Deep Work

Focus Club: Book Review

by Cal Newport

The whole hypothesis behind Deep Work is this:

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.

In his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal writes that people will hit a performance plateau beyond which they fail to get any better. (Which, by the way, is exactly what last month’s book, The Dip, is all about.)

Deep Work continues this theme. Cal writes: “To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing — a task that requires depth.” (pg. 13)

What Deep Work is all about is how to push through that plateau; how to move toward mastery; how to stay focused; and why it all matters. This book gives practical advice and insight about what to do when you do show up to do the work and how to turn it into a part of your lifestyle.

Deep Work Unto Your Best Work

The common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to your performance. […]
To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you.

I’ve spoken to many people who are struggling with the balance of growing their business or side project. In fact, this is a challenge that I am also facing.

If you feel that you’ve reached a ceiling in your ability to create quality work on a consistent basis, it’s probably because in your work life there is an undercurrent of working in a distracted state. Are you often in a semi-focused state at best? If so, then it’s no wonder that it can feel impossible to gain traction on business growth while also maintaining your ability to do high-quality creative work.

There are two moves for people in this situation…

For one, they no doubt need to automate, eliminate, and delegate additional tasks and responsibilities off their plate. Freeing them up to focus more on things that only they can do.

Secondly, they need more time spent on intentional practice and focused, deep work. As Cal writes, “Deep work helps you produce at an elite level.”

Clarity Cures Busywork

You need clarity about what matters if you want to do deep work on a regular basis over the long run.

Something I’ve written about before is how I always plan my single, most-important task, ahead of time. At the end of each day, I write down the one thing I’m going to focus on tomorrow that is most important.

Then, on the following day when I sit down to do the work, I have only one focus: accomplish the previously-defined task.

However, without that foreknowledge of defining ahead of time what is most important, then I would have a dual-focus when it came time to do my focused work. First, I would have to think about what to do, and then I would have to begin doing the actual work.

This lack of clarity about knowing what it is that is important to do is why so many people turn to email and other inboxes in order to keep “busy”. They don’t know what else to do. And thus they end up doing shallow busywork which helps them to feel productive.

Cal warns against using busyness as a proxy for productivity. He writes:

In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

On choosing to embrace boredom:

The ability to concentrate intently is a skill that must be trained. […] Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.

Also: My Interview with Cal Newport

When Deep Work first came out, I had the honor of interviewing Cal on my podcast. You can listen to the episode here, or, if you prefer to read, I’ve written out all the key takeaways, etc.

Book Highlights

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. (pg. 3)
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. (pg. 6)
To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing—a task that requires depth. (pg. 13)
The Deep Work Hypotheseis: 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. (pg. 14)
Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output. (pg. 16)
More generally, the lack of distraction in my life tones down that background hum of nervous mental energy that seems to increasingly pervade people’s daily lives. I’m comfortable being bored, and this can be a surprisingly rewarding skill—especially on a lazy D.C. summer night listening to a Nationals game slowly unfold on the radio. (pg. 17)

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy

The ability to quickly master hard things.
The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. (pg. 29)

If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive. (pg. 31)
This brings us to the question of what deliberate practice actually requires. Its core coponents are usually identified as follows: (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive. (pg. 35)
To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work. (pg. 37)

High-Quality Work Produced =

(Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus) (pg. 40)

The common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to your performance. (pg. 43)
To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. (pg. 44)
Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you. (pg. 44)
The Principle of Least Resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment. (pg. 58)
If e-mail were to move to the periphery of your workday, you’d be required to deploy a more thoughtful approach to figuring out what you should be working on and for how long. This type of planning is hard. (pg. 59)
Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not. (pg. 62)
Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner. (pg. 64)
…the visible busyness that surrounds shallow work becomes self-preserving, and that our culture has developed a belief that if a behavior relates to “the Internet,” then it’s good—regardless of its impact on our ability to produce valuable things. (pg. 70)
Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging. (pg. 84)
Any pursuit—be it physical or cognitive—that supports high levels of skill can also generate a sense of sacredness. (pg. 89)
…one of the main obstacles to going deep: the urge to turn your attention toward something more superficial. (pg. 98)
You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. (pg. 100)
You need your own philosophy for integrating deep work into your professional life… You must be careful to choose a philosophy that fits your specific circumstances,… (pg. 102)
Practitioners of the monastic philosophy tend to have a well-defined and highly valued professional goal that they’re pusuing, and the bulk of their professional success comes from doing this one thing exceptionally well. It’s this clarity that helps them eliminate the thicket of shallow concerns that tend to trip up those whose value proposition in the working world is more varied. (pg. 103-104)
Bimodal philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. (pg. 108)
Those who deploy the bimodal philosophy of deep work admire the productivity of the monastics but also respect the value they receive from the shallow behaviors in their working lives. (pg. 109)
…people will usually respect your right to become inaccessible if these periods are well defined and well advertised,… (pg. 110)
The rhythmic philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep. (pg. 111)
The journalist philosophy, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule. (pg. 115)
There’s no one correct deep work ritual—the right fit depends on both the person and the type of project pursued. (pg. 119)
The grand gesture: leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, couple perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work tast, you increase the perceived importance of the task. (pg. 122)
The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. (pg. 157)
Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. (pg. 157)
To suceed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. (pg. 165)
Productive Meditation: The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. (pg. 170)
To master the art of deep work, therefore, you must take back control of your time and attention from the many diversions that attempt to steal them. (pg. 182)
The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection: You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it. (pg. 186)
…tools are ultimately aids to the larger goals of one’s craft. (pg. 191)
The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts. (pg. 191)
It’s crucial, therefore, that you figure out in advance what you’re going to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin. Structured hobbies provide good fodder for these hours, as they generate specific actions with specific goals to fill your time. (pg. 213)
If you not only eliminate shallow work, but also replace this recovered time with more of the deep alternative, not only will the business continue to function: it can become more successful. (pg. 218)
Treat shallow work with suspicion becuase its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated. (pg. 221)
We spend much of our day on autopilot—not giing much thought to what we’re doing with our time. This is a problem. It’s difficult to prevent the trivial from creeping into every corner of your schedule if you don’t face, without flinching, your current balance between deep and shallow work, and then adopt the habit of pausing before action and asking, “What makes the most sense right now?” (pg. 222)
Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate. (pg. 228)
Ubiquitous e-mail access has become so ingrained in our professional habits that we’re beginning to lose the sense that we have any say in its role in our life. (pg. 242)

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