As I am moving forward with deep work understanding, even taking a class on that (Top performer) , trying to achieve more but keeping regular hours of work, planning my day has become a challenge and fun as well.  I try hard to place 90 minutes of deep work in the mornings and the afternoons — a total of 3 hours a day. Sometimes, I find it very hard not to check my email or even to think what people would say if I don’t respond to the email promptly – as I am a supervisor and I worry about work fires! Other times, I worry about how shallow my non-deep work is and how anybody can do this work without the need for any thinking- the catch 22 dilemma!

Approaching work and thinking continuously how to increase the rate of return on my time have made think about how to decrease the amount of time consumed by meetings.  Meetings take more than 30% of my time, and sometimes my mind shoots the question of how I can find a way to avoid certain meetings without decreasing my involvement and my responsibilities in the running of the office. To find this balance of deep work, less meetings, and more involvement, I am forced to think holistically using diffused thinking to connect the dots between my responsibilities, creativity, and growth.  I discovered that deep work allows me to solve some problems to prevent or decrease trouble in the future, making less mistakes with sound decisions.  In a way, deep work increases the possibility to save time by taking good small decisions with intense focus, and I have to say with fun.  Sound decisions prevent problems and save time, allowing me to bypass unknown territories and increase my understanding of the interplay of my daily tasks. At certain times, it shortens meeting times from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

I am now listening to  “Originals” a book written by Adam Grant. Grant inspires and motivates me to be like him — to be very productive. Grant, a full professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, achieved his tenure as one of the youngest professors ever at the Wharton Business School. Grant also wrote the book “Give and Take,” became a full tenured professor, writer, and business consultant in a most efficient way.  His TED talk reveals a lot of originality and the art of mastering productivity. After all, Grant works as an experimental psychologist who focuses on his teaching, research, and business consulting. During fall, Grant makes himself available to his students and the people around him. In summer and spring, Grant hits the ground running conducting very deep research. He usually closes his office and sends an automatic out-of-office response when he receives emails.  This small trick of isolating himself confuses his colleagues who would like to find him.  Grant’s ability to be prolific in publishing eight manuscripts (with a high H Google index) a year puts him in the top one percent of highly achieving professors in the academic world.

Finally, following in the footsteps of these achievers  will be a very interesting challenge. I am really looking forward to studying in the “Top Performer” class.

Thank you for reading my post. (Sufalkhaldi@futureandsciencehacks.com).  I would love to hear from you. This post is usually published on Saturday.