Books help you find answers to things no one else told you about. Deep Work by Cal Newport answers questions on effective prioritization of everyday tasks. In the hyper-connected, information abundant and world full of distraction that we live in. Your ability to focus is your biggest moat.
What is Deep Work?
"Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate."
What is Shallow Work?
"Non-cognitively 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."
Core Ideas
To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. Learning is an act of deep work. If you're comfortable going deep, you'll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in the economy.
By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching we can maximize the performance on this one task.
"Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love-----is the sum of what you focus on" - Gallagher
What you choose to focus on exerts significant leverage on your attitude going forward. These simple choices can provide a "reset button" to your emotions.
Another benefit of cultivating rapt attention in your workday. Such concentration hijacks your attention apparatus, preventing you from noticing the many smaller and less pleasant things that unavoidably and persistently populate our lives.
"the idle mind is the devil's workshop"... when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what's right?
We must focus on activities that involve deep work. Deep work gives the experience of flow. It is a proven path to deep satisfaction.
Things are easier said than done. It is easy to give in to desires and miss out on deep work. Will power is finite, it gets depleted as we use it. To not give in to desires develop deep work habits. Add routines, rituals to your work life.
Set time and quiet location used for your tasks. This way you'd require less willpower to start and keep going. In the long run, you'd therefore succeed with these deep efforts far more often.
The Bimodal Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else.
The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling asks to build rock-solid routines and get little by little done every day. This can also be done by keeping a calendar and striking it the day off when you follow the routine and practice deep work.
The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling is about including some dedicated hours of deep work wherever you can in your schedule.
There is no right or wrong way of doing things when it comes to productivity. However, whatever ritual you choose make sure to answer the following questions Where you'll work and for how long? How you'll work once you start to work? How you'll support your work?
4 Disciplines of Execution
- Focus on wildly important tasks - Act on the Lead measure - improve on things that you directly control - Keep a compelling scoreboard - it helps you keep an eye on the number of hours of deep work and the result achieved. - Create a cadence of accountability - Write weekly reviews. Review the week that went by and plan for the week ahead.Shutting the mind down and resting the mind down is as important as deep work. When thinking about work, think only about work. During downtime, don't think about work.
Quit Social Media. Scrolling feeds infinitely gives short term dopamine hit and comes at the cost of time. Might also result in giving you a lot of anxiety. Constant notifications are distractions.
Drain the shallows optimize to remove shallow work from your routine. To give time to high-impact tasks.
For the ones who are looking to figure out their working style. And, looking for ways to improve your productivity and get more things done. Deep Work is an excellent read.