January 22, 2021 | Book-Summaries

Deep Work – Cal Newport

I have never put a book summary or notes on my website before. I hope to do many more as my reading focus shifts from reading lots of books, to reading fewer books and retaining more information. This is an idea inspired by Alex and Book’s 25 X 250 Challenge

Deep Work by Cal Newport is a book that aims to help a class of people that Cal classifies as “Knowledge Workers” shift from doing “Shallow work” to “Deep Work”. This book is definitely for you if you’d like to learn how to create more time to do meaningful work. Or, if you want get rid of distractions in life.

Disclaimer: 90% of the text below is NOT my own thoughts ideas. They belong solely to Cal Newport

What is Deep Work?

Firstly, we need to define shallow work. Shallow work are tasks that are “logistical” in style. They don’t achieve much other than having to just be done. These efforts are easy to replicate and don’t create additional value to our world. Examples being: Replying to emails, browsing social media, meetings, phone calls, retrieving analytics reports and other reports. These things are rampant in the corporate business world.

Deep Work: The ability to knuckle down and perform work is becoming more rare, but at the same time more valuable. The ability to perform this type of work will allow those you master it, to thrive.

People such as John Doerr are successful because of their ability to focus on very little, very well. Their focus is razor sharp.

“In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access capital.”

  1. The High Skilled Workers
  2. The Superstars
  3. The Owners

How to become a winner in the new Economy

Cultivate the ability to quickly master hard things

The ability to produce at an elite level with both speed and quality.

Deep Work will help you quickly learn hard things

To learn fast requires intense concentration

“Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure.” – Ericson

Feedback loop of Deep Learning

  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.
The Science

Myelin – a fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner. This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated.

Myelin is a neurological foundation for why effective deliberate practice actually works.

If you’re comfortable going deep, you’ll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy.

Deep Work helps you produce at an Elite Level

Basic Equation: High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

Attention Residue: This occurs when you try to multitask.

Deep Work is Rare

We live in a society where everything is easy. We can order something and get it immediately. We can say “Hey google, what’s the weather tomorrow” and get an instant result. We can also take out our phone at any second to stave off boredom.

Busyness as a proxy for productivity:

Deep Work is:

Deep Work Is Meaningful

Deep work can generate as much satisfaction in an information economy as it so clearly does in a craft economy.

Neurologically:

Psychologically:

Philosophically:

The Rules of Deep Work

Rule #1: Work Deeply

3 Questions to ask yourself before doing deep work:

What about collaboration?

When working in a collaborative space keep this in mind:

When it comes to deep work, consider the use of collaboration when appropriate. Don’t abuse collaboration if it’s not needed. Execute like a business:

Create cadence accountability: A good way to do this is to implement a weekly review and on a weekly basis review if you are hitting your goals and ultimately driving the needle towards success.

Be Lazy

Have a distaste for frenetic work:

“I am not busy, I am the laziest ambitious person I know” – Tim Kreider

At the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning— no after dinner email check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shut down work thinking completely.

Reasons for downtime:

#1: Downtime Aids Insights

#2: Downtime Helps Recharge the energy needed to work deeply

#3: The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important.

Rule #2: Embrace Boredom

So we have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitaks all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted. they initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand… They’re pretty much mental wrecks. – Clifford Nass

We need to improve our ability to concentrate intensely and overcome our desire for distraction.

Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead, take breaks from focus.

Point #1: This strategy works even if your job requires lots of Internet use and/or prompt email replies.

Point #2: Regardless of how you schedule your Internet blocks, you must keep the time outside these blocks absolutely free from internet use.

Point #3: Scheduling Internet use at home as well as at work can further improve your concentration training.

Meditate Productively

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.

I’m not however, suggesting this practice for its productivity benefits (though they’re nice_. I’m instead interested in its ability to rapidly improve your ability to think deeply.

By forcing you to resist distraction and return your attention repeated to a well defined problem, it helps you develop your distraction resisting muscles.

Two Suggestions:

#1: Be wary of distractions and looping

#2: Structure deep thinking

Memorise a deck of cards

Your ability to concentrate is only as strong as your commitment to train it.

Rule #3: Quit Social Media

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.

Apply the law of the vital few to your internet habits

Step One: identify the main high level goals in your professional and personal life.

Step Two: List for each goal two or three of the most important activities to achieve these goals.

Example:

Professional Goal: To create well-written, narrative-driven stories that change the way people understand the world

Key Activities:

Quit Social Media

Quit social media for 30 days then ask:

  1. Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this service?
  2. Did people care that I wasn’t using this service?

Don’t use the internet to entertain yourself

You should and can make deliberate use of your time outside work.

Rule #4: Drain the Shallows

Many people can’t actually work for 40 hours a week or 8 hours a day. Truly you’re not acutally working all that time. It’s filled with fluff.

Schedule Every Minute of your day

Assign actual time to every task that you need to complete.

On some days you might rewrite your schedule half a dozen times. Don’t despair if this happens. Your goal is not to stick to a give schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward — even if these decisions are reworked again and again as the day unfolds.

The third tactic I suggest is to be liberal with your use of task blocks. Deploy many throughout your day and make them longer than required to handle the tasks you plan in the morning. Lots of things come during the typical knowledge worker’s day: Having regularly occurring blocks of time to address these surprises keeps things running smoothly.

Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your work day.

Ask your boss for a shallow work budget

This is a conversation you would need to have with your boss. Ask him what your most important function is at work. He will most likely say something related to your job function. Then, ask him as a percentage what amount of time you should spend doing that task. He will most likely say something like 90% of your time. Compromise and say you’ll do it for 70 – 80% of the time. Make it clear that Shallow work will only take 20% of your time.

Finish your work by 5

This is called fixed schedule productivity. You’re only productive during a set period of hours. But, you’re super productive because you’re resting well and getting to do exactly what you need to do.

Become hard to reach

Tip #1 Make people who send you email or messages do more work.

Tip #2 Do more work when you send or reply to emails.

Tip #3 Don’t respond

Final Thoughts

Cal Newport’s ideas are extreme. They are definitely not for everyone. I do believe that he has a lot of valuable advice. The 3 top principles that I have applied almost religiously to my life are:

  1. Finish work by 5: I’ll never work past five. I find that I am more productive during the day because I am more rested.
  2. Schedule every minute of the day: I use a method called time blocking which you can read more about.
  3. Delete Social Media: The Only social media network that I am active on is twitter and that’s because it contributes directly to a professional goal of mine. You can read more about how to resist the urge to use your phone here.

About Ross Griffin

Made Runners Calc a swiss army knife training tool for runners. eCommerce Solutions Consultant at Akinon. Owner and founder of Precipice. Passionate about Running, SEO, eCommerce and Business

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