I stand by the idea proposed by Cal Newport that the best way to do great work is to do "Deep Work"—large (but not all day) amounts of no-distraction, in-the-zone work. Harder to do than ever, but when I can do it I'm amazed.
Regular work means emails, slack, having coffee break with colleagues, over-hearing John's joke, overhearing what happened in metro to Mark this morning, suggesting where to go for lunch today and of course preparing for a meeting and going to the meeting etc.
"Deep work" or "flow" means there's just you and the thing you're doing, nothing else.
How about trying to actually do it? I agree self-help books are mostly fluff that can be said in half the length, but I do think "Deep Work" is a useful technique.
One problem I did have with the book was that Deep Work might not be useful for someone whose work is largely mechanical or mundane, though in that case I'd apply Deep Work to learn skills to into more interesting jobs if one wishes.
Maybe it doesn't teach anything new, but it does act as a refresher and makes you go back to Deep Work. I had almost completely forgotten about it and my work schedule was full of tab switching and short breaks. After going through the book, I started using Toggl and minding my time.
