Here's the productivity formula one Wharton professor uses to outwork almost everyone in his field
In 2009, 27-year-old
behavioral scientist Adam Grant became an associate
professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Within two years, he
became the youngest professor to receive tenure at the school; within five
years, he became the school's youngest full professor with around 60
peer-reviewed research papers under his belt.
Now, at 34, Grant is a New
York Times bestselling
author and prolific
researcher who performs at a level typically far beyond his years.
Grant decided early in his
career that productivity was a scientific problem that could be solved, and one
of the fundamental components of his solution is doing "deep work," Georgetown
professor and author Cal Newportwrites in his new book "Deep
Work". It's a phrase Newport coined for intense sessions of
distraction-free work that requires the full use of one's focus and
intelligence.
It's a simple
formula, Newport says: "High quality work produced =
(time spent) x (intensity of focus)."
Newport writes that
"there's one idea in particular that seems central to his method: the
batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted
stretches."
Rather than continuously
work on research throughout the year, Grant reserves the fall semester for his
teaching responsibilities, and the effort that he puts into his classes and
students has resulted in Grant's being Wharton's top-rated professor for four
straight years.
The spring semester and
summer are then dedicated to research. When he's working in his office, he'll
sometimes spend a few days working in total isolation. During these
stretches, Grant will set up an email auto-reply telling people he's not answering
messages for a few days.
"It sometimes
confuses my colleagues," Grant told Newport. "They say, 'You're not
out of office, I see you in your office right now!'"
In a 2009 research paper,
University of Minnesota business professor Sophie Leroy explains that every
time a brain shifts its attention from one task to another, part of its energy
is still processing the first task. She calls this "attention
residue."
When people discipline
themselves to focus on one task only, their brain utilizes energy more efficiently,
which Newport argues can result in more and better quality work.
"When Grant is
working for days in isolation on a paper," Newport writes, "he's
doing so at a higher level of effectiveness than the standard professor
following a more distracted strategy in which the work is repeatedly
interrupted by residue-slathering interruptions."
Deep work is an attribute of the committed and the consistent
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