How I ONLY Work 4 Hours a Day - How to Stay Focused

2021-07-11 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 9:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Books and reading) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, His own numbers

Ali says he works only about four hours on most days and takes five lessons from Cal Newport's Deep Work for making those hours count: value deep over shallow work, train focus like a muscle, chase only meaningful goals, build a deep-work routine, and embrace the satisfaction of deep work.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali works about four hours a day and asks how to be productive in few hours

★★★ Although some people online think he works all the time, Ali says that on most days he puts in only about four hours of work. — 00:00:00
★★★ Ali thinks the important question is not how to work harder and longer but how to be more productive in the few hours you work, so that you can work less and enjoy other things such as World of Warcraft, the guitar or friends. — 00:00:29 · World of Warcraft

“how can we be more productive in the few hours that we are working”
★★ Ali calls Cal Newport's book Deep Work the Bible on being productive in few working hours, with a lot of solid lessons. — 00:00:58
★★★ Ali's first lesson from Deep Work is to appreciate the difference between deep work and shallow work and to recognise that deep work is generally better. — 00:00:58 · deep work (concept)
★★ Ali says that a day his videos present as 14 hours of study probably held only about three hours of fully focused deep work; the rest went on screwing around, emails and odd jobs. (hedged) — 00:00:58 · deep work (concept)

00:01:07 — Deep work vs shallow work, and Bill Gates's think weeks

★★ Ali's best ideas and meaningful progress on his projects come from deep work rather than shallow work. — 00:01:27 · deep work (concept)
★★ Ali rarely has empty blocks in his calendar these days, yet to make decent progress on something important he needs three to four uninterrupted hours of deep work. — 00:01:27 · deep work (concept)
★★ Rereading the summary of Deep Work, Ali found compelling evidence that even three or four hours is not enough: reaching a proper focused state takes a whole uninterrupted day. — 00:01:56 · deep work (concept)
★★ Bill Gates took think weeks twice a year, a whole week in a cabin in the woods just to think, and Ali says Microsoft's 1990s vision for the internet apparently came from them. (hedged) — 00:01:56
★★ Ali is trying to take whole days for thinking more often: he spent the last two days in Oxford on his own "think two days", mostly hanging out with people rather than working, and found the recharge quite nice. — 00:01:56
★★★ Ali's second lesson from Deep Work is to treat the ability to focus like a muscle. — 00:02:42
★★ Whenever Ali asks on Instagram or Twitter about people's top productivity struggles, they split into two camps: those who struggle to get started, and those who start but cannot focus and get distracted. — 00:02:42 · Instagram, Twitter

00:02:51 — Treat the ability to focus like a muscle: artificial deadlines and no distractions

★★ Ali says many people who cannot focus wear it as a badge of honour and build an identity, a story in their heads, that they are chronic procrastinators who are terrible at focusing. — 00:03:18
★★★ Ali takes from Deep Work that focus is a muscle you can train: he used to struggle with distraction, trained it out of himself over time through spells of focused work, and now rarely struggles with it. — 00:03:18 · deep work (concept)
★★ To train focus Ali uses artificial deadlines, after Parkinson's law that work expands to fill the time allocated to it: given half an hour he gets a task done in it, given a whole day it takes the whole day. — 00:03:56
★★ Ali also gets rid of distractions for deep work: he puts his phone on silent and throws it onto the sofa, where it is annoying to reach, and turns on Do Not Disturb on his Mac with Slack notifications off; at worst he misses a friend's meme in a WhatsApp group chat. — 00:03:56 · WhatsApp, Slack
★★ Ali recommends Shortform, which is not sponsoring this video, as his favourite way of reading book summaries. — 00:04:25

00:04:39 — Reading book summaries on Shortform

★★ Ali reads a book's Shortform summary to decide whether to read the book, and to revisit the ideas of books he has read, such as Deep Work or The 4-Hour Workweek, instead of rereading them. — 00:04:54 · The 4-Hour Workweek

00:05:22 — Chase the goals that are most meaningful: the daily highlight

★★★ Ali's third lesson from Deep Work, which he still struggles to apply, is to chase only the goals that are most meaningful. — 00:05:23
★★ Often Ali ends a day spent on Zoom calls, emails and random admin and finds it hard to point to any goal of his that the work moved him towards. — 00:05:23 · Zoom
★★ Ali thinks a big reason is that scattered bits of time, 20 minutes here or an hour there, are only really suitable for shallow work rather than deep work. — 00:05:53 · deep work (concept)
★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport says deep work is the work that moves us towards our goals, while shallow work is the little things such as answering emails, replying to messages and Zoom calls. — 00:05:53 · deep work (concept), Zoom
★★★ To keep days from going to shallow work, Ali sets a daily highlight every day, the one most important thing he needs to do that day, and schedules it as a block in his calendar. — 00:05:53 · daily highlight
★★ On days when Ali sets his daily highlight and schedules it in a time block, he gets it done about 80% of the time, and making progress on something meaningful feels really good. — 00:06:22 · daily highlight
★★★ Ali's fourth lesson from Deep Work is to get into a routine. — 00:06:22
★★ Ali's deep-work routine is a block from about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. each morning in which no one may book calls with him, and most of the time he gets some deep work done in it. — 00:06:22 · deep work (concept)

