There's one skill that can make you more

money than crypto, stocks, and real

estate combined. And that skill ising,

but that's illegal. So, the next best

skill you can learn is how to master the

art of deep work. You see, right now,

there's a lot of really smart people in

the world, and they're all trying to

collect money. You're also trying to

collect money, but they're smarter than

you. So, you're basically trying to

compete in a Fortnite tournament while

running Windows 95. If you learn how to

train your brain to easily enter a deep

work state, it'll basically be like

going back in time to before they had

calculators while you have a phone

running the latest version of DeepSeek.

So, how can you learn how to do this?

It's actually really easy. There's a guy

named Cal Newport who wrote a book

called Deep Work, which I'm going to

summarize for you here. But why should

you listen to him instead of your

favorite productivity blogger with a

ring light? It's because Cal is a

theoretical computer scientist from MIT.

And in his book, he teaches the same

techniques that he himself used to earn

a topranked PhD, publish four books, and

double his rate of writing peer-reviewed

academic papers while never working past

5:00 p.m. Also, because science, there

was a study that interviewed 50 ultra

highscoring college students from the

most competitive schools, and they found

that the top ranking students actually

spent less time studying than the group

of students right below them in the

rankings. They did this because they

learned how to maximize their brain's

ability to focus at super saiyan levels

at will, while you were learning how to

analyze charts to day trade Dogecoin.

I'm going to teach you all the skills

from the book on how to activate your

brain's sage mode in just a minute. But

first, you must listen to my tale.

Please give me 47 seconds to convince

you why not watching this video in full

would be a worse decision for your life

than taking advice on where to invest

your life savings from sports players

and Larry David. One, the world has

become way more globalized. 50 years

ago, if you were a mediocre programmer

living in Boise, Idaho, you could pretty

easily get a cushy tech job at your

local Standard Potato and provide for

your second wife and three stepchildren.

But today, Standard Potato doesn't have

to settle for the talent pool of Idaho.

They can recruit and hire people from

anywhere. Like the far superior talent

pool in Ohio or Sergey from Estonia

who's willing to work for onetenth your

salary cuz $500 will buy enough smoked

sprouts and Estonian cheese to feed his

family for a lifetime. What this means

is that low to mid-level knowledge work

is becoming commoditized. The only way

you can compete for the big bucks is by

becoming extremely skilled, like the top

10% in a particular specialty. Don't

worry, this is actually really easy.

Two, working on anything while not in a

deep work state eats away at your free

time. Because if your entire life is

just spending 12 hours a day on working

or studying, cuz that's the only way you

can earn enough money to feed your

second wife and three stepchildren, then

that's not a very fun way to live. The

goal is to get your brain so

supercharged that you can knock out more

highquality work in 2 hours than you

typically do in 8, leaving the rest of

the day wide open for you to binge watch

a show you'll forget existed by next

Tuesday. Anyways, here's 11 ways the

book teaches you to unlock your brain's

ability to 10x both its speed and the

quality of work it produces. One, be

very selective about your work

environment. Before JK Rowling waged war

on trans people, she actually wrote a

pretty famous book called Harry Potter.

Trying to write the book at home was

really distracting because of the kids

running around, the dogs barking, the

cleaners working, and the activists

protesting outside her window. So, she

changed up her scenery by checking into

a suite at the five-star Balmoral Hotel

in downtown Edinburgh, which is one of

the most luxurious Victorian stone

buildings in the city. And it's right

across the street from Edinburghough

Castle, which was one of Rowling's

inspirations for Hogwarts. This was

really effective cuz not only were there

no distractions, but the vibes were also

perfect for creative writing. And since

she paid more money to spend time there

than the yearly salary of a public

school teacher, it forced her brain to

buckle down and focus with 100%

efficiency to avoid feeling like she's

wasting money. Two, your time boxes have

to be made of cast iron. It actually

doesn't matter if you spend time doom

scrolling or keeping up with the

Kardashians. Cal Newport says you don't

need to bother with avoiding or even

reducing how much time you spend on

distracting behavior. The only thing

that matters is that when you do

schedule your actual deep work time

blocks where you promise yourself that

you're going to focus on something

really important, you make sure that you

don't get distracted no matter what

during those time blocks. You can start

with short time blocks like 30 minutes

and eventually work your way up to a few

hours. Here's why this is so important.

