deep work Quotes

When you have a deep focus, you can't go wrong at all. Not when you're an expert at what you do.

Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.

When I'm writing a first draft of a script, I can disappear into that for two, three months exclusively.

I won't deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward.

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I'm aware that I'm writing. I'm aware of my surroundings. It's like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I'm able to see better.

Making a film is a beautiful mystery. You go deep into the wood, and you don't want to come out of that wood.

An addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production.

Dirac politely refused Robert's [Robert Oppenheimer] two proffered books: reading books, the Cambridge theoretician announced gravely, "interfered with thought."

I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else.

I could call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.

It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.

I think about sculpture all the time. I work at it for ten to twelve hours a day. I even dream about it. If as a result I was only to produce something that everyone immediately understood I would't have been thinking very profoundly.

The deepest work is usually the darkest. A brave woman, a wisening woman, will developing the poorest psychic land, for if she builds only on the best land of her psyche, she will have for a view the least of what she is. So do not be afraid of the worst. It only guarantees increase of soul power through fresh insights and opportunities for re-visioning one's life and self anew.

I'm not someone who works a lot, and what I mean by that is that I have a project and I focus on it, and I don't spread myself too thin. I try to give as much as I can to that project, and if we have a lot of time, that's amazing for me, because I like to really dive deep and do as much as I can.

Multi-tasking is keeping me from whole-hearted worship.

If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns.

I'm hungry as an artist to find opportunities to contribute to the world in a more meaningful way than just numbing people through entertainment.

The ability to focus on a single task for an extended period is a talent that’s underappreciated - especially by extroverts, who continue to exercise an unhealthy hegemony over most workplaces.

Writing a song is work. You have to go deep in order to mine the material and dig it out.

The groove can go for like three days - once I'm in it it will just keep going until I'm totally exhausted. But that's how I like to work, I like to be away from everyone and just get in the zone, and stay there for as long as I can keep it there.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

I think the lack of precision and deep focus is why it took me years to build up my work.

When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.

Just lock myself in a room, stop answering emails, stop answering the phone and I come out with something.

Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw into our awareness and into language itself the unobvious and the unexpected.