0:02 There's one skill that can make you more
0:04 money than crypto, stocks, and real
0:07 estate combined. And that skill ising,
0:09 but that's illegal. So, the next best
0:11 skill you can learn is how to master the
0:13 art of deep work. You see, right now,
0:14 there's a lot of really smart people in
0:16 the world, and they're all trying to
0:17 collect money. You're also trying to
0:19 collect money, but they're smarter than
0:20 you. So, you're basically trying to
0:22 compete in a Fortnite tournament while
0:25 running Windows 95. If you learn how to
0:27 train your brain to easily enter a deep
0:29 work state, it'll basically be like
0:31 going back in time to before they had
0:32 calculators while you have a phone
0:35 running the latest version of DeepSeek.
0:36 So, how can you learn how to do this?
0:38 It's actually really easy. There's a guy
0:40 named Cal Newport who wrote a book
0:42 called Deep Work, which I'm going to
0:43 summarize for you here. But why should
0:45 you listen to him instead of your
0:46 favorite productivity blogger with a
0:48 ring light? It's because Cal is a
0:50 theoretical computer scientist from MIT.
0:53 And in his book, he teaches the same
0:55 techniques that he himself used to earn
0:58 a topranked PhD, publish four books, and
0:59 double his rate of writing peer-reviewed
1:02 academic papers while never working past
1:05 5:00 p.m. Also, because science, there
1:07 was a study that interviewed 50 ultra
1:08 highscoring college students from the
1:10 most competitive schools, and they found
1:13 that the top ranking students actually
1:15 spent less time studying than the group
1:16 of students right below them in the
1:18 rankings. They did this because they
1:20 learned how to maximize their brain's
1:22 ability to focus at super saiyan levels
1:24 at will, while you were learning how to
1:27 analyze charts to day trade Dogecoin.
1:28 I'm going to teach you all the skills
1:30 from the book on how to activate your
1:32 brain's sage mode in just a minute. But
1:34 first, you must listen to my tale.
1:36 Please give me 47 seconds to convince
1:38 you why not watching this video in full
1:40 would be a worse decision for your life
1:42 than taking advice on where to invest
1:44 your life savings from sports players
1:46 and Larry David. One, the world has
1:49 become way more globalized. 50 years
1:51 ago, if you were a mediocre programmer
1:53 living in Boise, Idaho, you could pretty
1:55 easily get a cushy tech job at your
1:57 local Standard Potato and provide for
1:59 your second wife and three stepchildren.
2:01 But today, Standard Potato doesn't have
2:03 to settle for the talent pool of Idaho.
2:05 They can recruit and hire people from
2:07 anywhere. Like the far superior talent
2:09 pool in Ohio or Sergey from Estonia
2:11 who's willing to work for onetenth your
2:14 salary cuz $500 will buy enough smoked
2:16 sprouts and Estonian cheese to feed his
2:18 family for a lifetime. What this means
2:20 is that low to mid-level knowledge work
2:23 is becoming commoditized. The only way
2:25 you can compete for the big bucks is by
2:27 becoming extremely skilled, like the top
2:30 10% in a particular specialty. Don't
2:32 worry, this is actually really easy.
2:35 Two, working on anything while not in a
2:37 deep work state eats away at your free
2:38 time. Because if your entire life is
2:40 just spending 12 hours a day on working
2:42 or studying, cuz that's the only way you
2:43 can earn enough money to feed your
2:45 second wife and three stepchildren, then
2:47 that's not a very fun way to live. The
2:49 goal is to get your brain so
2:51 supercharged that you can knock out more
2:53 highquality work in 2 hours than you
2:55 typically do in 8, leaving the rest of
2:57 the day wide open for you to binge watch
2:58 a show you'll forget existed by next
3:01 Tuesday. Anyways, here's 11 ways the
3:03 book teaches you to unlock your brain's
3:06 ability to 10x both its speed and the
3:09 quality of work it produces. One, be
3:10 very selective about your work
3:13 environment. Before JK Rowling waged war
3:15 on trans people, she actually wrote a
3:17 pretty famous book called Harry Potter.
