Deep Work by Cal Newport

Thoughts

I stumbled upon one of Cal Newport’s TEDx talk about the impact of social media and why you should quit it. It was precise, insightful and sounded like the validation of the voice of my conscience (that I managed to suppress or ignore every time). I followed up with one of his interviews in a YouTube video where I heard him talk about eudaimonia, a word I heard for the first time but could identify with for its meaning and significance. I decided to read his book hoping to see if the clarity of thought that I had seen in these two videos would expand into imparting knowledge further on the subject.

I started the book hoping it wouldn’t be riddled with cryptic unintelligible messages, explain a simple idea with great rhetoric or warn eternal damnation if they didn’t practice deep work. I was relieved that it did not put me through such an ordeal. It was clear, well-structured, concisely written and acknowledged limitations of the real world.

Cal Newport starts off with explaining the difference between Deep work and Shallow work, the former being of high value requiring greater prowess of focus, while the latter low value generating, non cognitive redundant activity that could be easily performed even when distracted. He portrays accurately the current state of affairs and challenges faced by knowledge workers.

His insights on attention residue stemming from ‘connected culture’ from various chat applications, open office plans that cause nothing but distraction and help surveillance, metrics blackhole about how not every activity can be quantitatively measured immediately resonated with me. I’m certain that most if not all my contemporaries working in the IT industry would also have a similar feeling in that regard. He further emphasizes about ‘cult of internet’, fear of missing out all which are relevant now more than ever. In addition introduces a relatively new term called technopoly.

The book by the author’s own description is of two parts,

  • The first explaining why deep work is important advocating its benefits in various ways. He breaks up the significance of deep work from scientific, psychological and philosophical perspectives respectively.

  • The second part provides steps and measures on how to practice deep work in day to day life. Here the author acknowledges real life challenges: that shallow work is inevitable and the limited liberty that an individual faces in their work life, and provides practical solutions instead of spewing virtues. While we may be aware and implementing our version of deep work, this book illustrates with great detail and clarity the virtues of deep work to better understand and commit to it.

This book is just the exact length where it conveys the ideas it intends to with great coherence in the form of clearly demarcated units without making one lose track of the subject. While it does throw in real world examples and anecdotes it does not get side tracked or fall prey to hyperbole. I found the content helpful to reiterate and reinforce what I already know and realize better ways of deep work.

Takeaways

I’m listing below some of my key takeaways from this book. Note: If any of it does not seem to make sense, it is likely that I have written it in a notation of my understanding and not that the book does a poor job of doing so.

  • Deliberate practice is critical to deep work - Maintaining focus, taking corrective actions based on constructive feedback loops and repetition makes all the difference. Blunt repetition doesn’t.

  • Attention residue is real - Context switching and multitasking no matter how good we assume we are causes attention residue which inevitability affect deep work. Uninterrupted deep work is better quality deep work. Maybe its a good time to let the self-proclaimed multitaskers know about this?

  • Willpower is a depleting resource - Desire is the norm not the exception. We start the day with a full bar and keep losing it throughout until we are recharged for the next day. Unlike the misinformed thought that our will is directly a product of our character, realize it’s more like a muscle. The more regular we exercise it stays in shape. Ignore and it atrophies.

  • Determine your depth philosophy - Based on the nature of your work and practical limitations set a deep work philosophy. It may be
    • Monastic where you seldom have time for any distraction (not the norm).
    • Bimodal with intense spells dedicated for deep work and other times for normal work.
    • Rhythmic philosophy establishing a specific rhythm of consistently eliminating waste of effort to start work.(Incidentally I realised I used this chaining method to actually read this book).
    • Journalistic philosophy fitting deep work as and when one’s schedule permits - this one specifically requires greater practice and conviction.

  • Routines and rituals help minimize willpower depletion - Instead of spending will on to do or not to do tug of war, make it so you invariably start and spend effort on the work itself. Example: keeping phone away so you actually decide to start work instead of loitering in social media. While we mostly have one to start work, also have a shut down ritual (zeigarnik effect).

  • Keep a scoreboard - Always work with well defined goals and timelines, not the end result. Example of well defined - ‘will write n pages today’ instead of a broader ‘will write book’.

  • Don’t take breaks from distractions, take breaks from focus - This one, I suspect many of us are guilty of. Like using social media during breaks from work, again this adds to attention fragmentation affecting quality of deep work. Avoiding such activity also helps keep overall junk activity to a minimum. This time, as I now realize could be used for more important or productive activities that improves overall quality of life.

  • Structure your deep thinking and be wary of loops - Another relatable rule, sometimes working on a problem we end up spending a lot of time stuck in the same sequence of thoughts arriving at the same impediment. Being more mindful and structuring thoughts like breaking the linear flow of thoughts leads to that aha moment where you end up solving the problem, feels relatable now?

  • Be weary of internet and social media - Social media is a nice to have feature of the internet mostly than a critical aspect. Most of it is nostalgia inducing than being critical or essential. Apply the ‘law of vital few’ aka the 80-20 rule for internet usage. 80% of the effect is resultant of 20% of the cause. That 20% is what truly matters. Before you point fingers at this individual raising concerns about my own social media usage (assuming we are well acquainted), please be informed that I have significantly reduced it from what it used to be and intend to get better over time.

  • ‘Drain the shallows’ - while shallow work being an inevitable part of work is reality, try keeping it to a bare minimum as it doesn’t really contribute to growth. The deep work limit per day for children is usually capped to 1 hour a day and well practiced adult around 4 hours. Making best use of it to stay productive and keeping shallow work lesser contributes to optimal experience.

  • Schedule your work into blocks of specific time frames, plan the work day with critical work. Draw over with unscheduled work to see the variance between planned and actual work. Also helps identify the gap between planned effort and actual time taken. The purpose of this is not to place constraints on one’s time but having meaningful insight on how we spend time and do course correction. Acting on whims and external stimuli are less useful than working on more carefully planned work schedule.

  • ‘Finish work by 5:30’ - fix scheduled productivity. To reiterate, the feasibility of finishing by 5:30 is not be made a subject of debate here. The crux of the idea is Do not drag work and end up losing focus and quality deep work.

  • Become hard to reach - Do not drag mail interactions with to and fro response. Make the sender work by providing specifics and asking specifics in a process centered manner to close the loop. Do not respond to ambiguous, inconsequential or objects of no interest (again depends on the context).