To create something unambiguously valuable you have to stretch your cognitive capacity to the limit[1]. The Deep Work book is a manifesto for helping you achieve that.
Most people including myself used to think that it doing the just bare minimum repetitive work would set me just fine. Which stamps from the mindset of doing made minimum or as little as to pass my college semester and school exams.
If this was 20 years ago then I would have been right but in this new economy, you have to deliver that a non-trivial number of people find valuable.
Failing to do so new will punish you harshly and succeeding in providing value you will be rewarded handsomely.
The first step comes is knowing what is valuable.
In my personal case as a University student, I don't think passing the exam will provide any value when as compared to teaching myself to program was will help me a lot more.
For your case, apply the 80/20 rule. I love this because it specifies that not all, but only a few things will bring the majority of results. Helps in settling down in specializaiton[2].
The next step is draining the shallow.
Before reading this book I thought this constant context switching between different internet services of me being a modern internet user. Which actually was the product of non-thoughtfulness towards my internet habits.
While doing work, checking an email seems very innocent. But the context switching doing to your brain when you come back from checking the mail (and probably contains something that you can't act on or even though it was just the information) some attention has been left at that email. Do this multiple times throughout your working session from email to work then Facebook to work again then Instagram to work, the work you ended up producing is easily repeatable and shallow.
The best advice regarding this is do not use internet while working. I have seen that backdoor towards infinite stimulus always seems to succeed in indulging me into its time blackhole.
If you have to use the internet, then log out from all the Internet service that makes money from your attention. Personally only social media services that I use that could be considered that makes money from my attention are Gmail and YouTube,[3] which was the black hole of my time.
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Your current limit could be your current skill level. Which you can increase by delibrate practice.
Its a sign of maternity to be narrowing yourself towards a field or specialization. Transcendence from full of potential to actual realities.
Full disclosure (as per my marketing team) I have a YouTube channel.
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