MIT PhD taught me to unlock my brain’s “Sage Mode” - Deep Work (Full Summary)

There's one skill that can make you more money than crypto, stocks, and real estate combined. And that skill ising,

estate combined. And that skill ising, but that's illegal. So, the next best skill you can learn is how to master the art of deep work. You see, right now, there's a lot of really smart people in the world, and they're all trying to

collect money. You're also trying to

collect money. You're also trying to collect money, but they're smarter than you. So, you're basically trying to

you. So, you're basically trying to compete in a Fortnite tournament while running Windows 95. If you learn how to train your brain to easily enter a deep work state, it'll basically be like going back in time to before they had

calculators while you have a phone running the latest version of DeepSeek.

So, how can you learn how to do this?

It's actually really easy. There's a guy named Cal Newport who wrote a book called Deep Work, which I'm going to summarize for you here. But why should you listen to him instead of your favorite productivity blogger with a ring light? It's because Cal is a

ring light? It's because Cal is a theoretical computer scientist from MIT.

And in his book, he teaches the same techniques that he himself used to earn a topranked PhD, publish four books, and double his rate of writing peer-reviewed academic papers while never working past

5:00 p.m. Also, because science, there

5:00 p.m. Also, because science, there was a study that interviewed 50 ultra highscoring college students from the most competitive schools, and they found that the top ranking students actually

spent less time studying than the group of students right below them in the rankings. They did this because they

rankings. They did this because they learned how to maximize their brain's ability to focus at super saiyan levels at will, while you were learning how to analyze charts to day trade Dogecoin.

I'm going to teach you all the skills from the book on how to activate your brain's sage mode in just a minute. But

first, you must listen to my tale.

Please give me 47 seconds to convince you why not watching this video in full would be a worse decision for your life than taking advice on where to invest your life savings from sports players

and Larry David. One, the world has become way more globalized. 50 years

ago, if you were a mediocre programmer living in Boise, Idaho, you could pretty easily get a cushy tech job at your local Standard Potato and provide for your second wife and three stepchildren.

But today, Standard Potato doesn't have to settle for the talent pool of Idaho.

They can recruit and hire people from anywhere. Like the far superior talent

anywhere. Like the far superior talent pool in Ohio or Sergey from Estonia who's willing to work for onetenth your salary cuz $500 will buy enough smoked sprouts and Estonian cheese to feed his

family for a lifetime. What this means is that low to mid-level knowledge work is becoming commoditized. The only way you can compete for the big bucks is by becoming extremely skilled, like the top

10% in a particular specialty. Don't

worry, this is actually really easy.

Two, working on anything while not in a deep work state eats away at your free time. Because if your entire life is

time. Because if your entire life is just spending 12 hours a day on working or studying, cuz that's the only way you can earn enough money to feed your second wife and three stepchildren, then that's not a very fun way to live. The

goal is to get your brain so supercharged that you can knock out more highquality work in 2 hours than you typically do in 8, leaving the rest of the day wide open for you to binge watch a show you'll forget existed by next

Tuesday. Anyways, here's 11 ways the

Tuesday. Anyways, here's 11 ways the book teaches you to unlock your brain's ability to 10x both its speed and the quality of work it produces. One, be

very selective about your work environment. Before JK Rowling waged war

environment. Before JK Rowling waged war on trans people, she actually wrote a pretty famous book called Harry Potter.

Trying to write the book at home was really distracting because of the kids running around, the dogs barking, the cleaners working, and the activists protesting outside her window. So, she

changed up her scenery by checking into a suite at the five-star Balmoral Hotel in downtown Edinburgh, which is one of the most luxurious Victorian stone buildings in the city. And it's right across the street from Edinburghough

Castle, which was one of Rowling's inspirations for Hogwarts. This was

really effective cuz not only were there no distractions, but the vibes were also perfect for creative writing. And since

she paid more money to spend time there than the yearly salary of a public school teacher, it forced her brain to buckle down and focus with 100% efficiency to avoid feeling like she's

wasting money. Two, your time boxes have

wasting money. Two, your time boxes have to be made of cast iron. It actually

doesn't matter if you spend time doom scrolling or keeping up with the Kardashians. Cal Newport says you don't

Kardashians. Cal Newport says you don't need to bother with avoiding or even reducing how much time you spend on distracting behavior. The only thing

distracting behavior. The only thing that matters is that when you do schedule your actual deep work time blocks where you promise yourself that you're going to focus on something really important, you make sure that you

don't get distracted no matter what during those time blocks. You can start with short time blocks like 30 minutes and eventually work your way up to a few hours. Here's why this is so important.

hours. Here's why this is so important.

