an interruption, even if short, delays the total time required to complete a task by a significant fraction.

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.

If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

Deep work is way more powerful than most people understand.

I would compensate for losing the grant by increasing the rate and impressiveness of my publications—allowing them to declare on my behalf that I actually did know what I was doing, even if this one particular grant application didn’t go my way.

In addition to my rule about not working at night, I started to take extended lunch breaks in the middle of the day to go for a run and then eat lunch back at my apartment.

This tip can be uncomfortable at first because it will cause you to break a key convention currently surrounding e-mail: Replies are assumed, regardless of the relevance or appropriateness of the message.