He was struggling to do focused work every day while working remotely so he found a partner through Winston for a daily deep work session. They get along incredibly well, have great conversations every day, and push each other to be more consistent.
Meet Winston (the deep work tool).
Winston helps you get better at deep work. Get in-depth analytics on your deep work sessions, connect with accountability partners, and focus for longer periods of time.
Get 25% off of Winston for a year with the following code: CuriousExpeditions
Thanks for the chat Arjun! I like your focus on quality > quantity of time and creating a routine of meditation + removing distractions + scheduled deep work time. From my various chats, having a “buddy” whether it be for accountability or kindness (read my chat with Leon Logothetis aka The Kindness Guy) is effective.
Stay updated with Arjun by following him on Twitter.
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Really loved this edition - great stuff! I've been circling deep work as a practice for a long time but will finally give it a shot after this!