(Originally posted on LinkedIn today)
David Spade’s character in Tommy Boy was prophetic.
When he told Chris Farley’s character Tommy “Let’s say the average person uses ten percent of his brain. How much do you use? One and a half percent. The rest is filled with malted hops and bong resin.”
How often do you feel like this? The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way.
I just finished Deep Work by Cal Newport, which talks about the importance of focused work versus task work and how it can revolutionize your productivity.
Though the book was written in 2016 it is still applicable today after two and a half years of a pandemic where our time has become increasing bombarded with social media and distraction.
While the book isn’t necessarily about the percentage of your brain you are using the quote is still applicable to the idea that we don’t utilize our full capabilities to deliver on the most meaningful work.
This is partly because we haven’t trained the deep work muscle but also because we live in a world full of shallow tasks that can easily consume our time if we let it. And more importantly we don’t have any systems or structure in place to prevent this.
If you want to take concrete steps towards producing your best work over and over without the need to work past 5:30pm this book is a great read. Full of practical tips and frameworks and real life examples to inspire you and change the way you think about your work.
And to return to our hero Tommy Boy, once he applied himself to doing the deep work he became a sales machine, saving his father’s business and winning at life.
