Todays newsletter at a glance:
Using the Deep Work method to become prolific
This weeks book-Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and why it’s lessons apply now more than ever, especially when it comes to censorship, conspiracy theories and Kanye West.
Health Hack: Micro-dosing with psilocybin.
This isn’t news to you, but knowledge workers are suffering from a crisis of attention.
I know this because those who I coach as well as yours truly suffer from the same affliction.
AI driven algorithms, social media and even your computer operating systems are all designed to distract and capture attention.
The more you practice addiction to screens and distraction, the worse it gets.
It’s forced me to change the way I approach work.
People say time is more valuable than money, but I think attention is more valuable than time.
It’s really the only thing you truly have any control over.
And yet, most of us are willing to constantly give our greatest resource away to companies who sell it to the highest bidder and to other people’s interests.
There is another way though, and it’s called Deep Work, a term coined by Cal Newport who is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
“Deep work is a professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” -Cal Newport,
Distraction free, focused work is such a rarity today, that if you master it you’ll be orders of magnitude more productive than 99% of people.
I’ve written a complete guide to Deep Work that will have you making game changing progress on your biggest, most important priorities and you can get access to it here.
But if you just want the TLDR version and you’re ready to start today, here is the basic framework.
Look at your calendar and time block at least an hour for focused work every day.
When that time shows up, turn off your phone, log out of slack, teams, email or anything else that competes for your attention and set your computer to focus mode.
Work.
That’s it!
It’s literally that simple, and it’s the answer to your distraction and procrastination problems.
Do yourself a favor, read the guide, and download the checklist.
You’ll be thanking yourself when you see how much progress you make in such a short time.
A book I’m currently reading:
I finally read Robert Cialdini’s classic Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and it blew my mind how applicable it remains today.
Cialdini defines and details five main principles of persuasion and illustrates them with stories and experiments from his work as a psychologist.
The following persuasion principles create automatic responses in humans and are virtually unavoidable if you’re not aware of them.
They Are:
Reciprocity
Commitment and Consistency
Social Proof
Liking
Authority
Scarcity
Unity
A quick example is that of scarcity.
Cialdini discusses several experiments where information is withheld from certain participants.
Ironically, withheld information activates the scarcity trigger and causes people to believe the withheld information is TRUE!
There is a part of the human mind that understands those with more and/or privileged information oftentimes hold more power.
In our quest to exert influence over our environment.
When Kanye West goes on an anti-semetic tirade claiming that Jews control the media, then subsequently gets de-platformed, people are likely to believe Kanye more than if he remained platformed.
That is what the experimental data show.
Wow!
This book is full of incredible insights and is well worth a read or a listen.
Health Hack: Psilocybin Micro-Dosing
Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind,” probably did more to legitimize the use of psychedelics more than anything in the last 50 years.
Here was a New York Times best selling author going down the rabbit hole with psilocybin, LSD and DMT.
Heck, my own father called me after reading it asking if I could find him some magic mushrooms.
I think there’s another reason why psychedelics have become more mainstream though.
Living in the modern environment in general creates physical and emotional externalities (obesity, depression, anxiety, disconnection) at a rate never before seen.
People are looking for answers.
Micro-dosing is the practice of taking about 1/10 or less of a normal dose, so small that you would not even notice you took it.
But, there’s some great data out there on the effectiveness of this practice and if you’re considering other types of medication, it might behoove you to look into micro-dosing first.
I wrote a post about micro-dosing a while back that goes over some of those studies.
I’ve micro-dosed for periods of time and found it to be very beneficial.
I’d love to hear your own experience as well. ;-)