conclude a task before you’ve completed everything you know you need to do

Uninterrupted work on specific tasks fosters progress on your projects. It is an essential component of almost any kind of intellectual project. When working with a focus on a specific task, knowing when to stop is just as valuable as starting. Those are the two most challenging components of deep work: overcoming the friction of starting on the task and practicing the discipline of stopping when it is most appropriate.

The first component (overcoming the friction of starting) can be overcome via time-blocking, clearly defining your tasks to the most actionable level, and accepting your finitude to free up the mind and focus. Sometimes, also the time pressure of a deadline helps get the mind and body started on working on a task. Work expands to fill out the time allocated to it, as Parkinson’s law states.

The second component (knowing when to stop and actually stop) is an ability you can develop through practice. This is a common advice a writer may get: stop your writing session at a point when you know where to pick back up. You don’t write for 2 hours everything that’s in your mind until you run out of content for the day. You write for 2 hours (or a bit less) until you arrive at a point where you know how the story continues. Then you note down how the story continues so you do not forget the next time you pick up the “pen”.

This is valid practice for knowledge work too, I would argue. If a task takes a few hours and you intend to complete it in one sitting, then great. But if a task takes multiple focused sessions to complete, it is in your absolute best interest to stop when you still know what to do next. Note down what to do next, and then stop the current session. In this way, the next time you start working on that task, you know exactly where from to pick back up. This removes the friction of starting and the heaviness of context switching significantly. As a by-product, it can save up time.