Key Takeaways from ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport
“I’ll live a focused life, because it’s the best kind there is. A deep life is a good life, any way you look at it.” — Winifred Gallagher.
I’ve read this book two times back-to-back because it was so enlightening; I personally recommended this book to people who asked me for advice on work/life balance. I’ve learned so much from the book and was able to reap some benefits of deep work after putting some of the lessons from the book into practice. Here are my key takeaways from this book.
What is Deep Work and how does it differ from shallow work?
Deep Work: 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.
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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.
The author states that to remain valuable in our economy, therefore, we must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind as tech advances. To succeed, you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing — a task that requires depth.
The importance of deep work truly rings a bell for me. If you are questioning how you can delineate deep vs. shallow work, the author suggests that you think about how long it will take for a fresh college grad to pick up the work and be competent in it. If it takes a mere X weeks for the college grad to master, then, likely the work will fall under ‘shallow work’ (e.g. easily replicated and not much new value in the world).
Why is deep work hard?
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.
We know that deep work is important and the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare and valuable at the same time. So why is deep work so hard? There are two main reasons:
1/ Busyness as a proxy for productivity: in the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner (e.g. responding to instant message, email promptly…).
2/ The principle of least resistance: in a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend towards behaviors that are easiest at the moment (such as responding to email right away or instant message that’s awaiting your response).
Dotting a clear line on what’s important for her to be the most successful in her job makes it easy to confidently say ‘no’ to the things that do not move the needle. At the end, being responsive real-time via email and instant message is not very impactful given its high switching costs.
In order to not fall into the trap of the above, ‘Measure What Matters’ by John Doerr explains how to set successful OKRs; having concrete OKRs in place and aligning with your manager / colleagues on the OKRs would help. Here’s my takeaways from the book.
Deep work goes hand in hand with rest
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets… it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
There’s a tendency for people to be always present at work (or worse, even after work) which sometimes can be interpreted as a proxy for productivity. Yet, being completely off from work is, in fact, essential to getting more work done the day after.
‘Incubation’ is a stage in creativity where you take a step back from the problem and allow your mind to wander to let it contemplate and work the problem through; contrary to the popular beliefs to be always ‘on’ to produce ideas, letting it rest lets your unconsciousness do its magic by leaving a breathing room to reach its full potential. That’s when the aha moments arise. In a nutshell, rest is a pre-condition for deep work.
Is ‘deep work’ learnable? How can I cultivate the skill?
The author states that ‘deep work’ is learnable and people become better at it via practice. After reading this book, there is one thing I’ve started incorporating into my life which is planning my day and week ahead in 30-min blocks during a ‘shutdown’ ritual. The author suggests that we spend 30-min at the end of the work day for a ‘shutdown’ ritual in which we go through emails and instant messages and comb through the important tasks for the next working day or week.
For me, this helped me to [a] not fall under the trap of doing things with least resistance (often checking emails / messages) whenever I have free time at work, and [b] get more ‘deep work’ hours as I can eliminate the time needed to figure out what I should be doing at the given time.
Additionally, another significant benefit I’ve experienced from the shutdown ritual has been that it helps to temper down the nervous mental energy of thinking about work ALL the time; the anxiety coming from ‘what if’ I have overlooked some important tasks I should have done. Completing a shutdown at the end of the day makes me feel truly at ease after work knowing that I have everything under my control. I’ve learned that knowing I have a game plan to get this work done some day in the future puts me at ease though I haven’t actually completed them. The effect of whether I had a shutdown or not has a huge impact on my quality of after-work hours. If I have skipped a shutdown, I feel the nervous mental energy creeping in throughout my after-work hours which eventually degrades my quality of rest.
It could feel overwhelming to schedule your day in 30-min blocks. However, the goal of planning ahead with 30-min blocks is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward — even if these decisions are reworked again and again as the day unfolds.
Ending thoughts
I was able to experience some step-change improvements in my work/life balance and productivity after introducing focus-block calendars and shutdown into life. It is my hope that everyone can be more thoughtful about how everyone is spending one’s time and is able to dedicate more time on doing valuable work that is truly impactful and worthwhile for not only oneself but for others.
“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.” — Winifred Gallagher