In his book “Deep Work”, Cal Newport gives a name to the productive state of “flow” most of us like to attain at work but which we can rarely maintain for more than a couple minutes when the next emergency interrupts our train of thought.
Newport defines “Deep Work” as:
“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.”
Source: LMI.ie/
The book is all about
how to create an environment in which Deep Work is possible and how to reduce
the time spent on “Shallow Work”:
“Shallow Work: Non
cognitively 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 book is structured
in two parts. The first part motivates Deep Work in stating that Deep Work is
valuable, rare and meaningful. The second part describes four rules that help
to facilitate Deep Work.
Key Takeaways
1. Multi-Tasking Does Not
Make You More Productive
Contrary to what you
might think and have probably been led to believe, multi-tasking in order to
get more done actually makes you less productive. This is because when you
switch from task 1 to task 2, whilst your body might be able to switch
seamlessly, your brain is still focused on the first task you were doing. You
might think of multi-tasking as cooking dinner whilst helping the kids with
their homework, but it also comes in the form of checking your email and
responding to the pings on your phone when writing that report.
2. Four Ways of Getting
Deep Work Done
- The Monastic approach – Eliminating all sources of distraction; working in isolation.
- The Biomodal approach – Setting clearly defined work time boundaries i.e. the 9-5.
- The Rhythmic approach – Getting into the habit of doing deep work for 60 or 90mins.
- The Journalistic approach – Using unexpected free time in your day for deep work.
3. Technology has changed
our lives so much in recent years, making it much easier to get certain things
done but also bringing many more distractions. There's a way to rewire your
brain so that it can focus and that's through productive meditation. it means
making use of 'unbusy times' when your phone is not in your hand to problem
solve without distraction – This could be when you're commuting to work,
walking the dog, or taking a shower.
4. The Work / Life Balance
Must Be Scheduled
The solution to a happy
and healthy work/life balance is to schedule everything in using 30 or 60
minute blocks, not just for work and the chores at home but for your hobbies
and social life too. This makes you more mindful of how you spend your time so
that you don't waste 5 nights a week watching mindless TV, checking work emails
at home, or losing time by scrolling through social media posts on your phone
when you could be reading a book, working on a hobby, or having a proper
conversation with friends and family without other things going on around you.
Source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrNuM_1VYAA2HAw.jpg
My say
It is a great original
work and an absolutely first new topic in detail. The crux of the book is it
gives numerous new ideas on how not to waste time in useless work and how to
dig deep in one selected field to obtain mastery. It is a must read for all. I want
to point out what’s good and not-so-good in this book.
The Good
Cal highlights actionable ways to 1) increase concentration and focus and 2) produce more work output. He specifically delineates between "shallow" low priority work and "deep" high-priority, high-payoff work and ways to identify which types of work fall into which category.
Cal anticipates more of the (valid) objections and nuances to his thesis than I've seen him do previously. I thought his discussions on professions like CEO's that might not be deep-work appropriate, different ways to think about how social media improves your life, and going off-schedule to pursue an insight made the book much better-rounded and connected to life.
The Not-So-Good
I think that deep work
is a very large umbrella term that could be broken down. For example, the way
in which brainstorming or writing an academic paper stretches your brain is
very different from the way in which editing a paper (p. 228) stretches your
brain. Cal identifies all of these as deep work, but more thought on how you
attack very different types of deep work would be helpful.
Thumbnail Credits: FlowYourRoll.com
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