Monk Download
Liv
Monks are united in their ability to magically harness the energy that flows in their bodies. Whether channeled as a striking display of combat prowess or a subtler focus of defensive ability and speed, this energy infuses all that a monk does.
At 1st level, your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use unarmed strikes and monk weapons, which are shortswords and any simple melee weapons that don't have the two-handed or heavy property.
Certain monasteries use specialized forms of the monk weapons. For example, you might use a club that is two lengths of wood connected by a short chain (called a nunchaku) or a sickle with a shorter, straighter blade (called a kama). Whatever name you use for a monk weapon, you can use the game statistics provided for the weapon on the Weapons page.
Starting at 2nd level, your training allows you to harness the mystic energy of ki. Your access to this energy is represented by a number of ki points. Your monk level determines the number of points you have, as shown in the Ki Points column of the Monk table.
You can spend these points to fuel various ki features. You start knowing three such features: Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind. You learn more ki features as you gain levels in this class.
When you spend a ki point, it is unavailable until you finish a short or long rest, at the end of which you draw all of your expended ki back into yourself. You must spend at least 30 minutes of the rest meditating to regain your ki points.
Also at 2nd level, you train yourself to use a variety of weapons as monk weapons, not just simple melee weapons and shortswords. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can touch one weapon, focus your ki on it, and then count that weapon as a monk weapon until you use this feature again.
Starting at 3rd level, you can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack. When you do so, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + your monk level.
If you reduce the damage to 0, you can catch the missile if it is small enough for you to hold in one hand and you have at least one hand free. If you catch a missile in this way, you can spend 1 ki point to make a ranged attack with a range of 20/60 using the weapon or piece of ammunition you just caught, as part of the same reaction. You make this attack with proficiency, regardless of your weapon proficiencies, and the missile counts as a monk weapon for the attack.
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Starting at 5th level, you can interfere with the flow of ki in an opponent's body. When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.
At 7th level, your instinctive agility lets you dodge out of the way of certain area effects, such as a blue dragon's lightning breath or a fireball spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.
At 15th level, your ki sustains you so that you suffer none of the frailty of old age, and you can't be aged magically. You can still die of old age, however. In addition, you no longer need food or water.
In my role as someone who writes about productivity, I enjoy the opportunity to discuss this topic with a variety of different people. Recently, something caught my attention about these conversations.
The execution of the monk mode morning is straightforward. Between when you wake up and noon: no meetings, no calls, no texts, no email, no Slack, no Internet. You instead work deeply on something (or some things) that matter.
Not everyone is in a position to execute the monk mode morning (indeed, most of the people who mentioned this to me in recent months run their own companies). But the growing popularity of this bold hack is yet another indication that my long predicted shift away from the cult of connectivity, and toward depth, is perhaps beginning to pick up speed.
Thanks for the great post Cal. Based on what I have read about learning and the imagination, I also recommend the night before briefly reviewing your notes so there can be some incubation time for ideas to take hold overnight. Then, maybe some mid day exercise to stimulate thought and solidify learning.
So I would say to first figure out what are your working hours on a weekly basis (when the kids are in school, day care, sleeping or your partner or someone else can take care of them) and then schedule your deep work sessions in these time slots without distraction. Outside these time slots, let your attention fully go to your kids and family.
I read deep work this past year, and worked hard to implement a number of the strategies you outline in this blog and in your book. Very happy (and thankful) to report that my law school grades improved when really committing to them. I really like this MMM idea and might add it to the mix.
I always enjoy reading your posts and asking myself how I could apply some of these principals as a middle school orchestra teacher. It definitely translates to doing things like score study, lesson planning, activity planning, problem solving, etc.. during my 30-40 minutes between classes in the morning and making copies, organizing the office or the classroom, reshelving music, etc.. in my afternoon planning period when my brain is toast. I like the idea of not touching email until the afternoon. It is so easy as a teacher to feel like I must reply to those morning emails to be considerate when I could really address those in a short period after school and will still have replied to the parent or colleague within 24hrs.
If I could choose, I would have preferred it the other way (a team in US ? to have the mornings without distraction.. but one learns to live with it: I tend to take a walk after the morning frenzy and lunch to return more relaxed for the after noon and go into focus mode.
This site is the online home for the computer science professor and bestselling author Cal Newport. Here you can learn more about Cal and both his general-audience and academic writing. You can also browse and subscribe to his long-running weekly essay series. For more on Cal's podcast, videos, and online courses, please visit his media portal, TheDeepLife.com
In this episode, I talk to two women who provide wise counsel for those of us who have struggled with belonging and faith (and still do on occasion). Sue Monk Kidd and Jen Hatmaker are dissident daughters, brave leaders, and the very best companions for a contemplative journey.
Jen Hatmaker is the author of 12 books, including the New York Times best-selling Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life, For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards, and 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. Jen is also the creator and happy host of the award-winning For the Love! Podcast with Jen Hatmaker, the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and a sought-after speaker who tours the country every year speaking to women. She and her husband, Brandon, founded the Legacy Collective and also starred in the popular series My Big Family Renovation and Your Big Family Renovation on HGTV. Jen is a mom to five and a zealous resident of Austin, Texas, where she and her family are helping keep Austin weird.
Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide To Being Glorious You Jen Hatmaker provides readers with a detailed roadmap to reconciling their inner convictions and outer presentations. Stuck in people-pleasing or fear, many women hide and pretend, then end up sidelined in their own lives. But what they want is to be brave, to claim every gift, dream, quirk, and emotion inside, to stop performing and start living. Throughout the book, Jen dives into tough questions and provides thoroughly researched psychological tools as she explores the ripple effects of patriarchy, conflicting messages women receive, body image, loneliness and why asking for help is so hard.
SMK: Oh yes. Of course it was. [chuckle] Because it was my first novel. I remember telling my mother that I just wanted to write a book that would be respectable, and she would like to read, and it would have a nice little readership. I never in my life imagined it would have that many readers in the end.
BB: I have the stats somewhere in here, hold on, let me look. Spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list, sold more than 6 million copies, which is completely rarefied air. I mean, the rarest of rarefied air, and turned into award-winning major motion picture and a musical, and has been translated into 36 languages. What is it about that book that speaks to us so beautifully?
SMK: Ann was right out of college, and I was turning 50, and we went off on this journey together to Greece, and it turned into this extraordinary experience of re-finding one another in our lives, in new ways.
BB: Okay, we could get in a whole podcast about that, how people think deep and contemplative and spiritual and funny are mutually exclusive. When I think funny is a prerequisite for contemplative and spiritual. Okay, number four, the last TV show that you binged and loved.
JH: And so, when those things started to rub for me, when I started to realize that I was one Jen in this room, this big public room that everybody can see. And I knew about that room and I knew the language of that room, but I was a different Jen over here in this little private room, that was the only safe room I had. It was very small. Nobody can see it; nobody knew that I was visiting it. But when I started to realize that those two things were disintegrating, I was terrified, I felt physically sick, I stopped sleeping.
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