00:06:44 — Get into a routine; about four hours of deep work a day

★★★ Rereading the Shortform summary of Deep Work, Ali realised his three-hour morning block is probably not enough, so he is now trying to block out all of Tuesday and all of Friday just for deep work. (hedged) — 00:06:51
★★★ For people with a job or studies who cannot block out whole days, Ali recommends a recurring ritual: a few hours blocked out every morning, or on certain mornings, for meaningful work such as exam preparation, learning to code, a business or a hobby. — 00:06:51 · deep work (concept)
★★ Ali's deep-work time goes to making progress on writing his book, which he has been struggling with for the last couple of months. — 00:07:37 · deep work (concept)
★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport writes that the scientific consensus apparently puts our capacity for deep work at about four hours a day; beyond that the work is not very deep, as the brain cannot focus that long. (hedged) — 00:07:37 · deep work (concept)
★★★ Ali says his videos claiming he studied 14 hours a day are not true: adding up the focused time in an old study-with-me video from university gave about four or five hours a day, some of it procrastination. — 00:07:37
★★★ Ali thinks everyone needs to be more realistic about how much deep work is achievable in a day; the goal he personally aims for is four hours. — 00:08:06 · deep work (concept)
★★★ Ali's fifth lesson from Deep Work, which really resonated with him, is to embrace the satisfaction of deep work. — 00:08:06

00:08:28 — Embrace the satisfaction of deep work

★★★ Shallow work such as replying to emails and ticking off small to-dos feels satisfying, and Ali often convinces himself he is productive doing it, but only days with a solid session of deep work and real progress feel genuinely satisfying and fulfilling. — 00:08:33 · deep work (concept)

In the description and comments

★★ Ali explains that his whole deep-work days are days in which the only thing he does is four hours of deep work. — creator comment · deep work (concept)
★ Ali Abdaal (channel): The channel says Ali's four hours of work a day do not include emails and Zoom calls. — creator comment · Zoom
★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To a viewer who would rather not focus at all if life required only four hours of focus, the channel answers that focused work is fun. — creator comment
★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked by a mother which laptop to give her son for his A-levels on the way to studying medicine, the channel recommends a MacBook Air. — creator comment · MacBook
★★ Ali says he is still not great at being focused: some days he "works" all day and gets nothing done, other days he works three to four hours and makes a lot of progress. — creator comment

Threads in this video

restate · How many hours a day should you work? — Ali thinks the important question is not how to work harder and longer but how to be more productive in the few hours you work, so that you can work less and enjoy other things such as World of Warcraft, the guitar or friends. (00:00:29)
refine · How many hours a day should you work? — Ali thinks everyone needs to be more realistic about how much deep work is achievable in a day; the goal he personally aims for is four hours. (00:08:06)
restate · How many hours a day should you work? — Cal Newport writes that the scientific consensus apparently puts our capacity for deep work at about four hours a day; beyond that the work is not very deep, as the brain cannot focus that long. (00:07:37)
restate · How do you improve your focus? — Ali rarely has empty blocks in his calendar these days, yet to make decent progress on something important he needs three to four uninterrupted hours of deep work. (00:01:27)
refine · How do you improve your focus? — Ali takes from Deep Work that focus is a muscle you can train: he used to struggle with distraction, trained it out of himself over time through spells of focused work, and now rarely struggles with it. (00:03:18)
restate · How do you beat procrastination? — To train focus Ali uses artificial deadlines, after Parkinson's law that work expands to fill the time allocated to it: given half an hour he gets a task done in it, given a whole day it takes the whole day. (00:03:56)
restate · How do you stop your phone and social media from eating your time? — Ali also gets rid of distractions for deep work: he puts his phone on silent and throws it onto the sofa, where it is annoying to reach, and turns on Do Not Disturb on his Mac with Slack notifications off; at worst he misses a friend's meme in a WhatsApp group chat. (00:03:56)
restate · Should you read book summaries instead of whole books? — Ali reads a book's Shortform summary to decide whether to read the book, and to revisit the ideas of books he has read, such as Deep Work or The 4-Hour Workweek, instead of rereading them. (00:04:54)
restate · How should you plan your day? — To keep days from going to shallow work, Ali sets a daily highlight every day, the one most important thing he needs to do that day, and schedules it as a block in his calendar. (00:05:53)
restate · Should you time-block your calendar? — On days when Ali sets his daily highlight and schedules it in a time block, he gets it done about 80% of the time, and making progress on something meaningful feels really good. (00:06:22)
shift · Should you time-block your calendar? — Rereading the Shortform summary of Deep Work, Ali realised his three-hour morning block is probably not enough, so he is now trying to block out all of Tuesday and all of Friday just for deep work. (00:06:51)
refine · Should you time-block your calendar? — For people with a job or studies who cannot block out whole days, Ali recommends a recurring ritual: a few hours blocked out every morning, or on certain mornings, for meaningful work such as exam preparation, learning to code, a business or a hobby. (00:06:51)
setback · Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020) — Ali's deep-work time goes to making progress on writing his book, which he has been struggling with for the last couple of months. (00:07:37)
refine · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — Shallow work such as replying to emails and ticking off small to-dos feels satisfying, and Ali often convinces himself he is productive doing it, but only days with a solid session of deep work and real progress feel genuinely satisfying and fulfilling. (00:08:33)
refine · Which tech is worth buying? — Asked by a mother which laptop to give her son for his A-levels on the way to studying medicine, the channel recommends a MacBook Air. (creator comment)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020) — running; last: milestone, 2021-10-20

Mentioned

Central: Cal Newport · Deep Work (book) · deep work (concept)

Also: People: Bill Gates

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · The 4-Hour Workweek

Organizations: Instagram · Microsoft · Twitter

Concepts: daily highlight · Parkinson's law · shallow work

Places: Oxford

Products: Shortform · Slack · WhatsApp · World of Warcraft · Zoom

Only in the description or credits: MacBook

Replies to

continues · How I Manage my Time as a Doctor + YouTuber - 9 Time Management Tips

← Previous: 6 Time Management Tips in Under 60 Seconds #Shorts · Next → How much I spend in a month…