How Does the Working Genius Model Apply to Deep Work?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Alright, so let's move on now to some questions about deep work.

00:00:11.000 | Our first question comes from Brendan.

00:00:15.000 | Brendan asks, "Are you familiar with Patrick Liccioni's working genius model?

00:00:22.000 | And if so, how might someone's working geniuses be best suited to deep work and time block planning

00:00:29.000 | and which types may have to work harder at it?"

00:00:34.000 | Well, Brendan, I don't know this particular framework from Patrick.

00:00:39.000 | I have actually met Patrick before.

00:00:41.000 | We were both speaking at the same conference that was outside of Dallas.

00:00:45.000 | This would have been maybe four or five years ago, and we had lunch together.

00:00:50.000 | Fascinating guy, great writer, sells a ton of books, by the way.

00:00:53.000 | He really has his finger on the pulse of the business market.

00:00:56.000 | I don't know working genius, but I know the general type of book you're talking about here.

00:01:01.000 | These are books in which you try to discern something about you as your personality or as a worker.

00:01:08.000 | So you talk about in your elaboration here that your "geniuses" in Liccioni's framework are discernment and tenacity.

00:01:16.000 | And you're trying to ask, are there going to be some of these personality or worker types

00:01:22.000 | that are better suited for some of this advice than others?

00:01:25.000 | Generally what I like to say, because I encounter this a lot,

00:01:29.000 | is that deep work and time-block planning are universal.

00:01:35.000 | So in other words, regardless of what your personality or genius type is,

00:01:41.000 | the fact remains that if your brain is focusing on one thing at a time without context switching,

00:01:47.000 | it's going to produce better output than if it's context switching,

00:01:51.000 | than if you're kind of working and you're kind of distracted.

00:01:53.000 | It doesn't matter if your genius is discernment or tenacity or whatever else they are.

00:01:57.000 | With time-block planning, the same thing holds.

00:02:00.000 | If you give every minute of your day a job, so you are intentional about,

00:02:04.000 | "Here is the time that's available. What do I want to do with it?"

00:02:07.000 | You are going to be better off, you're going to produce more, you're going to be less stressed,

00:02:11.000 | less will get forgotten, than if you're instead just reactive and say, "What do I want to do next?"

00:02:15.000 | So I don't believe there's a personality type for which deep work is not relevant.

00:02:20.000 | I don't believe there's a personality type for which time-block planning is not going to help.

00:02:25.000 | Now that being said, how much deep work you do,

00:02:29.000 | how much work you have in your life that requires deep work,

00:02:32.000 | how you set up and structure that deep work,

00:02:35.000 | what blocks you're putting into your time-block plan,

00:02:37.000 | whether the time-block plan is very tight, meaning that you have lots of blocks precisely timed,

00:02:42.000 | or very loose where you have really large blocks and maybe buffer blocks to give yourself room

00:02:46.000 | if something takes longer than something else,

00:02:48.000 | all of that could be affected by you and your particular personality.

00:02:51.000 | So let's make the underlying idea that deep work produces higher quality and quantity than shallow work.

00:02:57.000 | Let's take the underlying idea that intention about your time is going to be much better

00:03:01.000 | than being random, haphazard, or reactive, and say that's universal.

00:03:05.000 | But your style for applying those ideas, I think it's completely fine to think that that style might differ.

00:03:11.000 | And your style might be someone who really needs five hours in a cave,

00:03:15.000 | don't bother me doing deep work, or your style might be, this is like pulling teeth,

00:03:21.000 | it's two hours, it has to be first thing in the morning before other things get going.

00:03:25.000 | That's fine. That's stylistic. Your style with your time-block plan might be very tight.

00:03:29.000 | I want to be like an assembly line rolling through a lot of things incredibly effectively,

00:03:32.000 | or it might be like we talked about, very loose. And I think that's fine too.

00:03:35.000 | So we have universal ideas, individualistic, however, applications of those ideas to your working life.

00:03:43.000 | [Music]

How Does the Working Genius Model Apply to Deep Work?

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