Deep Work — Carl Newport

Cal Newport describes 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 values, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Why deep work?

In this era of automation and artificial intelligence, increasingly lots of tasks will be done by smart devices. Technology is rapidly changing the way businesses are being conducted.

In this new economy those people will succeed who

(a) can work with intelligent machines and technology.

(b) who are considered a ‘star’ in their field of work.

Deep Work skills will allow us to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.

And lastly the most important and immediate benefit of deep work is the immense satisfaction and sense of fulfillment we can get by adopting the deep work lifestyle.

Carl Newport advices four core rules to adopt deep work lifestyle.

1. Work deeply
2. Embrace boredom
3. Quit Social Media and
4. Drain the Shallow.

All these rules are interrelated and lead to similar conclusions and solutions. Lets beging with social media.

Quit Social Media.

All of us agree that Social Media is a big distraction. When I landed at that chapter, I assumed this section doesn’t apply to me. I don’t update my Facebook status every time I step a foot in any restaurant. I don’t have an Instagram account. But as I continued reading I realized I do check business news, stock prices, publish blurbs, read blogs, check twitter multiple times a day.

I thought I am a rational person. I don’t engage in these activities for entertainment or FOMO. These activities are for becoming a better investor. That is how I used to justify spending time on internet based activities.

In this book I learnt that this behavior is called ‘Any Benefit’ approach. We engage in these activities because we are ready to accept any benefit that we get. Let’s take a real life example. If we go to a hardware shop, every tool in there has some utility. But we don’t buy everything that is available, we only take the tools which will best serve the job which we want to accomplish. Newport proposes to apply the same rule for engaging in social media.

Every digital tool has some benefit. I need to assess whether those tools are helping me in achieving my top 2–3 professional or personal goals.

If my professional goals are

1. Improving my analytical skills.

2. Generating good investment returns

Then I should evaluate whether reading every word twitted by Professor is improving my analytical skills? What will improve my analytical skills more? Reading books or tweets. Is periodic glance at stock price going to help me in generating alpha? For someone who wants to master technical analysis, the answer might be positive. Similarly if your primary goal is networking being active on social media might be essential for you.

We need to choose the best tools to achieve our goal.

It may not be practical to completely quit social media. Instead of following this rule in literal sense, we can be prudent in spending time on those. In connection to this Newport proposes another rule

Embrace Boredom

Our brains are accustomed to distraction. At any moment of potential boredom like waiting in a queue, commuting in local trains, during commercial breaks on TV we tend to grab our smart phones to keep us entertained.

Newport advises us to embrace boredom at such times. Just sit still with your own thoughts. That will allow our mind to relax and result in reducing addiction to novel stimuli. It is an opportunity to train your mind to resist distraction. If you are accustomed to seeking distraction every time you are bored, the habit is likely to affect your ability to concentrate even when you try deep work.

This state will can let your mind do more meaningful things.

So once we have hold on our social media and smart phone habits, next rule is ‘Drain the Shallow’.

We saw that Deep work is Professional activities performed in a state of distraction free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

In contrast Shallow work is Non-cognitively demanding, logical style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

To identify if the work is shallow, ask how long would it take to train a fresher to do this job? If the answer is less than six month, you can consider that work as non-value additive for you.

Constantly spending time in shallow activities reduces your capacity to perform deep work.

But shallow work is inevitable. Any organization requires shallow activities for smooth functioning and facilitating deep work. We cannot completely avoid it, what we can do is ensure that the proportion of shallow work is contained to a limited amount.

To ensure that shallow work doesn’t overtake your deep work, you can structure your entire day with comprehensive schedule. Budget limited time for shallow work and stick to the time limits.

Now coming to the most important rule. Work Deeply.

High Quality Work Produced is a function of Time Spent on the activity and Intensity of Focus.

Time spent is up to us to schedule and intensity of focus is dependent on deep working habits and ability to resists distraction.

Research says that 4 hours is the limit for how much real deep work an average person can do in one day. So what we can do is manage our schedule in such a way that 4 hours preferably at a stretch are devoted for deep work and remaining hours can be used for non-deep work.

When we allocate time for deep work, we should keep in mind the effect of ‘Attention Residue’. When we switch from one task to another, our attention doesn’t immediately follow. A residue of our attention remains stuck thinking about the first task. And so we are likely not to perform our best at the current task. As per some studies Attention residue lasts for 20–30 minutes. If the time allocated to deep work is just an hour, we should consider that for first 30 minutes, we will not be performing at our peak level.

Effect of Attention Residue shall also be consider when we Multi-task.

During a deep work activity when we quickly reply to a new email saying ‘I will do the needful by EoD’ and get back to our original task, our mind starts formulating plan to complete the task asked in the email. So our concentration is diluted.

This book made me realize it is okay not to read and respond to mails immediately. There is no standard solution for all but depending on our work responsibilities we can set up intervals to check mails and communicate with others. In most of the fields even if one replies to a client or our boss after 2/3 hours, it wouldn’t be the end of world. As long as your intentions and schedules are clearly communicated, people will respect your right to not get distracted. And if there is any real emergency, people know where to find you.

With emails, controlling the distraction is in recipients’ hands. But with instant messaging one doesn’t have that option. So we should try to use instant messaging only for matters which require immediate resolution.

Electronic connectivity is crucial, what we can do is add some planning and discipline to minimize its effect on our deep work.

Now coming back to deep work –

Deep work isn’t easy and cannot be accomplished by mere noble intentions. It requires serious commitment, continuous practice and major changes in our lifestyle.

To engrain deep work in our lifestyle we should create deep work routine and rituals. We can start by scheduling our entire day. Not just the work hours but also our free time.

Plan which deep work tasks you will be performing and when. Keep flexibility and alternatives in your schedule. If your planned deep work tasks take less time than you had budgeted, the alternative deep work task will ensure that you do not break your deep work routine and stray towards shallow work. After we complete a task and are in process of deciding what to take up next, we often end up spending time in shallow or internet activities. A comprehensive schedule will save energy required in decision making and ensure that shallow activities are confined to designated time.

A very important point I learnt in this regard is planning internet time whether at work or home. Internet and Google are essential for our deep work. But we also know that time just flies when we are browsing. What we can do is schedule internet blocks and resists accessing internet outside of those blocks. Depending on our work requirement the blocks could be after every half an hour or after 4 hour. What is important is disciplining your mind to resist the urge.

To inculcate this discipline our mind needs to resist distraction of internet in our personal time. For that it is important to schedule your personal time, otherwise whenever we have free time we often end up spending most of it semiconsciously browsing the net.

Deep work is difficult to achieve without planning and clear structure.

And lastly when you work deeply it is important to give yourself a downtime. You have a limited capacity for deep work in a day. After that your brain needs a break so it can recharge the energy required for next day’s work.

Set a cutoff point each day and after that keep your mind free of any work related concerns, deep or shallow. If you continue responding to work mails even after work hours, you are not allowing your brain the much required downtime. To work deeply it is okay to be lazy at times.