How to Live With Purpose in a World of Distraction (8 Quotes That Impacted Me)

What Cal Newport’s Deep Work taught me about time, attention, and building a life that actually matters.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

What if I told you the key to mastering your time, creating your purpose, and hearing the voice of the aether—starts with protecting your attention?

TL;DR:

• This week, I revisited Deep Work by Cal Newport while reflecting on my recent article about “space” and “time.”

• It led me to eight timeless lessons—on focus, discipline, flow, rest, and crafting a life of purpose.

• Each quote reveals a new layer of how to guard your mind in a world built to hijack it.

• In this article, I walk you through those eight lessons and how I’ve been applying them in real life—while preparing a deeper dive for paid subscribers on the portals of space and time.

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Introduction

Earlier this week, I wrote about using “space” and “time” to create. Ironically, or synchronistically—while researching that article—I was transformed to a “space” and “time” earlier in my career, where I had to do research on my book An Unorthodox Truth.

In discussing Monday’s article, I leaned into the research on the book Deep Work that I read, and in doing so, it brought back to mind just how impactful that book was.

Some of that research—quotes from the book that I—I believe these are quotes from the book—are so powerful that they’ve stuck with me since, and I’ve been reflecting on them all week.

One of the concepts that I’ve been specifically reflecting on is the deeper concept of space and time. In researching for Monday’s article, the idea of “portals” came into place.

That idea has stuck with me for quite some time now, and I will be releasing a deeper dive on these concepts—space and time and how they act as portals—for my paid subscribers later today.

But in today’s article—once we understand looking at reality from space and time and seeing how small things help and get us there—we further cement the reason for guarding our attention at all costs.

In today’s technological world, where 70% of communication now occurs within a screen-based device, we need to do more of that today: guard our attention.

According to Goodreads¹, the following quotes—eight of them—are from Deep Work. I wanted to touch on them because they provide guidance on how to control our attention in a world where everything seems to be trying to take our attention away.

And so, without further ado, let’s dive right in.

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Lesson 1: Be Thoughtful With Your Time

“Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward—even if these decisions are reworked again and again as the day unfolds.”

This quote is an excellent way to kick things off. Your goal is not to stick to the schedule of the day.

It is to maintain, at all times, a thought of what you’re doing with your time.

The first three, four quotes are all about protecting your time. Time is very impactful, and it must be protected.

So, with this first lesson, the point is that—listen—your goal throughout each day is just to have an idea of what you’re doing with your time.

Don’t stick to a schedule because it will change. Your goal is always to be thoughtful about what you’re going to do now.

That was incredibly powerful because everyone who keeps a schedule knows it consistently changes. With this quote, while the goal is to essentially ebb and flow, one must consistently be mindful of what one will do with one’s time.

Even if the decisions are reworked repeatedly, as long as you are thoughtful about what you’re doing with your time, you win the day.

Lesson 2: Remake Your Schedule When Disrupted

“If your schedule is disrupted, you should, at the next available moment, take a few minutes to create a revised schedule for the time that remains in the day. You can turn to a new page. You can erase and redraw blocks.”

The following quote again concerns your schedule. If your schedule is disrupted, you should center yourself at the next available moment to ensure you’re still on track with your goals.

This quote kind of follows the first one. As long as you are thoughtful, if your schedule is disrupted, whenever you get a second, make a new one.

You must have an idea of what you need to do today. You have to. And you have to have a plan that tells you that, so you can constantly keep your mind focused on what you’re doing.

Again, you have to be conscious in this world. Consciousness is key.

In the paid article, I’ll discuss how consciousness relates to the idea of space and time and creates realities.

Lesson 3: Pause Before Action

“Adopt the habit of pausing before action and asking, ‘What makes the most sense right now?”

The next piece returns to the idea that consciousness is key. You must always ensure that you know what you’re doing.

If anyone has a day and their schedules are just thrown off course, pause and ask yourself, “Okay, what makes the most sense?”

Here is where the idea of planning and to-do lists comes into play. As I wrote in the space and time article earlier this week, I’ve been able to implement it so far.

Just having a list makes me realize, “Oh wow, I’ve got 20 things to do today.” It gives me pause to ask myself, “What makes the most sense right now?”

