Here are two ways to achieve your full potential:
\nFirst, through chunks of time dedicated to deep-work, without distraction.
\nSecond, through leveraging intelligent machines to help you produce at an elite level.
\nDeep Work by Cal Newport is a prescient commentary on getting valuable work done in our uber-distracted, and increasingly competitive digital age. I recommend it.
\n\n\nThe 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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The book defines deep work as “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.”
\nThe antithesis of deep work – the other end of the spectrum of work intensity and quality – is Shallow Work.
\nAccording to Newport, Shallow Work is “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.”
\nConsider whether you are engaging in shallow work (that is easily replicated by a reasonably smart person) or deep work (requiring intense focus and resulting in significant value).
\nThere are two core abilities for thriving in the New Economy that are developed through deep work.
\nBy focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit in your brain to fire, again and again, in isolation. As in weight training, the reps are what build muscle. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits — effectively cementing the skill.
\n\n\n“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.”–K. Anders Ericsson
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Newport confronts a potential contention with his thesis, explaining that a good chief executive is “essentially a hard-to-automate decision engine.” The necessity of distraction in these executives’ work lives is highly specific to their particular jobs. “They have built up a hard-won repository of experience and have honed and proved an instinct for their market. They’re then presented inputs throughout the day — in the form of e-mails, meetings, site visits, and the like — that they must process and act on.To ask a CEO to spend four hours thinking deeply about a single problem is a waste of what makes him or her valuable.It’s better to hire three smart subordinates to think deeply about the problem and then bring their solutions to the executive for a final decision.”
\nUnless you are among the Jack Dorsey’s of the world, it isn’t likely your value is only in making final decisions. Instead, value is created through deep work–intensely focused attention on the vital few tasks and projects that will lead to achievement of your goals.
\nThe book introduces science writer Winifred Gallagher, who set out to better understand the role that attention, as a thought leader on the idea of deep work. Gallagher describes attention as what we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore, and that it defines the quality of our life.
\nAfter five years of science reporting, she came away convinced that she was witness to a “grand unified theory” of the mind: “that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.”
\n\n\n“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.” — Winifred Gallagher
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Transitioning to flow, Newport also discusses at length Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s pioneering work on flow states.
\n\n\n“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.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One of Csikszentmihalyi’s most interesting findings is that free time and relaxation tends not to make people happy. The results from his studies reveal that, ironically,“jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have 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 shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
\nNewport summarizes, “Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.” Flow generates happiness.
\nAny pursuit — be it physical or cognitive — that supports high levels of skill can also generate a sense of meaning. Discussing the task of a craftsman, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.”
\n\n\n“We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.” — Quarry Worker’s Creed
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Live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.
\nAnother idea Newport discusses is the “deep work chamber.” Architecture professor David Dewane describes this as chambers six by ten feet and protected by thick soundproof walls (and lots of sound-proofing insulation). The purpose of the deep work chamber is to allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow. Dewane imagines a process in which you “spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times. At that point “your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day.”
\nIn 2016, where most work environments by default value quick responses to the latest email over producing the best possible results, such ideas are quite contrarian.
\nBut you don’t need a Deep Work Chamber to get the benefits. The key to developing a deep work habit (even in an environment that seems to devalue deep work) is to “add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.”
\nNewport suggests, for example, a set time and quiet location used for your deep tasks each afternoon. Creating routines and rituals helps ensure that you are making deep work easier to start and keep going.
\nDonald Knuth, Stanford Computer Science professor has given up on email altogether. As Knuth states his communication policy on his website, “What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.” He prioritizes deep work by trying to eliminate or minimize all other types of work. That’s a grand gesture.
\nImplementing monk-esque solitude isn’t practical or desirable by most. Newport also profiles others, such as doctoral candidate Brian Chappell, who, by contrast, “deploys a rhythmic strategy in which he works for the same hours (five to seven thirty a.m.) every weekday morning, without exception, before beginning a workday punctuated by standard distractions.”
\nNewport offers an abundance of ideas to work into your specific situation.
\nThe common thread throughout is to be extremely deliberate regarding when and how you will engage in deep work. Map out when you’ll work deeply. A core idea is that you don’t want to make spur-of-the-moment decisions about how that time is going to be structured in your life — so you can preserve more mental energy for the deep thinking itself.
\nThis means that you aren’t going to be waiting for inspiration to strike. In fact, Newport states, “ignore inspiration” — he believes in putting in the time, reliably and deliberately, distraction free.
\nBill Gates, is also profiled, who was famous during his time as Microsoft CEO for taking “Think Weeks.” During these weeks away, he would leave behind his normal work and family obligations to retreat to a cabin with a stack of papers and books. His goal was to think deeply, without distraction, about the big issues relevant to his company.
\nWhen you commit, when you make grand gestures (whether it is completely deleting all email from your life, building a writing shed in the backyard, putting yourself in an exotic location, or just waking up early to focus), you push your brain to its limits. Commitment expressed in this way unlocks mental resources previously out of grasp.
\nAs Newport says, “Sometimes to go deep, you must first go big.”