3:18 Trying to write the book at home was
3:20 really distracting because of the kids
3:22 running around, the dogs barking, the
3:23 cleaners working, and the activists
3:25 protesting outside her window. So, she
3:27 changed up her scenery by checking into
3:29 a suite at the five-star Balmoral Hotel
3:31 in downtown Edinburgh, which is one of
3:33 the most luxurious Victorian stone
3:35 buildings in the city. And it's right
3:36 across the street from Edinburghough
3:38 Castle, which was one of Rowling's
3:40 inspirations for Hogwarts. This was
3:42 really effective cuz not only were there
3:44 no distractions, but the vibes were also
3:46 perfect for creative writing. And since
3:48 she paid more money to spend time there
3:49 than the yearly salary of a public
3:51 school teacher, it forced her brain to
3:54 buckle down and focus with 100%
3:56 efficiency to avoid feeling like she's
3:59 wasting money. Two, your time boxes have
4:01 to be made of cast iron. It actually
4:03 doesn't matter if you spend time doom
4:04 scrolling or keeping up with the
4:06 Kardashians. Cal Newport says you don't
4:08 need to bother with avoiding or even
4:10 reducing how much time you spend on
4:12 distracting behavior. The only thing
4:14 that matters is that when you do
4:16 schedule your actual deep work time
4:17 blocks where you promise yourself that
4:19 you're going to focus on something
4:21 really important, you make sure that you
4:23 don't get distracted no matter what
4:25 during those time blocks. You can start
4:27 with short time blocks like 30 minutes
4:29 and eventually work your way up to a few
4:32 hours. Here's why this is so important.
4:33 Imagine that when you scheduled your
4:35 time blocks for the day, you put up a
4:37 physical wall between your deep focus
4:40 time and your shallow activities time.
4:41 Every single time you let your brain
4:43 convince you to cross that wall, even
4:45 for small stuff like checking your
4:47 Instagram for 2 seconds, what's actually
4:50 happening is you're drilling a physical
4:51 hole through that wall so that you can
4:53 pass through. And the more often you do
4:55 this, the more holes you're drilling
4:57 through that wall until there are so
4:59 many holes that your brain is just going
5:01 to ignore that wall altogether. Which
5:02 means that the next time you want to put
5:05 up that mental focus wall to concentrate
5:07 on something really important, you won't
5:08 be able to keep your thoughts focused on
5:10 the task at hand. Your thoughts are just
5:12 going to keep hopping back and forth
5:14 between studying for your final exam for
5:15 5 minutes and thinking about whether a
5:18 100 men can defeat a silverback gorilla
5:20 in unarmed combat for 3 and 1/2 hours.
5:22 Cuz your mental wall that's supposed to
5:24 keep your concentration boxed in is
5:26 going to have more holes than Jeffrey
5:28 Epstein's prison security footage. But
5:30 the more times you fight against that
5:31 urge for distraction during your
5:33 scheduled deep work time, the more your
5:35 brain patches up these holes, making it
5:37 really easy to stay in an ultra focus
5:40 mode whenever you schedule it. Three,
5:42 don't plan your day like a fool. Studies
5:44 show that when it comes to estimating
5:46 how much time a certain activity will
5:48 take, humans are more delusional than an
5:50 unemployed influencer calling himself a
5:52 disruptor after using chat GBT to vibe
5:54 code a worse version of Craigslist.
5:56 People who estimated they watch an
5:58 average of 15 hours of TV each week
6:00 actually watch closer to 30 when the
6:02 data was tracked. And when it comes to
6:04 work, it was the opposite. People
6:06 estimate they spend twice as much time
6:08 working as they actually do in reality.
6:11 To fix this, do these three things.
6:13 Single eye, schedule your day in batches
6:16 of similar tasks cuz your brain wastes a
6:18 lot of energy whenever it switches from
6:20 one type of task to a different one. Two
6:22 eyes, schedule your deep work as early
6:24 in the day as possible because that's
6:26 when you have the most brain energy.