Lesson 4: Plan Your Free Time

“It’s crucial, therefore, that you figure out in advance what you’re going to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin.”

The following quote is crucial because we often go into these times when we have nothing to do.

And when you have nothing to do, that is when that distraction takes everything.

The cell phone comes in, the TV comes in, etc.

But when you go into these with a plan and an idea of what you want to work on, these become critical in knowing and controlling your ability to use space and time to do what you want.

Lesson 5: Develop Your Craftsmanship

“A similar potential for craftsmanship can be found in most skilled jobs in the information economy. Whether you’re a writer, marketer, consultant, or lawyer: Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.”

This next quote ties into a deeper aspect of what we do here at Unorthodoxy: how we live this life. I’ve written older articles about it. One piece is about finding your purpose, and the other is about living your purpose.

In my article “How to Find Your Purpose in Three Steps,” I discuss starting with what you like and what you have been called to. In my other article, “How to Live Your Best Life,” I show or discuss how you can generate income and live in society with your purpose.

When you start this journey of living your purpose, it becomes a skill—a craft. This quote suggests that a similar potential for skilled craftsmanship is found in dedicated spaces. This is important because it tells you that if you really put your space and time into living your purpose—which becomes a craft—you do become a skilled craftsman.

As you develop that skill, it grows and provides value that you can live off of. It’s a very fundamental piece here, and this quote is powerful because it all starts with space and time.

You can live your purpose in this world, but you’ll have to travel to that reality where you’ve done so.

Lesson 6: Remember to Rest

“Decades of work from multiple different subfields within psychology all point toward the conclusion that regularly resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.”

You work hard, you play hard—you’ve got to rest. The idea is, “Okay, hey listen, I’ve focused for so long and I’ve got to rest now.”

Rest is different from scrolling. Those are two different things. Rest isn’t the absence of activity, but rather the presence of renewal.

Rest might look different for everybody, but at the end of the day, the bonus to resting is that rest is when we get the most ideas and insights from the aether.

When you do this, I would say just capture the ideas that come, but make sure you enjoy the rest of your hard work.

Remember, God worked for six days; he rested on the seventh.

Lesson 7: Resist Stimuli

“To summarize, to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli.”

To really succeed in deep work, you must be comfortable resisting stimuli. In our world, where we have been wired on stimuli—hence the article Help, I Can’t Get Off My Phone—it will be incredibly hard to do so.

However, when we continue to control our space and time, we become so absorbed in the concept of flow that we don’t necessarily crave the stimuli.

By doing the things mentioned in the article so far, we can stay focused on flow.

Lesson 8: Avoid Distractions

“First, distraction remains a destroyer of depth. Therefore, the hub-and-spoke model provides a crucial template. Separate your pursuit of serendipitous encounters from your efforts to think deeply and build on these inspirations. You should try to optimize each effort separately, as opposed to mixing them together into a sludge that impedes both goals.”

The last quote here spoke to me. It says that often, when we focus on something, an idea comes in that says, “Hey, listen, what about this?”

And while that’s great—and I know if anyone’s like me, you’re like, “Oh, well, let me just do that right now, it’s in my head”—the idea here is no.

You don’t want to do that. You want to stay with what you’re supposed to and keep that going.

Unless that idea helps what you’re already focusing on, you want to capture it somewhere and then continue concentrating on what you’re already focusing on.

You want to keep that going because by doing so, you are honing your focus. You don’t want to try to stop what you’re doing and do something else.

Like Cal Newport says, you can’t do two things at the same time.

You’re just going to make bad jobs for both of them.

Conclusion

Again, phenomenal work here. I hope Monday’s article helped, and these lessons do as well.

Now, if you want a deeper, meaningful, richer aspect of these lessons—like how to live this lifestyle—I recommend becoming a paid subscriber to my podcast, which I’ll be dropping either today or tomorrow on this topic of space and time.

It’s incredibly phenomenal as I’m working through it. I’m just blown away, so I look forward to sharing it with you all.

Without further ado, thank you for your time and attention. I hope you have a wonderful day, and be great.

Ashe.

Franklin O’Kanu

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Notes and References

1. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45502249-deep-work-rules-for-focused-success-in-a-distracted-world?page=16&source=post_page---------------------------