In the middle of the last fiscal year, during a very heavy lift at work, a dear friend recommended Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World. It’s about cultivating a less distracted, more deeply focused work practice.

Newport describes the skill of 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.”

Deep work is a skill but also a practice. Its opposite is described as, “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.”

Deep Work’s central concept is that our distraction-filled workplace, fueled by social media and email amongst other always-on technology, is driving professionals to the shallow side of the pool and away from the deep end where value is created. Newport’s “hypothesis of deep work” states that as the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly scarce it also becoming increasingly valuable economically. As a consequence the few who cultivate the skill, and make it a central part of their practice, will thrive.

Part 1 is intended to convince the reader that the deep work hypothesis is solid. First, Newport establishes the notion that Deep Work is Valuable by identifying 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

He posits that deep work is necessary to focus and develop these abilities. By turning off distractions and focusing more deeply on the work at hand, your ability to master difficulty and churn out high quality work at speed is intensified.

Second point, Deep Work is Rare.  Newport cites various case studies and data on how completely distracted and plagued by “busyness” we are as knowledge workers. His working theory to that end is that the modern workplace with its open floor plans, constant problematic meetings, and lack of meaningful feedback (or worse yet, remote work) combined with the endless distraction of email, the internet, and social media has created an environment that is an enemy to deep work.

Finally he ascribes that Deep Work is Meaningful by identifying several concrete, provable cognitive benefits of deep mono-focused work. He highlights the research of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the mental benefits of flow states and the work of other cognitive scientists including Dreyfus and Kelly on the connection between attention, depth, meaning, and spirituality.

Part 2 lays out a practical approach for the reader to take advantage of the deep work hypothesis by training the brain and transforming work habits. These strategies are meant to help the reader put deep work at the center of their professional practice. He establishes four rules to cultivate the practice of deep work:

Rule #1: Work Deeply

Practical advice is laid out on a number of subjects including physical structures for working spaces, several strategies for scheduling time for deeper work practices, developing deep work rituals including setting a hard out time to leave work each day, addresses the importance of not working alone and provides an extended section on The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Rule #2: Embrace Boredom

Newport encourages the reader to embrace boredom rather than distract oneself with mindless entertainments and instant gratification. By not allowing ourselves to be distracted we actually increase our ability to work and think more deeply. Several strategies are identified here including:

  1. Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction in order to focus, schedule the occasional break from focused work to allow for distraction
  2. Create intensive portions of the day strictly for focused work
  3. Find time to meditate productively
  4. Practice memorization techniques in order to improve focus and attention

Rule #3: Quit Social Media

Newport recommends a 30-day full on social media fast followed by these two questions:

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

If the answer is a clear no to both it’s time to quit. If you answer yes then you might consider staying on but several key strategies for smarter social media consumption are outlined including not using social media to entertain yourself, something I have been trying to get better at for more than a year.

Rule #4 Drain the Shallows

Here’s where theory is put into practice. Newport provides the full blueprint on how to schedule time for deep work, quantify the depth of your activities, implement deep work with your team, create a concise day that ends at 5:30pm, as well as practical advice on how to intentionally become harder to reach — dismantling one of the central tenets of the “always-on” construct of 21st century knowledge work.

Key Takeaways

The parts of the book I put into action are now four very important aspects of my daily and weekly routine:

  1. Schedule every minute of your day. By creating time for specific tasks including reading, reviews, emails, and deep work you give yourself the proper time and space to accomplish those tasks. Also, most people (except your boss probably) will not be able to encroach upon that time since it’s already in your calendar.
  2. Create a cadence of accountability. Each Sunday or Monday make a plan for the work week ahead. Be precise in terms of what you hope to accomplish. At the end of each week do a quantitative and qualitative review of your performance against the plan.
  3. Take meaningful breaks. Giving yourself permission to get up and leave your desk or better yet the building to walk for coffee, lunch, or just to wander aimlessly creates real breaks in the day. When I’m away I do not think about work.I just walk and clear my head.
  4. Give yourself a hard out each day. My deadline to leave is 6:00 p.m. each day and when I’m gone work is turned off. I only violate this rule for official work functions or travel. 

After working this way I believe Newport’s hypothesis of deep work is dead on. Adopting any of his recommended strategies will only benefit your work practice. For the altMBA I’m going to try the recommended social media fast, which I’ve never been able to pull off. I think it will help me to bring my best to the program.