I'm off the deep (work) end, watch as I dive in

If you’re reading this in your email inbox, you’re doing shallow work...I know, shots fired!

Let me explain. See, email, messaging, and digital networking, albeit important, is low-impact work. It has to be done but it’s work that doesn’t move mountains.

What does? Deep work.

Deep work is the high-impact and high-leverage activities that let you complete difficult projects and accomplish ambitious goals. Like launching a new product or writing an awesome newsletter (wink, wink). It was coined by New York Times best-selling author, Cal Newport. He described it as

A professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

While the idea took off, the tools to support the immense focus and concentration required did not.

So this week in Digital Opsessions, my teammate, Daniel Hull, wrote about a delightful tool called Centered that we, at Optemization, use to get that deep work done.

We’ve spent 479.13 hours in Centered, and here’s why. (Not a sponsored post)

The All-in-One Tool for Deep Work

Workflows for doing deep work are clunky and fragmented: one tool for music, another tool for calendar-blocking, and another tool for task management.

The result? An annoying workflow that sucks.

Enter Centered — a suite of flow-centric tools under one platform. An “operating system” for getting into flow day in and day out.

In this article, I'll break down 6 ways the app helps me get into flow:

1. Consolidation of apps in interface

2. Binaural Beats

3. Virtual Productivity Coach

4. Auto Do Not Disturb Mode

5. Time Blocking

6. Virtual Co-Working

Dive in

Before Centered

After Centered

Binaural Beats

When I started with Deep Work, I’d flip on long, non-lyrical instrumental music or cinematic soundtracks to flow. For me, these tracks worked better than songs. However, sometimes, they would unintentionally trigger distracting emotions — euphoria, sadness, and excitability that often come with dramatic tones. Or worse, lead me to procrastinate choosing that “perfect” Spotify study playlist.

By using the binaural audio channels in Centered I get access to hundreds of hours of perfectly balanced audio that doesn’t become repetitive or emotional.

I did use the popular Brain FM for a bit. It’s a pretty good solution for binaural beats. But, in comparison to Centered, it was just one part of a tool arsenal I used to duck tape together.

Centered offers five high-quality curated playlists:

• Ambient Atmosphere: a perfect balance of upbeat and cinematic (my personal favorite)
• Global Beats: energetic and inspiring
• Old School Centered: a variety of classic binaural sounds
• Himilayan Dream Rain: calming and peaceful
• Sonic Caffeine: dramatic and powerful

Alternatively, you can also connect your Spotify to Centered and stream whatever music you like!

Virtual Productivity Coach

By default, Centered comes with Noah, a virtual coach who is quietly observing your work. He’s like Siri but instead of telling you what’s zero divided by zero (the most popular Siri request), it will nudge you if you visit distracting websites or apps and get off track. You can, of course, customize what you believe to be distracting.?

This feature really needs to be experienced rather than explained - it’s highly effective and not annoying in a way you might initially expect. Noah will also tell you if your task timer is nearly up and when it’s time for a break as well as congratulate you when you finish a task.

In Centered Groups and customized rooms, Noah can be replaced. For example, Product Management expert Lenny Rachitsky runs a Centered Group called Lenny’s Crew where his voice replaces that of Noah.

The coaching aspect tackles two problems. The obvious first one is the urge to avoid difficult tasks by hopping over to sites like Medium or Product Hunt that I “feel” productive but actually aren’t. Secondly, the coach addressed our urge to communicate. All too often, we feel compelled to jump on Slack or Superhuman to fire off a quick message. An innocent act that actually destroys flow. Preventing this, keep you focused but also forced you to be more mindful about communication with your teammates, which is something we’ve been thinking about in our article about The Half-Life of Workplace Communication .

Here’s, by the way, how this helps our CEO, Tem:

I really like responding to people fast. Whether it’s an iMessage, Slack DM or a good ol’ email, I constantly feel the tug towards responding instantly and pursuing inbox zero. Sometimes I switch out from deep work to check if a sales lead has responded to my quote and that breaks my flow. Noah is there to remind me that this a no-no. People can wait for a response and maintaining concentration will enable me to complete the task at a faster and better.

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