To combat the trap of putting a premium on being busy, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, recommends building a habit of “deep work” — the ability to focus without distraction.
There are a number of approaches to mastering the art of deep work — be it lengthy retreats dedicated to a specific task, developing a daily ritual, or taking a “journalistic” approach to seizing moments of deep work when you can throughout the day. Whichever approach, it is critical to determine your duration of focus time and stick to it.
Another approach to getting more done in less time is to rethink how you prioritise your day — in particular how we craft our to-do lists. Tim Harford, author of Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, points to a study in the early 1980s that divided undergraduates into two groups: some were advised to set out monthly goals and study activities; others were told to plan activities and goals in much more detail, day by day.
While the researchers assumed that the well-structured daily plans would be most effective when it came to the implementation of tasks, they were wrong: the detailed daily plans demotivated students. Harford argues that inevitable distractions often leave the daily to-do list ineffective, while leaving room for improvisation (即兴创作) in such a list can reap the best results.
In order to make the most of our focus and energy, we also need to embrace downtime, or as Newport suggests, “be lazy.” Srini Pillay, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes this counter-intuitive connection between downtime and productivity may be due to the way our brains operate. When our brains switch between being focused and unfocused on a task, they tend to be more efficient. “What people don’t realize is that in order to complete these tasks they need to use both the focus and unfocus circuits in their brain,” says Pillay.
【小题1】What contributes most to mastering deep work?| A．Keeping to focus length. | B．Seizing the working chance. |
| C．Carrying out specific plans. | D．Ensuring the task procedures. |
| A．Distractions may contribute to efficiency. |
| B．Daily schedules are beneficial to studying. |
| C．Performances are barely driven by monthly goals. |
| D．Detailed plans might not be as fruitful as expected. |
| A．is motivated by well-planned tasks | B．can bring about greater productivity |
| C．is targeted at better working balance | D．will greatly affect the way brains work |
| A．The approach to easing distractions. | B．The priority to embracing downtime. |
| C．Solutions to relieving the life tension. | D．Keys to getting more done in less time. |
