Deep Work : Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World - Cal Newport
Deep Work : Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World
Deep Work And Why Is It Valuable
According to the author, deep work is any professional activity carried out in a distraction-free state, which allows an individual to use his cognitive capabilities to the maximum.On the other hand, the opposite of deep work is shallow work, it is a form of non-cognitive demanding tasks, often carried out while distracted. Shallow work does not add much value, and it's easy to replicate.
Deep work requires a distraction-free environment, a high level of concentration, and it ultimately improves your skills, which in turn leads to value addition, but it is difficult to replicate.
Shallow work is applied extensively for non-cognitive demanding tasks, it requires little focus; hence, it is carried out while distracted. This type of work can be easily replicated. Examples of such work include: responding to push notifications, checking emails every couple of minutes, and the distractions may range from notifications from News websites, Twitter, Facebook, and many more.
Unfortunately, the ability to perform deep work is decreasing in the world today, leading to an increase in its value. As a result, if you can cultivate this skill, you will thrive.
As skills and jobs are being lost to automation, a lot of people will lose out and will not survive. In the same vein, the group below will thrive and excel, they are:
• The highly skilled workers — those who are skilled at communicating and interacting with complex machines taking away many low- skilled positions.
• The superstars — these are people who know that being the best in a market is not enough. Yes, there is a premium for being the best, but when the market is flooded with performers, customers will only go for the best of the best, no matter how small the competitive advantage they have over others.• The owners — individuals with huge capitals to invest in rising technologies that threaten to disrupt the way we live.
To become a winner in this new economy dominated by machines and automation, you need to imbibe these two core abilities:
• The ability to quickly learn hard things
• Ability to consistently produce at an elite level, in terms of speed and quality
• The ability to quickly learn new things
In this new economy, the machines driving the revolution are more complex to understand and master. These intelligent machines use command lines like SQL that are complicated. To be relevant, you must hone the ability to communicate with these machines. Technology is ever-changing, these means over time, you will have to learn and relearn a never-ending language quickly.
The second core component is to be able to perform deep work. If you do not have this skill, it will become difficult to learn complex languages and perform at an elite level.
“Two 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"
Deep Work Is Becoming Rare By The Day
The deep work hypothesis states that "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."
Deep work is scarce, why?
Well, shallow work is a lot easier, and it's being encouraged by business, even large conglomerates are not left out. Facebook, for instance, wants to launch the largest open floor plan in the world. Where more than three thousand employees will be working on movable furniture spread in an over ten-acre expanse of office space.
This encourages constant connectivity, fast response times, encouraging employees to choose the path of least resistance. This is a shallow work-induced environment, where the employees work in a shallow manner.
The principles of least resistance state that: "In a business environment, without clear feedback on the effect of various behaviors to the bottom line, employees will tend toward behaviors that are easiest at the moment".
“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive — no matter how skilled or talented you are.”
According to the author, most workers engage in what is called visible busyness or busyness as a proxy for productivity. Because many do not know what it means and how to become valuable at work, they indulge in several industrial indicators of productivity — doing things in a visible manner.
It is hard to engage in Deep work, while in the absence of clear work goals, most workers arm themselves with self-preserving shallow work
Deep work is valuable because it helps to maximize the amount of productivity you can obtain from a certain period. It entails single-tasking, no distractions in a state of intense focus for a while. This is how these can help you maximize productivity.
Studies have found that multitasking makes people less productive and that focusing on a single task at a time maximizes productive output. When there is no distraction, you will get more things done in less time. It translates to the more focused you are, the better your productivity. And working for a while in this undistracted state has to do with attention residue. This will be discussed in the next chapter.
Now that you have read the importance of deep work, the dearth of this reality portends bad news for businesses today; they will miss out on a concrete way to optimize production. On the other hand, this is good news for you as an individual, the dearth of deep work uncovers a great personal advantage.
If this trend continues, deep work will keep increasing in value; therefore, you can use the information in this book to develop your ability to perform deep work and reap bountiful rewards.
What Is Attendance Residue?
When an individual switch from a task A to Task B, his 100% attention does not automatically switch to the new tasks, some remain stuck at the original task A. This is attention residue, and it is strongest if task A was unbounded, or low intensity in nature before making the switch, even if you complete task A before switching, part of your attention will still remain on task A for a while.
Working in a semi-distraction state is counterproductive. Although it might look seemingly harmless to cast an occasional glance at your inbox every 7 minutes or so, and in fact, some justify this action as being better than keeping the inbox opened on the screen all the time.
But according to the author, this is not an improvement, as you switch to your inbox, you create a new target for your attention, and by seeing a task B you cannot accomplish at the moment, you will be switching back to task A, with task B left unfinished.
Attention residue makes working deep for an extended period boost productivity. The principle of attention residue goes thus, every time you switch from a task A to B, a residue of your attention remains in task A. This makes it difficult to focus on a high-level intensity needed to work efficiently on the new task. Therefore, you lose some amount of productivity over time if you switch your task.
In a study in which participants were asked to work on a set of puzzles, in one trial, they got interrupted and switched to a more tasking and engaging task, which was examining resumes and making hypothetical hiring decisions. In the second trial, the participants were allowed to start and finish the puzzle. In between the puzzle solving and hiring task, the researchers deployed a quick lexical decision game to ascertain the level of residue left from the first task.
In the lead scientist's words, they found that “People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task.”
