- Your mind can only hold 4 things at once
- Think about your mind like an older computer with limited RAM
- Boil things down to their essence
- Practice periods of Deep Work
In 2001, Nelson Cowan at the University of Missouri-Columbia decided to poke around in the human brain and figure out how many things we (humans) can juggle at once. Turns out, the magic number is four. Four things. That’s it. And even then, it depends on what those four things are. Four numbers? Easy. Four long, convoluted words? Not so much. Four full sentences? Forget about it. Your brain’s already tapping out.
I’m sure this doesn’t apply to you, right? You’re a multitasking wizard. You’ve got your proposal open in one tab, six different Teams chats blowing up in another, and somehow you’re still managing to fantasize about your boss taking a long walk off a short pier. You’re fine. Totally fine.
Except, here’s the thing: your brain’s prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for short-term memory—has limits. Hard limits. It is not a machine, not a supercomputer; it’s more like a sticky note with a finite amount of space. And the field of relational complexity (yes, that’s a real thing) tells us that the fewer variables you’re juggling, the better your decisions will be. The less you carry, the fewer mistakes you make.
Picture this: you’re working on a computer that’s essentially held together by duct tape and hope. It’s running on limited RAM (RAM is the part of a computer that holds short term memory). You’re trying to create a fancy document with four high-res photos. Every time you move them around, the computer freezes like it’s contemplating the meaning of life. Here’s the trick: instead of wresting with the high-res photos right away, you use low-res placeholders first. Problem? Solved. You get everything you want, then drop in the good stuff.
This isn’t just some nerdy design hack—it’s a metaphor for how your brain works. Your brain is that computer. It can only handle so much at once before it starts glitching. And just like those designers, you need to “rough out” your ideas before you dive into the details. Screenwriters do this with storyboards—simple sketches that map out the story. They don’t start by writing the whole script. They start with the big picture, the core elements, and then build from there. Why? Because it’s easier to move a cartoon sketch around than to rewrite an entire scene.
Here’s the kicker: simplifying isn’t just a nice-to-have skill—it’s a survival tactic. Successful people do this all the time. They take complex problems and strip them down to their bare essentials. They don’t get lost in the weeds. Take Hollywood, for example. The best movie pitches are one sentence long. Alien was famously pitched as “Jaws in space.” That’s it. Three words, and everyone gets it.
Simple is good. Simplest is best. When you boil things down to their essence, you free up mental space to actually think. You can play with ideas, rearrange them, and see the bigger picture. But when you overcomplicate things, you’re just wasting energy. You’re that guy trying to build a spreadsheet line by line before he even knows what he’s trying to accomplish. Don’t be that guy.
So, here’s the lesson: your brain is a crappy computer. Treat it like one. Start with the low-res version of your idea. Get the big picture right. Then, and only then, dive into the details. Because if you don’t, you’re just going to freeze up, waste time, and probably piss yourself off. And nobody wants that.
Deep Work to Free Up the Brain
In his disruptive best seller, Deep Work, Cal Newport has a very compelling answer to these distractions. He says we need deep work, periods of focus, undisturbed and unbroken. You must carve out time in your day, time when you are unreachable, when you are alone with the task at hand. You grind. You push. You do not stop. It is not easy, but it is necessary. The world is loud, but in these moments, you must be silent.
Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that will push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skills, and are hard to replicate.
You know how everyone’s always yapping about “deep work” and “focus” like it’s some kind of mystical superpower? Well, it turns out there’s actual science behind it—neuroscience, to be exact. And it’s not just some fluffy self-help nonsense. It’s about how your brain literally rewires itself when you stop scrolling Instagram and actually focus on something for more than five minutes. If you want to learn how to improve focus at work, you have to learn about deep work.
When you dive into deep, undistracted work, your brain starts building this stuff called myelin. Myelin is like the brain’s version of high-speed internet. It’s a white, fatty tissue that wraps around your neurons, making them fire faster and cleaner. Think of it as upgrading your brain from dial-up to fiber-optic. The more you focus on a specific task, the more myelin you build in that area of your brain. And the more myelin you have, the better you get at that task.
Now, let’s talk about Woz—Steve Wozniak, the guy who co-founded Apple. When he was working on the Atari project, he wasn’t juggling a million distractions. He wasn’t checking Slack every five minutes or sitting in pointless meetings. He was locked in, fully immersed in his work. And that’s how he pulled off the kind of breakthroughs that changed the world. Deep work isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the secret sauce for creating something extraordinary.
But here’s the thing: it’s not just about you. If you’re leading a team, it’s your job to create an environment where people can actually focus. In a world where distractions are shoved in our faces 24/7, giving your team the space to do deep work is like giving them a superpower. It’s about protecting their time, their attention, and their ability to get stuff done without being interrupted every five seconds.
Deep work matters. It’s not just some trendy buzzword. It’s how you build a better brain, create something meaningful, and maybe even change the world. But it’s also fragile. Distractions will always be there, waiting to pull you away. Your job—whether you’re working solo or leading a team—is to fight for that focus. Because in the end, that’s where the magic happens.
When you think you are doing well by multi-tasking, you are actually doing something called “task shifting.” You are shifting your attention back and forth, like a monkey bouncing around on branches. This is precisely why people are working harder, yet accomplishing so little. You are bouncing between instant messages, emails, and trying to accomplish important tasks at the same time. In Deep Work, Newport refers to these types of tasks as “shallow work.”
You are a normal human being who is being overloaded with trivial items that prevent the larger, more important, items from being done. The solution to this is being able to stay in communication (with a specific communication plan) without being distracted by the day-to-day. You’re not a good communicator if you’re “always available” but rarely meet the deadlines you set, or rush through important items because you were interrupted while working on something else.
Implementing Deep Work in a Work Week
Deep Work and Focused Work are two synonyms that mean the same thing. You are sitting (or standing) working on nothing but a single task. You have shut off your phone, your IMs, and you aren’t surfing the web. It’s you and the task at hand. You are focused on a single task.
Experts believe that beginners can only do about one hour of Deep Work a day, and are able to gradually move up to four hours per day. You will want to keep this in mind as you start to implement Deep Work, starting small and gradually moving up to having half your working day spent on deep work.
When leading a team, it is almost more important for you to protect the timeboxes for your team members and subordinates. Allow them to set strict office hours and periods of the one-to-four hours to do nothing but distraction-free meaningful work. This one-to-four protected hours a day still leaves half the day for answering emails, phone calls, and other normal distractions.
Jason Fried, the CEO of tech company Basecamp, is notorious for cutting his team down to a thirty-two-hour work week. Through the months of May through September, a strict thirty-two-hour work week is enforced at his company and employees only have four days to work. Fried talks a lot in his books, blogs, and interviews that the first things to go are all of the “useless” time wasters.
Going hand in hand with the concept of Parkinson’s Law—that work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion—a shorter work week means you are less likely to allow distractions to come in and disrupt your time. When you are in the mindset that you will be working early and late, it gives you more mental freedom to allow little distractions to interrupt the time you should be working during the day.