Dr. Cal Newport

Distraction, important, well, you have to quiet the neural circuitry so you can isolate the circuit that's actually relevant to the thing that you're doing, right?

You're not gonna get better at something if you have noisy circuitry, and that requires a really intense concentration.

So it was one of the big advantages of deep work

was if you're used to that cognitive state, you're gonna learn things faster.

And I think it was all Anders to understand why.

So if you're not distracted, I'm really focusing hard on what I'm doing, trying to learn this new thing, you're giving the right mental conditions, but it's not a flow state.

And I always used to say, okay, when your deep work is not flow,

Because of this, like a lot of deep work is you're trying to do something that is beyond your comfort zone and that's going to be difficult.

That's a state of deliberate practice.

And there's a famous paper about this where Anders actually explicitly says deliberate practice and flow are very different.

And I wrote an essay years ago called The Father of Deliberate Practice Disowns Flow.

And again, people are really flow partisans out there.

It's interesting.

I think people just like the idea.

Because it feels good.

But I mean flow is the feeling of performance is the way I think about it.

Like it's really hard to train for certain sports.

But then when you're actually performing, you're in the game, you can fall in the flow, right?

Because then everything is – and it's really hard to train guitar.

But like when you're performing in front of a big crowd, you probably – maybe you fall in the flow.