Deep Work Rituals

What behaviours do you regularly perform right before working on a difficult task?

These don’t need to be big. Any repeated and intentional activity, from making a cup of coffee, to going for a short walk or doing 20 push ups counts.

Let’s call these your deep work rituals.

This week I’ve been paying attention to the ‘things I do’ right before sitting down to work on the most important thing that day.

I’ve shared 2 of my go-to rituals below…

It’s the first time I’ve consciously thought about the utility of these small activities. Cal Newport talks about these rituals (and routines) on a recent Deep Life podcast.

“Rituals are the activities you do with specific goal of changing your mindset in the moment or reminding you of something that’s important to you.”

Cal Newport

In the context of what we’re talking about here; that ‘important’ thing is doing deep work. And performing a regular ritual right before tackling something important can be extremely helpful for preparing your mind to focus.

Here are my 2 favourite deep work rituals:

Changing the light temperature in my home office

During the day, the home office lights are always set at a daylight temperature to mimic what you would expect when working in a conventional office. However if I am working on something into the evening, I enjoy increasing the light temperature to something much warmer. It creates a totally different ambience in the room and helps me refocus and compartmentalise the ‘evening work’ from everything that happened earlier in the day.

Burning incense

Burning incense already has ritualistic connotations, but for me I find it a helpful practice if I need to focus on something intensely for 30-45 minutes. The intentional act of taking the incense out of the box, lighting it and placing it in its holder prepares my mind to focus. Even more useful though is that the actual burning of the stick acts as a sort of hour glass timer where I know I just need to stay focused for the length of time it takes to burn, and then I get to take a short break after. I’ve been able to solve plenty of difficult tasks using this ritual.

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It would be cool to hear if any of you have deep work rituals that help you focus on important work.

Drop me a reply.

Catch up next week.

Sam

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