Imagine that when you scheduled your

time blocks for the day, you put up a

physical wall between your deep focus

time and your shallow activities time.

Every single time you let your brain

convince you to cross that wall, even

for small stuff like checking your

Instagram for 2 seconds, what's actually

happening is you're drilling a physical

hole through that wall so that you can

pass through. And the more often you do

this, the more holes you're drilling

through that wall until there are so

many holes that your brain is just going

to ignore that wall altogether. Which

means that the next time you want to put

up that mental focus wall to concentrate

on something really important, you won't

be able to keep your thoughts focused on

the task at hand. Your thoughts are just

going to keep hopping back and forth

between studying for your final exam for

5 minutes and thinking about whether a

100 men can defeat a silverback gorilla

in unarmed combat for 3 and 1/2 hours.

Cuz your mental wall that's supposed to

keep your concentration boxed in is

going to have more holes than Jeffrey

Epstein's prison security footage. But

the more times you fight against that

urge for distraction during your

scheduled deep work time, the more your

brain patches up these holes, making it

really easy to stay in an ultra focus

mode whenever you schedule it. Three,

don't plan your day like a fool. Studies

show that when it comes to estimating

how much time a certain activity will

take, humans are more delusional than an

unemployed influencer calling himself a

disruptor after using chat GBT to vibe

code a worse version of Craigslist.

People who estimated they watch an

average of 15 hours of TV each week

actually watch closer to 30 when the

data was tracked. And when it comes to

work, it was the opposite. People

estimate they spend twice as much time

working as they actually do in reality.

To fix this, do these three things.

Single eye, schedule your day in batches

of similar tasks cuz your brain wastes a

lot of energy whenever it switches from

one type of task to a different one. Two

eyes, schedule your deep work as early

in the day as possible because that's

when you have the most brain energy.

Three eyes, schedule buffer and

contingency to allow for flexibility cuz

you're probably going to miscalculate

how long stuff will take you and you

don't want those miscalculations to

throw off your plan. But you probably

aren't taking notes and it's hard to

remember all these things. So method

four is to create a ritual that you do

right before you enter deep work. This

will make entering a deep work state

eventually become easy and automatic

after you do your ritual. This could be

something as simple like making coffee

and putting on jazz music or something

more complicated like drawing a

pentagram and espresso grounds and

summoning your productivity demon. If

you do this every day for a few weeks,

your brain will just automatically enter

an ultra focused deep work state as soon

as you draw the pentagram because you've

built that habit loop. Just like you

automatically reach for a towel after

washing your hands without spending any

energy thinking about it. Method five is

to use idle gaps like a smart person.

Entering deep work isn't a one-time

decision. It's not something you try

once like tofu or krypto. It's a real

muscle that will atrophy if you don't

exercise it. But people treat focus like

it's a personality trait. Oh, I just

can't concentrate. I must be neurode

divergent. But it's all about how you

train your brain. Cuz people who

constantly try to fill up any moments of

boredom with some type of distraction,

like scrolling TikTok when you're at the

dentist office before they glue your

teeth back together, have immeasurably

different brain wiring than people who

train themselves to be comfortable with

sitting in silence. If every day you

practice being able to just sit there

without any external stimulation, like

when you're in line at the grocery store

or waiting for your water to boil, this

will make it way easier to comfortably

sit in silence and boredom when working

on difficult problems. If you can't

handle even a few minutes of bored

silence, your brain will definitely not

be able to handle getting stuck on hard

problems and will immediately trigger

you to start doomcrolling at the first

sign of mild stress. Cal Newport once

said, "Once you're wired for

distraction, you crave it." Then he went

to go silently stare at a tree for 45

minutes. Method six is to multitask the

right way instead of the wrong way. The

way most people multitask is wrong. What

they try to do is flip back and forth

between two cognitive tasks, like

checking emails and working on a

project. Studies have shown that this

literally turns your brain into mashed

potatoes with Wi-Fi. That's not even a

joke. The book suggests that you take

advantage of tasks you already do that

require no mental brain power, like

walking your dog or commuting to work,

and use that time to think deeply about

a creative problem you need to solve.

So, the next time you're out walking on

your lunch break from work, instead of

chain smoking cigarettes, try thinking

about how to name your Etsy shop side

hustle without sounding like a cult. If

your boss asks, "What took you so long?"

