Cal Newport & Scott Young – Top Performer

What Will the Course Teach? The course is divided into four phases, spread over eight weeks: Research (Weeks 1 & 2). In this first phase, we’re going to challenge you to rethink assumptions you have about how success works in your field. We’re going to guide you through techniques for contacting experts in your field, and teach you how to ask them the right questions so you can get to the heart of which skills matter and which you can ignore.

Project (Weeks 3 & 4). In the second phase, we’re going to go from having some insights into the types of skills that matter for your career, into designing a deliberate practice project that will improve them. We’ll discuss the many different types of projects you might consider, and then give you a step-by-step method for generating a watertight plan that you’ll be sure to follow through on.

Deep Work (Weeks 5 & 6). In the third phase, we’ll talk about deep work. This kind of work is quite different from the shallow, hurried way most people have learned to approach their work. We’ll teach you how to structure your habits and environment to foster deep work and how to avoid the busyness that seems to constantly threaten our ability to get important work done.

Mastery (Weeks 7 & 8). In the fourth and final phase, we’ll be talking about getting feedback and lifelong mastery. We will teach you how to get feedback on your project to drive the fastest improvement. We’ll also give you concrete steps so you can make the tools you learned in this course permanent habits instead of a one-time experience.

What is the Course Format?
In addition to the overall curriculum, Cal and I have also spent a lot of time designing the structure of each weeks’ content to make participating in this course as easy and effective as possible.

Each week of the course is divided into the following sections:
Main lesson. This video is at the top of each page. It contains the big idea for that week along with a broad summary of the goal we’d like you to work on for that module. These videos are short and to the point. Our hope is that even if you can’t watch every supplementary lesson or follow every community post, you should watch these.

Main homework exercise. Every week has a simple criterion for success we’ve prepared. That means you should know, immediately, whether or not you’ve done enough to move onto the next week. We’ve also added suggested and additional exercises that go beyond the bare minimum and give you ideas for how you can further your progress.

Supplementary lessons. In addition to the short main lessons, we have prepared a number of supplementary lessons for each week. These go into more depth and explore a specific nuance of that week’s lessons you may not have considered. These lessons are optional, so you can watch, read or listen to them when you’re struggling with a part of the course.

Although this content provides the base for the teachings of this course, remember that this is a course you’ll learn by doing not by reading, listening or watching. So use these lessons as motivators for action, which you can use in conjunction with the community to guide your efforts.

We’ve also installed checkpoints before weeks 3, 5 and 7. These checkpoints are designed to make sure you’ve done the minimum required homework before moving onto the next units. We are also using this as an opportunity to help keep track of your progress in the course and get feedback for future course enhancements.