In this lesson, we look at the 3 components of the optimal deep work session and the 1 document you'll use to manage and gradually improve your sessions.

If you aren't yet convinced that pure, deep work is a good thing to do - if you're reluctant to truly cut yourself off from distractions in order to do your best work - then the book Deep Work by Cal Newport is a good read.

Examples of My Journal Entries

To give you some guidance, here are a few entries from my own deep work journal.

Here's what I would call a "typical" entry, with brief answers to each question:

Title: Homepage History Post

What am I working on?Updating the rapid landing pages course.What’s the goal of this session?To finish the replication of the first lead gen page and log any changes needed before I can record the video.Why is this important?This is our highest performing lead magnet and showing the new UI in it is an important improvement.Review30 minutes to finish the test page. So far so good. Don’t feel like continuing, though.

I call this a typical entry because I usually don't explain anything in great detail in my entries. They aren't meant for anyone else to read and as long as I know what the notes mean, they're clear enough.

For example, the meaning of goal of the session is clear to me, but probably not obvious to someone else.
In the "why is it important" part, I also don't elaborate why updating our best performing lead magnet is important, because that's immediately obvious to me.
Note how in the "review" part, I describe how long it took me to complete the task and I mention that I didn't continue the deep work session. This was a short session because the goal was reached before the minimum time was up.

Here's another example. This is an example with slightly more elaborate descriptions:

Title: Homepage History Post

What am I working on?Analysing the homepage snapshots, headlines and so on, to collect some data to turn into content.What’s the goal of this session?To have some data and notes with non-obvious observations that will form the basis of the post content.Why is this important?I think this could be really useful and popular content. Good for the business and good for our audience. If this goes well, I can document the process and delegate this kind of content creation in the future.ReviewVery exhausted after 58 minutes or so. For posterity, I should mention that it’s past 10 pm on a day where I got up at 6 and have been travelling all day. It’s good that I managed to get this session in nonetheless. Interesting work, for when you’re actually awake and alert.

This was one of several deep work sessions I did to complete this epic blog post.

For the first 2 questions, I again make no efforts to explain this to someone who isn't me. What's important is that I can still remember what this was about, when I revisit the notes. Detail beyond that is unnecessary.
In the "why is it important" part, I'm tying my work in with one of my top priorities at the time: getting better at delegating. I make it part of my goal not just to create this post but to lay the groundwork for other people to create posts like it, in the future.
In the "review" part, I deliberately left notes for "future Shane". I'm adding context about things that I knew I'd forget about and it's this kind of information that helps me work out my peak focus times and ideal schedule.

Finally, here's an example of a "minimum version" of deep work notes:

Title: Homepage History Post

What am I working on?Work on the presentation slides for the Thrive Optimize launch webinar.What’s the goal of this session?Finish the slides and share them with Hanne.Why is this important?The better the webinar, the more sales we’ll make.

Review62 minutes, slide 14, but only about 20% into the presentation. Gonna be a long day.

Here, I'm not elaborating anything, but the notes are still clear enough that they make sense when I review them in the future.
For the "why is it important" part, I'm simply tying my work to a clear business goal: sell the new product.
In the review notes, you can see that in this example, I ran out of steam once the hour was up. I was hoping I could power through the whole presentation in one go, but I was far off target with that. This shows how useful it is to have the minimum time + goal in the session. Trying to stubbornly finish the presentation anyway would not have been productive on this day. But without the timer, I would probably have given up after 30 minutes or so.

The Deep Work Session