I just read Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport.
It’s a fascinating topic, and something close to my heart because deep work, craftsmanship and flow are things that I enjoy and try to bring to my work. I had heard so much about this book, but was somewhat disappointed by it. It had some interesting points about the value of deep work, had some practical tactics, but I felt that the book lacked a cohesion that I can’t quite explain. The points were kind of disparate, it feels like there’s quite a lot of filler content, even though the main points were useful. I wonder if it’s perhaps it’s just me fresh off reading Atomic Habits, so my expectations were skewed too high?
Sharing them here as reference for myself, and for anyone who might find it useful. This is not a book review, just raw notes lifted directly from the book, with some minor interpretations and categorisations of my own. This is part of my reading list for a new season.
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Deep Work, by Cal Newport
Deep work = Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
The ubiquity of deep work among influential individuals is important to emphasize because it stands in sharp contrast to the behaviour of most modern knowledge workers, who do shallow work.
Shallow work = Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
The Deep Work Hypothesis = The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
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Why do deep work at all?
Because it is valuable, rare and meaningful.
Deep work is valuable
2 core abilities for thriving in the new economy:
1. The ability to quickly master hard things.
2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.
Quickly mastering hard things is important because intelligent machines creating our new economy are complicated and hard to master (not consumer tools like iPads).
If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.
You must also transform your latent potential into tangible results that people value.
If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled ot talented you are.
The 2 core abilities depend on ability to perform deep work.
High quality work produced = (Time spent) x (Intensity of focus)
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Deep work is rare
We should not expect the bottom-line impact of depth-destroying behaviours (e.g. emails) to be easily detected. Metric black holes persist.
Principle of least resistance:
Without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviours on the bottom-line, we will tend towards behaviours that are easiest in the moment, i.e. shallow work.
Busyness as a proxy for productivity:
In absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back towards an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.
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Deep work is meaningful
“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy.” ~ Matthew Crawford
Craftsmen have clarity - they do work that’s simple to define but difficult to execute. But knowledge workers today have ambiguity - knowledge work that’s hard to define but simple to execute.
A skillful management of attention is the key to a good life, improving your world without changing anything concrete about it. “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.” - Winifred Gallagher
Deep work is meaningful because of flow - going deep is in itself rewarding. Depth and meaning are intertwined. “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile [i.e. flow] … Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have a built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate, and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shapes into something that can be enjoyed.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Rules for deep work
Rule #1: Work deeply
Approaches:
- monastic approach: prioritize deep work by eliminating or minimizing all other types of shallow work, e.g. no email address, use postal
- bimodal approach: Batching time on scale of weeks, months or years, dedicating clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else, e.g. 1 offsite day every month, or 3 months deep work out of 1 year
- rhythmic/“streak” approach: easiest way to consistently do deep work is to transform them into a simple regular habit, e.g. working same hours of deep work everyday within the same schedule of daily activities.
- journalistic approach: not for deep work novice. Rapidly switch mind from shallow to deep work at any time there’s free time.
Hacks:
- ritualize to help you go deep. “Great creative minds think like artists but work like accountants.” ~ David Brooks
- grand gestures. Sometimes to go deep, you must first go big. Gestures that commit so seriously to your deep goal at a level of mental priority that unlocks the needed mental resources, e.g. check in to a hotel room, buy long round-trip flights, to write.
- be lazy and have undistracted downtime. Create shutdown rituals to let it go for the day. Downtime aids insights by letting unconscious mind untangle complex problems. Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to do deep work, because your attention centers is a muscle that needs rest.
- deep work and deliberate practice overlaps. There’s a limited capacity for deep work/deliberate practice per day.
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Rule #2: Embrace boredom
- take breaks from being constantly distracted instead of breaks from focus.
- meditate productively, e.g. use a physical activity (jogging, driving) to focus on a single well-defined mental problem
- train your ability to concentrate, e.g. learn to memorize a deck of cards, playing a musical instrument
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Rule #3: Quit social media
- have Internet sabbaticals
- use social media when positive impact on success and happiness substantially outweighs negative impacts. Be intentional about social media use, instead of mindlessly entertained by it. Focus on the 20% of the features that bring 80% of the effect you want.
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Rule #4: Drain the shallows
- tame shallow work’s footprint in your schedule but reducing time for it, e.g. in 4 day work week or ending work by 5.30pm, core work still gets done, but shallow work gets squeezed out
- schedule every minute of your day, quantity the depth of every activity, and eliminate shallow work blocks, because we spend much on autopilot mindlessly
- be hard to reach, intentionally. Manage recipient expectations, by using sender filters, “I’ll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests…”
- do more work upfront by stating exactly what I want, to reduce back and forth
- don’t respond by default if the sender didn’t convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile. “Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.” ~ Tim Ferriss