So, if you want to perform at an optimum productivity level, work for long periods on a single task, with full concentration and zero distraction — work deeply!
The Rules Of Deep Work
Now that you know how valuable deep work is for productivity, you will have realized that knowledge is not the hard part, rather it is doing. Because humans are naturally attracted to distractions, and we suck at multitasking. The following rules will teach you how to incorporate deep work in your life. The author came up with the following rules:
• Work Deeply
• Embrace Boredom
• Quit Social Media
• Drain the Shallows
Rule 1
Work deeply — due to the amount of efforts working deep requires, many do not want to engage in it. If you factor in the culture of the environment we live in, it becomes even more difficult to deploy. Also, humans have finite willpower, as it gets depleted, we tend to favor shallow work. To implement deep work into your life, you need to create rituals and routines — this way, deep work becomes easier and second nature to you.
Rule 2
Embrace Boredom — intense concentration is a skill that must be cultivated. Like the way an athlete taking optimal care of his body outside the training sessions, in a similar vein, you need to hone your concentration skill outside of your deep work sessions. If you give in to distractions every day of your life at the slightest sign of boredom, it will become challenging to cultivate the intense concentration needed for deep work.
Also, you will need to train and retrain your brain for on-demand distraction. This will lead to a vicious cycle of being distracted over and over again, even when you intentionally want to work deeply.
To prevent this, embrace boredom! Stop yourself from checking your phone notifications everyone there is a beep. Train your ability to resist distractions.
“To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
Rule 3
Quit Social Media — social media are prime examples of shallow living. As the author points out, it offers nothing beneficial in return for all the time we give it. It will be a barrier to working deep if you feel the urge to check on your social media account every few minutes. Due to the addictive tendencies, deep living and social media do not go well together.
Rule 4
Drain the Shallows — “The Shallows,” a name giving to a book which depicts the adverse effects of the internet on our mental life. Examples of shallow work from the previous chapters include: attending to meetings, making phone calls, answering emails, and many other activities of low value. If you really want to work deep, you need to drain the Shallows. Create time for deep work, and spend little time doing shallow work.
How To Use Routines To Reutilize Deep Work
It is challenging to engage in deep work in a world that encourages shallow work. To do this, you need to create rituals and routines designed to reduce the amount of willpower exerted when trying to transition into a block of unbroken concentration.
Four broad approaches can help you carve time for deep work. Do not rely on shortcuts, they are less effective because they rely on a high amount of willpower, and are therefore not sustainable.
Choose any of the following approaches, or mix two or more to fit your lifestyle if necessary.
Monastic Philosophy
This is the cutting off of oneself from distractions completely, similar to monks in a monastery.Bimodal Philosophy
This approach alternates between living a normal engaged life and a monastic approach. The author, for instance, alternated between a normal therapy practice and social life while he was in Zurich, and a monastic mode in his retreat house, where he writes.Rhythmic Philosophy
This philosophy involves setting a fixed time for deep work every day, this may be between 5-7 a.m. or a set time during the week. It may be Tuesdays and Thursdays.Journalistic Philosophy
This is fitting deep work into your schedule anytime you can. This is similar to a journalist who is ready to write a piece on deadline when the need arises.These are the four broad philosophies, choose one or combinations that work for you. The goal here is to deploy deep work into your life.
The Value Of Systematic Idleness
And these are the reason why!
• Downtime aids insights — some decisions are better left to your unconscious minds to untangle. Therefore, if you occupy your mind with these leisure activities, you will be in a better state to make better decisions after reaching more insight.
• Downtime is needed to recharge your energy — during deep work, you use up a form of energy called directed attention. It is a limited resource, to recharge, you need to take a break.
• Downtime usually replaces work that is not very important — the capacity to burst into deep work in any given day is finite — most cases, it is only for a couple of hours. Once you have exhausted these hours, any task that comes after is less productive and thus less important.
Please note, downtime is not the same as shallow work, and it does not also mean activities which have some part of your attention. It means true leisure, taking a stroll, a casual conversation with a friend, playing a game with your kid, listening to music, and many more.
“Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.”
So, how do you incorporate downtime into a daily routine? The author recommends a shut-down ritual. At the end of the day, completely shut off work issues until the next morning. Do not check your emails after dinner, no planning for the next job, and no mental replays of conversations. As much as you can, shut down thinking completely.
The author, for instance, rarely work on weekends, and ends his workdays by 5:30 p.m. despite that, he has written many best-selling books and publishes several scientific papers yearly. He even won two competitive grants.
Productivity is not about committing more hours into work; instead, it is making the most of the hours worked and getting optimal recovery from the hours you do not work.
Conclusion
Truth is deep work is a pain in the ass.
You have to fight distractions continually, concentrate by shutting down distractions, staying away from social media, spend less time on the internet, plan your work days, even the leisure periods in advance, and many more.
A deep life is not for everyone, it is too much work for many people, they are more comfortable with artificial busyness. However, if you want optimal productivity, deploy your mind to the maximum, and get things done effectively, there is no better way to pursue deep work, and live a deep life.
Try this:
When next you need to get into a deep mode, shut down your social media notifications, don't switch from a Task A unfinished to a Task B. There will be an attention residue — Working in a semi-distraction state is counterproductive. Spend less time on the internet, exert maximum productivity from the hour's work, and maximum recovery from your downtime. With this, you will find it easier to switch into deep work when required.
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