6:28 Three eyes, schedule buffer and
6:31 contingency to allow for flexibility cuz
6:33 you're probably going to miscalculate
6:34 how long stuff will take you and you
6:36 don't want those miscalculations to
6:38 throw off your plan. But you probably
6:39 aren't taking notes and it's hard to
6:41 remember all these things. So method
6:44 four is to create a ritual that you do
6:46 right before you enter deep work. This
6:48 will make entering a deep work state
6:50 eventually become easy and automatic
6:52 after you do your ritual. This could be
6:54 something as simple like making coffee
6:56 and putting on jazz music or something
6:58 more complicated like drawing a
6:59 pentagram and espresso grounds and
7:01 summoning your productivity demon. If
7:03 you do this every day for a few weeks,
7:05 your brain will just automatically enter
7:07 an ultra focused deep work state as soon
7:09 as you draw the pentagram because you've
7:11 built that habit loop. Just like you
7:13 automatically reach for a towel after
7:15 washing your hands without spending any
7:17 energy thinking about it. Method five is
7:20 to use idle gaps like a smart person.
7:22 Entering deep work isn't a one-time
7:23 decision. It's not something you try
7:26 once like tofu or krypto. It's a real
7:28 muscle that will atrophy if you don't
7:30 exercise it. But people treat focus like
7:33 it's a personality trait. Oh, I just
7:35 can't concentrate. I must be neurode
7:37 divergent. But it's all about how you
7:39 train your brain. Cuz people who
7:41 constantly try to fill up any moments of
7:43 boredom with some type of distraction,
7:45 like scrolling TikTok when you're at the
7:46 dentist office before they glue your
7:48 teeth back together, have immeasurably
7:50 different brain wiring than people who
7:52 train themselves to be comfortable with
7:55 sitting in silence. If every day you
7:57 practice being able to just sit there
7:59 without any external stimulation, like
8:00 when you're in line at the grocery store
8:02 or waiting for your water to boil, this
8:04 will make it way easier to comfortably
8:06 sit in silence and boredom when working
8:09 on difficult problems. If you can't
8:10 handle even a few minutes of bored
8:13 silence, your brain will definitely not
8:14 be able to handle getting stuck on hard
8:16 problems and will immediately trigger
8:18 you to start doomcrolling at the first
8:21 sign of mild stress. Cal Newport once
8:23 said, "Once you're wired for
8:25 distraction, you crave it." Then he went
8:27 to go silently stare at a tree for 45
8:30 minutes. Method six is to multitask the
8:32 right way instead of the wrong way. The
8:35 way most people multitask is wrong. What
8:37 they try to do is flip back and forth
8:39 between two cognitive tasks, like
8:41 checking emails and working on a
8:43 project. Studies have shown that this
8:45 literally turns your brain into mashed
8:47 potatoes with Wi-Fi. That's not even a
8:49 joke. The book suggests that you take
8:51 advantage of tasks you already do that
8:53 require no mental brain power, like
8:56 walking your dog or commuting to work,
8:58 and use that time to think deeply about
9:00 a creative problem you need to solve.
9:02 So, the next time you're out walking on
9:04 your lunch break from work, instead of
9:06 chain smoking cigarettes, try thinking
9:07 about how to name your Etsy shop side
9:09 hustle without sounding like a cult. If
9:12 your boss asks, "What took you so long?"
9:13 You can tell them that you were
9:16 implementing mobile strategic ideiation.