Imagine that when you scheduled your time blocks for the day, you put up a physical wall between your deep focus time and your shallow activities time.

Every single time you let your brain convince you to cross that wall, even for small stuff like checking your Instagram for 2 seconds, what's actually happening is you're drilling a physical hole through that wall so that you can

pass through. And the more often you do

pass through. And the more often you do this, the more holes you're drilling through that wall until there are so many holes that your brain is just going to ignore that wall altogether. Which

means that the next time you want to put up that mental focus wall to concentrate on something really important, you won't be able to keep your thoughts focused on the task at hand. Your thoughts are just going to keep hopping back and forth

between studying for your final exam for 5 minutes and thinking about whether a 100 men can defeat a silverback gorilla in unarmed combat for 3 and 1/2 hours.

Cuz your mental wall that's supposed to keep your concentration boxed in is going to have more holes than Jeffrey Epstein's prison security footage. But

the more times you fight against that urge for distraction during your scheduled deep work time, the more your brain patches up these holes, making it really easy to stay in an ultra focus

mode whenever you schedule it. Three,

don't plan your day like a fool. Studies

show that when it comes to estimating how much time a certain activity will take, humans are more delusional than an unemployed influencer calling himself a disruptor after using chat GBT to vibe

code a worse version of Craigslist.

People who estimated they watch an average of 15 hours of TV each week actually watch closer to 30 when the data was tracked. And when it comes to work, it was the opposite. People

estimate they spend twice as much time working as they actually do in reality.

To fix this, do these three things.

Single eye, schedule your day in batches of similar tasks cuz your brain wastes a lot of energy whenever it switches from one type of task to a different one. Two

eyes, schedule your deep work as early in the day as possible because that's when you have the most brain energy.

Three eyes, schedule buffer and contingency to allow for flexibility cuz you're probably going to miscalculate how long stuff will take you and you don't want those miscalculations to throw off your plan. But you probably

aren't taking notes and it's hard to remember all these things. So method

four is to create a ritual that you do right before you enter deep work. This

will make entering a deep work state eventually become easy and automatic after you do your ritual. This could be something as simple like making coffee and putting on jazz music or something more complicated like drawing a

pentagram and espresso grounds and summoning your productivity demon. If

you do this every day for a few weeks, your brain will just automatically enter an ultra focused deep work state as soon as you draw the pentagram because you've built that habit loop. Just like you automatically reach for a towel after

washing your hands without spending any energy thinking about it. Method five is to use idle gaps like a smart person.

Entering deep work isn't a one-time decision. It's not something you try

decision. It's not something you try once like tofu or krypto. It's a real muscle that will atrophy if you don't exercise it. But people treat focus like

exercise it. But people treat focus like it's a personality trait. Oh, I just can't concentrate. I must be neurode

can't concentrate. I must be neurode divergent. But it's all about how you

divergent. But it's all about how you train your brain. Cuz people who constantly try to fill up any moments of boredom with some type of distraction, like scrolling TikTok when you're at the dentist office before they glue your

teeth back together, have immeasurably different brain wiring than people who train themselves to be comfortable with sitting in silence. If every day you practice being able to just sit there

without any external stimulation, like when you're in line at the grocery store or waiting for your water to boil, this will make it way easier to comfortably sit in silence and boredom when working on difficult problems. If you can't

handle even a few minutes of bored silence, your brain will definitely not be able to handle getting stuck on hard problems and will immediately trigger you to start doomcrolling at the first

sign of mild stress. Cal Newport once said, "Once you're wired for distraction, you crave it." Then he went to go silently stare at a tree for 45 minutes. Method six is to multitask the

minutes. Method six is to multitask the right way instead of the wrong way. The

way most people multitask is wrong. What

they try to do is flip back and forth between two cognitive tasks, like checking emails and working on a project. Studies have shown that this

project. Studies have shown that this literally turns your brain into mashed potatoes with Wi-Fi. That's not even a joke. The book suggests that you take

joke. The book suggests that you take advantage of tasks you already do that require no mental brain power, like walking your dog or commuting to work, and use that time to think deeply about

a creative problem you need to solve.

So, the next time you're out walking on your lunch break from work, instead of chain smoking cigarettes, try thinking about how to name your Etsy shop side hustle without sounding like a cult. If

your boss asks, "What took you so long?"