You can tell them that you were

implementing mobile strategic ideiation.

The whole point is to give your brain

practice with picking one important

topic and working through that one topic

from start to finish without getting

distracted. This will turn your mind

into the brain equivalent of Arnold

Schwarzenegger. And by multitasking this

with an activity you already do that

requires zero brain power. You don't

need to find any extra time in your day

to do this brain training. Something to

keep in mind is that when you first try

this, your brain's going to fill up with

a bunch of less important, more

entertaining thoughts like, "Do raccoons

have knees?" or "Could essential oils

cure your uncle's dyslexia?" If these

come to mind, just remind yourself that

you can worry about that later and come

back to thinking about your main task at

hand. You should also structure your

thinking process so that you're tackling

key questions one at a time and then

summarizing your conclusions at the end

of your thinking session instead of just

randomly bouncing around different

topics over and over again. Method seven

is you should become irresponsible not

by microwaving foil but by taking on

less responsibilities. This will give

you more time and energy to get smart or

to follow your dreams of becoming a

professional ice cream taster. Physicist

Richard Fineman was a self-proclaimed

irresponsible person. Whenever someone

asked him to take on more

responsibilities like being on fancy

committees or doing admin work, he just

said, "Nah, I'm good." Then he won a

Nobel Prize cuz he had time to focus on

the important stuff. Cal Newport says,

"Clarity about what matters provides

clarity about what does not." And this

quote helped me a lot cuz once I

understood that life is meaningless and

the universe is silent, I stopped

worrying about optimizing my notion

dashboard. Method eight is to avoid the

any benefit mind trap. Your brain likes

to do low value shallow tasks because

they require less brain energy, but it

knows you don't want to do low value

tasks. So, it tries to trick you by

rationalizing the value that you do get

from them. Like scrolling Facebook lets

you keep up with what's going on in the

lives of people you knew from high

school. But let's be honest, if you

didn't read that Sharon from 2009 is

feeling blessed at a cheesecake factory,

I promise you'd still wake up tomorrow

with the same credit score and slightly

crooked spine. Meanwhile, that time and

energy could have gone to literally

anything better, like learning a skill

that makes you rich, growing your own

strawberries, or making actual real

friends in real life. Just because an

option has some benefit, doesn't mean

it's a good choice. Newport says you

should identify the highest ROI tasks

and use your deep work time blocks to

focus exclusively on those because

that's how you make your life actually

better. Method 9 is to end your day the

right way and not the wrong way. Trying

to squeeze out a little extra work at

night is actually bad. What's better is

to let your brain fully relax for the

evening, but your brain can't fully

relax if it's stressing out about

unresolved tasks. So, what you should do

is spend the last 15 minutes of your

workday listing out all the urgent and

important items left on your to-do list

and writing down a plan for how you plan

to tackle each of them tomorrow. That

way, your brain can actually relax and

recharge cuz it knows that you already

have a written plan in place and that

there's nothing to worry about. Method

10 is to relax the right way and not the

wrong way. Most people relax by being

couch potatoes cuz they're tired and

they don't have energy after work. But

Newport says that just because you had a

long and focused day at work does not

mean you should spend your evening just

blankly staring at the TV waiting for

death or reruns. Your mental faculties

actually don't tire out like the muscles

in your arms and legs. It only feels

like they do because of your existing

habits. You should spend your free time

doing things that are actually

adventurous and meaningful, like

watching all the videos on this YouTube

channel. If your free time is spent

doing truly fun things, you'll be that

much more determined to make sure you

don't let any work spill over into your

fun time and your brain will work 10

times more efficiently. Studies done by

the famous psychologist Mihi Chick Mihi

found three interesting results. One,

vowels and last names are mostly

unnecessary. Two, when people were

tracked extremely closely over a long

period of time, it was discovered that

the people who experienced the most joy

and fulfillment in life were not the

ones who were relaxing the most. The

happiest people by far were the ones who

were frequently stretching their brain's

capabilities to the absolute limit on

something that was both difficult and

meaningful to them, aka engaging in deep

work and entering a flow state. Three,

people who subscribe to this YouTube

channel have a much easier time entering

an ultra productive deepwork state than

the general population.

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