Deep Work by Cal Newport

Summary: Cal Newport is the author of one of my favorite career books, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” In it, Cal argues that people often make the mistake of endlessly looking for a job or field that they’re “passionate” about, when instead they should simply focus on becoming great at what they do. Once one becomes “so good they can’t ignore you” at their profession, they will be able to exchange those tremendous skills for a great job with great perks. Plus, they will feel mastery, autonomy, and impact.

After writing “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” Cal was repeatedly asked “ok great, but HOW do I become great?” He wrote “Deep Work” to answer this question. The book offers a fantastic deep dive into how and why you should prioritize focus in order to thrive in the world of knowledge work.

Rating: 9/10

1. Deep vs. Shallow Work

Producing valuable work in the world of knowledge work requires focus. It requires using all of your brain power to accomplish difficult intellectual tasks.

Cal 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.”

On the other hand, shallow work is “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.”

2. The Value of Deep Work

The skill of focusing for long periods of time has never been more valuable. At the same time, it has never been more rare. People are more distracted than ever, severely hampering their ability to churn out valuable knowledge work.

“Deep work is so important that we might consider it…the superpower of the 21st century.”

"The 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.”

3. Myelin

In his previous book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal discusses the value of deliberate practice. The main components of deliberate practice are motivation, focus, feedback, and repetition. You are setting up a practice environment the way that a pianist would practice scales or a basketball player would do shooting drills.

As you practice, you get better at the specific skill. “This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated.”

“By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. 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.”

For an excellent breakdown on deliberate practice and a deeper dive into myelin development, check out “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle.

4. Attention Residue

So by now, you’re probably sold on the value of focusing. But you may ask yourself, what’s the big deal if I check an email or respond to a slack message here or there? As it turns out, that is a huge deal.

Our brains are not actually capable of multitasking. Multitasking is a myth. Instead, what we do is “context switching.” We switch our mind from context to context, when we try to focus on multiple things. And when we switch, there are significant costs to doing so. Switching contexts leaves what’s called an attention residue. A bit of our attention remains on the previous task.

“When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.”

According to Sophie Leroy, “People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task,” and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance.”

5. The Power of Boredom

Social media companies invest literally billions of dollars learning how to best hijack our attention. It's becoming harder and harder to resist the addicting pull of social media. Unfortunately, spending so much time in this distracted state seriously hampers our ability to focus on hard things for extended periods of time.

Checking social media during work is obviously a bad habit for work quality. What is not so obvious is that using social media for significant periods of time outside of work lowers our attention spans drastically.

Cal literally does not have social media, for this reason. He suggests deleting it yourself. While I think this is more extreme than I am willing to go, and I’d imagine most readers are in the same boat, there are many steps one can take to drastically reduce social media use and to limit its negative impact on our attention, during the times that we intend to work deeply.

• Delete social media off your phone (keep the accounts, but remove the mobile apps)
• Use focus apps (Freedom, Opal, etc.) that will let you block yourself from accessing distracting applications and websites
• Put your phone in the other room
• Track your screen time - remember, what gets measured gets managed

Cal argues that rather than scheduling focus, you should schedule distraction. Focus or boredom should be your default states, with boredom being the less common alternative.

Bonus: Personal Techniques for Deep Work

I loved this book, but I actually didn’t find that it was super tactical in terms of how to actually do deep work.

Therefore, I wanted to elaborate on the books ideas, with some activities I have found helpful to personally find ways to work more deeply: - Pomodoro technique - Freedom focus app - Meditation - Placing my phone outside of the room - Turning off email and IM notifications. I make sure to check email during specific time blocks - Time blocking - Specifically, I currently follow Cal’s daily and weekly planning strategies. I even use his time block planner