You can tell them that you were implementing mobile strategic ideiation.

The whole point is to give your brain practice with picking one important topic and working through that one topic from start to finish without getting distracted. This will turn your mind

distracted. This will turn your mind into the brain equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And by multitasking this

Schwarzenegger. And by multitasking this with an activity you already do that requires zero brain power. You don't

need to find any extra time in your day to do this brain training. Something to

keep in mind is that when you first try this, your brain's going to fill up with a bunch of less important, more entertaining thoughts like, "Do raccoons have knees?" or "Could essential oils

have knees?" or "Could essential oils cure your uncle's dyslexia?" If these come to mind, just remind yourself that you can worry about that later and come back to thinking about your main task at

hand. You should also structure your

hand. You should also structure your thinking process so that you're tackling key questions one at a time and then summarizing your conclusions at the end of your thinking session instead of just randomly bouncing around different

topics over and over again. Method seven

is you should become irresponsible not by microwaving foil but by taking on less responsibilities. This will give

less responsibilities. This will give you more time and energy to get smart or to follow your dreams of becoming a professional ice cream taster. Physicist

Richard Fineman was a self-proclaimed irresponsible person. Whenever someone

irresponsible person. Whenever someone asked him to take on more responsibilities like being on fancy committees or doing admin work, he just said, "Nah, I'm good." Then he won a

Nobel Prize cuz he had time to focus on the important stuff. Cal Newport says, "Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not." And this quote helped me a lot cuz once I

understood that life is meaningless and the universe is silent, I stopped worrying about optimizing my notion dashboard. Method eight is to avoid the

dashboard. Method eight is to avoid the any benefit mind trap. Your brain likes to do low value shallow tasks because they require less brain energy, but it knows you don't want to do low value

tasks. So, it tries to trick you by

tasks. So, it tries to trick you by rationalizing the value that you do get from them. Like scrolling Facebook lets

from them. Like scrolling Facebook lets you keep up with what's going on in the lives of people you knew from high school. But let's be honest, if you

school. But let's be honest, if you didn't read that Sharon from 2009 is feeling blessed at a cheesecake factory, I promise you'd still wake up tomorrow with the same credit score and slightly

crooked spine. Meanwhile, that time and

crooked spine. Meanwhile, that time and energy could have gone to literally anything better, like learning a skill that makes you rich, growing your own strawberries, or making actual real

friends in real life. Just because an option has some benefit, doesn't mean it's a good choice. Newport says you should identify the highest ROI tasks and use your deep work time blocks to

focus exclusively on those because that's how you make your life actually better. Method 9 is to end your day the

better. Method 9 is to end your day the right way and not the wrong way. Trying

to squeeze out a little extra work at night is actually bad. What's better is to let your brain fully relax for the evening, but your brain can't fully relax if it's stressing out about

unresolved tasks. So, what you should do

unresolved tasks. So, what you should do is spend the last 15 minutes of your workday listing out all the urgent and important items left on your to-do list and writing down a plan for how you plan

to tackle each of them tomorrow. That

way, your brain can actually relax and recharge cuz it knows that you already have a written plan in place and that there's nothing to worry about. Method

10 is to relax the right way and not the wrong way. Most people relax by being

wrong way. Most people relax by being couch potatoes cuz they're tired and they don't have energy after work. But

Newport says that just because you had a long and focused day at work does not mean you should spend your evening just blankly staring at the TV waiting for death or reruns. Your mental faculties

actually don't tire out like the muscles in your arms and legs. It only feels like they do because of your existing habits. You should spend your free time

habits. You should spend your free time doing things that are actually adventurous and meaningful, like watching all the videos on this YouTube channel. If your free time is spent

channel. If your free time is spent doing truly fun things, you'll be that much more determined to make sure you don't let any work spill over into your fun time and your brain will work 10

times more efficiently. Studies done by the famous psychologist Mihi Chick Mihi found three interesting results. One,

vowels and last names are mostly unnecessary. Two, when people were

unnecessary. Two, when people were tracked extremely closely over a long period of time, it was discovered that the people who experienced the most joy and fulfillment in life were not the

ones who were relaxing the most. The

happiest people by far were the ones who were frequently stretching their brain's capabilities to the absolute limit on something that was both difficult and

meaningful to them, aka engaging in deep work and entering a flow state. Three,

people who subscribe to this YouTube channel have a much easier time entering an ultra productive deepwork state than the general population.

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