Number of words: 535 When Ryan Nicodemus decided to simplify his life, one of his first targets was his possessions. At the time, Ryan lived alone in a spacious three-bedroom condo. For years, driven by a consumerist impulse, he had been trying his best to fill this ample space. Now it was time to reclaim … Read more

Number of words: 573 When Pritchard took over Smith Meadows, he explained, the farm made its own hay to use as animal feed during the winter months when grazing is impossible. Haymaking is done with a piece of equipment called a hay baler: a device you pull behind a tractor that compresses and binds dried … Read more

Number of words: 317 The problem with this approach, of course, is that it ignores all the negatives that come along with the tools in question. These services are engineered to be addictive —robbing time and attention from activities that more directly support your professional and personal goals (such as deep work). Eventually, if you … Read more

Number of words: 127 I propose an alternative to the Internet Sabbath. Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction. To make this suggestion more concrete, let’s make the simplifying assumption that Internet use is synonymous with … Read more

Number of words: 172 Before diving into the details, let’s start by considering a popular suggestion for distraction addiction that doesn’t quite solve our problem: the Internet Sabbath (sometimes called a digital detox). In its basic form, this ritual asks you to put aside regular time—typically, one day a week—where you refrain from network technology. … Read more

Number of words: 489 Another key commitment for succeeding with this strategy is to support your commitment to shutting down with a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project … Read more

Number of words: 298 This study, it turns out, is one of many that validate attention restoration theory (ART), which claims that spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate. This theory, which was first proposed in the 1980s by the University of Michigan psychologists Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan (the latter of … Read more

Number of words: 438 Consider  the  following excerpt from a  2006  paper  that  appeared  in the  journal Lurking in this bland statement is a bold claim. The authors of this study, led by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, set out to prove that some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. In … Read more

Number of words: 242 In the mid-1990s, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen received a call from Andy Grove, the CEO and chairman of Intel. Grove had encountered Christensen’s research on disruptive innovation and asked him to fly out to California to discuss the theory’s implications for Intel. On arrival, Christensen walked through the basics … Read more

Number of words: 95 This combination of sound proofed offices connected to large common areas yields a hub-and-spoke architecture of innovation in which both serendipitous encounter and isolated deep thinking are supported. It’s a setup that straddles a spectrum where on one extreme we find the solo thinker, isolated from inspiration but free from distraction, … Read more