\nFirst identifying a small number of “wildly important goals” is Newport’s recipe for sparking enthusiasm about spending more time in deep work (recognizing that the idea of deep work isn’t an attractive idea to most).
\nBy holding a vision of the tangible and substantial professional benefits of engaging in a new practice of deep work, you’ll naturally become more enthusiastic.
\nThe key indicator of success is therefore: “time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal.”
\nEarlier, I discussed Gallagher’s insight that “who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.” Indeed, attention is all there is.
\nDeep Workdescribes attention restoration theory (ART), that having a casual conversation with a friend, listening to music while making dinner, playing a game with your kids, going for a run, and walking in nature have a causal relationship with restoring attention.
\nOne idea presented by Newport, in relation to restoring attention, is to enforcea strict shutdown ritualthat you use at the end of every workday. The purpose of a shutdown routine is to “ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right.”
\nWe don’t need to complete a task in order to clear it out of our working memory and free up attention.
\nNewport’s advice is that “When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.” Yes, maybe your average e-mail response time will suffer some, but you’ll more than make up for this your results compared to your exhausted colleagues.
\nAnother tactic presented in order to restore attention is to engage in an “Internet Sabbath.” By eliminating the ability of the internet to hijack your attention, you both grow stronger and rehabilitate your available attention.
\nIn Deep Work, Newport highlights Roosevelt’s extraordinary level of productivity developed as a freshman at Harvard in the 1876–1877 school year.
\nRoosevelt had a wide array of extracurricular interests, yet would spend “no more than a quarter of the typical day studying.” Despite spending significantly less time studying than his classmates, he achieved honors in five of his seven first-year classes.
\nThe future president would begin every day by mapping out his schedule, not leaving much time for coursework. Newport explains that the time blocked for studying “didn’t usually add up to a large number of total hours, but he would get the most out of them by working only on schoolwork during those periods, and doing so with a blistering intensity.”
\nNewport says one way to incorporate rewarding deep work into your life is “to inject the occasional dash of Rooseveltian intensity into your own workday.” Give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces the time available, and run against the clock. Beat the buzzer. Attack your work “with every free neuron until it gives way under your unwavering barrage of concentration.”
\nDeep work requires levels of concentration well beyond where most knowledge workers are comfortable.
\nI found Newport’s description of productive mediation fascinating. (Although I disagree with the inferred idea that other types of meditation are not “productive.”) 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.” Similar to mindfulness meditation, you continue to bring your attention back to the problem at hand when your mind wanders or stalls.
\nPeople often (myself included) justify introducing new tools into their lives with the “Any-Benefit Approach.” For example, when choosing a network tool (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.) you look to see if “you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.” If there is any benefit, then it is adopted.
\nHowever, the fact that there could be some benefit shouldn’t justify its use. Newport instead recommends treating your tool selection “with the same level of care as other skilled workers, such as farmers.” He calls this the Craftsmen Approach. The fact that a farmer could benefit from a new hay baler, doesn’t mean he needs to buy one. Instead of adopting the new tool become it has some merit, he might decide it makes more sense buy pre-baled hay.
\nIf you’re clear about your goals, it can be helpful to think about whether a new tool or social network will actually help you get closer to the life and business you want.
\nReferring to today’s social networks, Newport aptly explains:
\n\n\n“These services aren’t necessarily, as advertised, the lifeblood of our modern connected world. They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell your personal information and attention to advertisers. They can be fun, but in the scheme of your life and what you want to accomplish, they’re a lightweight whimsy, one unimportant distraction among many threatening to derail you from something deeper. Or maybe social media tools are at the core of your existence. You won’t know either way until you sample life without them.”
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When we spend our days on autopilot — not giving much thought to what we’re doing with our time, it is a problem. When on autopilot, the trivial many creeps out the vital few projects and tasks. Just as we should do with every dollar, give every minute of your workday a job. Now use this schedule to guide you.
\nDeep Work provides insight into how to tactfully say no to requests on your time. For example, if Newport turns down a time-consuming speaking invitation, he doesn’t provide details — which might leave the requester the ability to suggest a way to fit his or her event into his existing obligation His recommendation is to instead just say, “Sounds interesting, but I can’t make it due to schedule conflicts.” He believes that a clean break is best.
\nThe bar for gaining access to your time and attention rises as you begin to more ruthlessly reject ideas that are a poor fit.
\n“I’ll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests.”
\nWhen responding to email, think “What is the project represented by this message, and what is the most efficient (in terms of messages generated) process for bringing this project to a successful conclusion?” By spending a little bit more time now, you are saving a lot more time later.
\n\n\n“I’d love to grab coffee. Let’s meet at the Starbucks on campus. Below I listed two days next week when I’m free. For each day, I listed three times. If any of those day and time combinations work for you, let me know. I’ll consider your reply confirmation for the meeting. If none of those date and time combinations work, give me a call at the number below and we’ll hash out a time that works. Looking forward to it.”
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It might seem like you’re spending more time on e-mail, with responses such as the example above. However, those “extra two to three minutes you spend at this point will save you many more minutes reading and responding to unnecessary extra messages later.”
\nA commitment to deep work is not a moral or philosophical stance — it is instead “a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.” I 100% agree.
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