9:18 The whole point is to give your brain
9:20 practice with picking one important
9:22 topic and working through that one topic
9:25 from start to finish without getting
9:26 distracted. This will turn your mind
9:28 into the brain equivalent of Arnold
9:30 Schwarzenegger. And by multitasking this
9:32 with an activity you already do that
9:34 requires zero brain power. You don't
9:36 need to find any extra time in your day
9:38 to do this brain training. Something to
9:40 keep in mind is that when you first try
9:42 this, your brain's going to fill up with
9:43 a bunch of less important, more
9:46 entertaining thoughts like, "Do raccoons
9:48 have knees?" or "Could essential oils
9:51 cure your uncle's dyslexia?" If these
9:53 come to mind, just remind yourself that
9:55 you can worry about that later and come
9:56 back to thinking about your main task at
9:58 hand. You should also structure your
10:00 thinking process so that you're tackling
10:03 key questions one at a time and then
10:04 summarizing your conclusions at the end
10:06 of your thinking session instead of just
10:08 randomly bouncing around different
10:10 topics over and over again. Method seven
10:12 is you should become irresponsible not
10:15 by microwaving foil but by taking on
10:17 less responsibilities. This will give
10:19 you more time and energy to get smart or
10:20 to follow your dreams of becoming a
10:22 professional ice cream taster. Physicist
10:25 Richard Fineman was a self-proclaimed
10:27 irresponsible person. Whenever someone
10:28 asked him to take on more
10:30 responsibilities like being on fancy
10:32 committees or doing admin work, he just
10:35 said, "Nah, I'm good." Then he won a
10:37 Nobel Prize cuz he had time to focus on
10:40 the important stuff. Cal Newport says,
10:42 "Clarity about what matters provides
10:44 clarity about what does not." And this
10:46 quote helped me a lot cuz once I
10:48 understood that life is meaningless and
10:50 the universe is silent, I stopped
10:52 worrying about optimizing my notion
10:54 dashboard. Method eight is to avoid the
10:57 any benefit mind trap. Your brain likes
10:59 to do low value shallow tasks because
11:01 they require less brain energy, but it
11:02 knows you don't want to do low value
11:05 tasks. So, it tries to trick you by
11:07 rationalizing the value that you do get
11:09 from them. Like scrolling Facebook lets
11:10 you keep up with what's going on in the
11:12 lives of people you knew from high
11:14 school. But let's be honest, if you
11:16 didn't read that Sharon from 2009 is
11:18 feeling blessed at a cheesecake factory,
11:20 I promise you'd still wake up tomorrow
11:22 with the same credit score and slightly
11:25 crooked spine. Meanwhile, that time and
11:26 energy could have gone to literally
11:28 anything better, like learning a skill
11:30 that makes you rich, growing your own
11:32 strawberries, or making actual real
11:35 friends in real life. Just because an
11:37 option has some benefit, doesn't mean
11:39 it's a good choice. Newport says you
11:42 should identify the highest ROI tasks
11:44 and use your deep work time blocks to
11:46 focus exclusively on those because
11:47 that's how you make your life actually
11:50 better. Method 9 is to end your day the
11:52 right way and not the wrong way. Trying
11:54 to squeeze out a little extra work at
11:56 night is actually bad. What's better is
11:59 to let your brain fully relax for the
12:01 evening, but your brain can't fully
12:02 relax if it's stressing out about
12:05 unresolved tasks. So, what you should do
12:07 is spend the last 15 minutes of your
12:09 workday listing out all the urgent and
12:11 important items left on your to-do list
12:13 and writing down a plan for how you plan
12:15 to tackle each of them tomorrow. That
12:17 way, your brain can actually relax and
12:19 recharge cuz it knows that you already
12:20 have a written plan in place and that
12:22 there's nothing to worry about. Method
12:25 10 is to relax the right way and not the
12:27 wrong way. Most people relax by being
12:29 couch potatoes cuz they're tired and
12:31 they don't have energy after work. But
12:33 Newport says that just because you had a
12:35 long and focused day at work does not
12:37 mean you should spend your evening just
12:39 blankly staring at the TV waiting for
12:42 death or reruns. Your mental faculties
12:43 actually don't tire out like the muscles
12:45 in your arms and legs. It only feels
12:47 like they do because of your existing
12:49 habits. You should spend your free time
12:51 doing things that are actually
12:52 adventurous and meaningful, like
12:54 watching all the videos on this YouTube
12:56 channel. If your free time is spent
12:58 doing truly fun things, you'll be that
13:00 much more determined to make sure you
13:02 don't let any work spill over into your
13:04 fun time and your brain will work 10
13:06 times more efficiently. Studies done by
13:09 the famous psychologist Mihi Chick Mihi
13:12 found three interesting results. One,
13:13 vowels and last names are mostly
13:16 unnecessary. Two, when people were
13:19 tracked extremely closely over a long
13:21 period of time, it was discovered that
13:23 the people who experienced the most joy
13:26 and fulfillment in life were not the
13:28 ones who were relaxing the most. The
13:31 happiest people by far were the ones who
13:32 were frequently stretching their brain's
13:35 capabilities to the absolute limit on
13:37 something that was both difficult and
13:40 meaningful to them, aka engaging in deep
13:43 work and entering a flow state. Three,
13:45 people who subscribe to this YouTube
13:47 channel have a much easier time entering
13:49 an ultra productive deepwork state than
