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…when it comes to relaxation, don’t default to whatever catches your attention… but instead dedicate some advance thinking to… how you want to spend your [day]…

The shallow work that increasingly dominates the time and attention of knowledge workers is less vital than it often seems in the moment.

…if you not only eliminate shallow work, but also replace this recovered time with more of the deep alternative… [the business] can become more successful.

…once you’ve hit your deep work limit in a given day, you’ll experience diminishing rewards if you try to cram in more.

…the typical knowledge workday is more easily fragmented than many suspect.

We spend much of our day on autopilot – not giving much thought to what we’re doing with our time. This is a problem.

Without structure, it’s easy to allow your time to devolve into the shallow – e-mail, social media, Web surfing.

Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your workday.

…tasks that leverage your expertise tend to be deep tasks and they can therefore provide a double benefit: They return more value per time spent, and they stretch our abilities, leading to improvement.

The notion that all messages, regardless of purpose or sender,… deserve a (timely) response, is absurdly unproductive.