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The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
In the early days of the 
Seinfeld
show, Jerry Seinfeld remained a working comic with

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a busy tour schedule. It was during this period that a writer and comic named Brad
Isaac, who was working open mic nights at the time, ran into Seinfeld at a club waiting
to go on stage. As Isaac later explained in a now classic Lifehacker article: “I saw my
chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me
was something that would benefit me for a lifetime.”
Seinfeld began his advice to Isaac with some common sense, noting “the way to be
a better comic was to create better jokes,” and then explaining that the way to create
better jokes was to write every day. Seinfeld continued by describing a specific
technique he used to help maintain this discipline. He keeps a calendar on his wall.
Every day that he writes jokes he crosses out the date on the calendar with a big red 
X
.
“After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld said. “Just keep at it and the chain
will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a
few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
This 
chain method
(as some now call it) soon became a hit among writers and
fitness enthusiasts—communities that thrive on the ability to do hard things
consistently. For our purposes, it provides a specific example of a general approach to
integrating depth into your life: the 
rhythmic philosophy
. This philosophy argues that
the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a
simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a 
rhythm
for this work
that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to
go deep. The chain method is a good example of the rhythmic philosophy of deep work
scheduling because it combines a simple scheduling heuristic (do the work every day),
with an easy way to remind yourself to do the work: the big red 
X
s on the calendar.
Another common way to implement the rhythmic philosophy is to replace the visual
aid of the chain method with a set starting time that you use every day for deep work.
In much the same way that maintaining visual indicators of your work progress can
reduce the barrier to entry for going deep, eliminating even the simplest scheduling
decisions, such as when during the day to do the work, also reduces this barrier.
Consider the example of Brian Chappell, the busy doctoral candidate I introduced
in the opening to this strategy. Chappell adopted the rhythmic philosophy of deep work
scheduling out of necessity. Around the time that he was ramping up his dissertation
writing he was offered a full-time job at a center on the campus where he was a
student. Professionally, this was a good opportunity and Chappell was happy to accept
it. But academically, a full-time job, especially when coupled with the recent arrival
of Chappell’s first child, made it difficult to find the depth needed to write thesis
chapters.

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Chappell began by attempting a vague commitment to deep work. He made a rule
that deep work needed to happen in ninety-minute chunks (recognizing correctly that it
takes time to ease into a state of concentration) and he decided he would try to
schedule these chunks in an ad hoc manner whenever appropriate openings in his
schedule arose. Not surprisingly, this strategy didn’t yield much productivity. In a
dissertation boot camp Chappell had attended the year before, he’d managed to
produce a full thesis chapter in a single week of rigorous deep work. After he
accepted his full-time job, he managed to produce only a single additional chapter in