My 7 Takeaways from Deep Work by Cal Newport

How you win the war for your attention

There are a lot of good books out there. But every once in a while, we come across a true gem and start recommending it to everyone who will care to listen. Deep Work by Cal Newport is one such book for me. It offers a simple enough concept, yet, as I have found out, not very easy to implement these days.

We can all feel how modern life, particularly the internet, social media, the news cycle, and never-ending entertainment takes its toll on our attention and ability to concentrate. Just recently there was an article in the Guardian about how our attention is getting stolen (you can read it here). I will not go into how that happens, just read the books like Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows or Adam Alter’s Irresistible. Or listen to what Jonathan Haidt, Ryan Holiday, or Jordan Peterson have to say on the matter. Suffice it to say that our attention span getting shorter is a serious challenge to anyone keen on doing something important, achieving something, and not just drifting through life.

Cal Newport offers one way to win the war for our attention. Yes, that’s right. Make no mistake, it is a war. A war waged by big internet, news, and entertainment corporations. It is a particularly sinister type of war. It is undeclared. It is invisible. And it is meant to hold you back by making sure your attention focuses on what makes money for these corporations.

So how do you resist this? I give you Deep Work, the concept that Cal Newport presents as one way to protect your attention and focus. In this article, I would like to share my seven key takeaways from Deep Work by Cal Newport:

1. Get clarity, and avoid busywork. Newport presents a simple two-pronged concept of what skills we need to have in the modern economy — a) the ability to quickly master hard things; and b) the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. It is also important to focus on getting valuable things done. Things that matter. It is too easy to be sucked into busywork — which is defined as work that keeps us busy but has very little value. We all know what that is — lots of things that we do throughout the day, we feel very busy, and then at the end of the day, we can’t put our finger on anything of value that we have done. The first step to getting out of this is to clarify the objectives and set clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable. In the absence of these, we tend to focus on more industrial types of indicators — doing a lot of something in a visible manner. Seek clarity, because deep work is good for you, even if on the surface it might seem bad for business. Now let’s get on to what deep work is — which is essentially HOW you learn to master hard things and produce at an elite level.
2. What is Deep Work. Newport is of the view that Deep Work is essential to extracting meaning from our work. He defines it 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. Compare it to shallow work, which is not cognitively demanding, and typically consists of logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate. It is optimal to batch hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches. By maximizing the intensity when you work, you maximize the results you produce per unit of time spent working. The magical thing that happens when you engage in deep work, is you turn the work into a craft. By the way, Deep Work is precisely how you create a state of flow — coined by American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
3. How to do Deep Work. Move away from intentions and focus on routines and rituals. Create an environment designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. A set time, a quiet location. There are different approaches to how to make this happen. The monastic approach involves isolation to aid concentration. This way former allows you to minimize distractions and gradually build up your ability to do deep work, this is perhaps best when you are starting this practice. Another method is the so-called journalistic approach. It is more erratic, you produce when you find the time, and the little bits add up. It is perhaps best when you have an experience in deep work. It requires confidence in your abilities to concentrate on demand. Newport goes on to suggest a number of methods to induce and maintain deep work, including building up streaks (or chains as Seinfeld called it, creating rituals (to put you in the right place and mindset, including a shutdown ritual when you finalize work), or even making grand gestures (think Bill Gates’ Think Week when he isolates himself to read and reflect).
4. Track your work. Keep a compelling scoreboard. Keep track of progress, achievements, and mistakes. Make sure to regularly review where you stand and adjust your plans. Tracking is useful because we typically tend to overestimate how much we do. Having precise records allows you to objectively measure and adjust what you do. In addition, it is well known that tracking progress is, in itself, a strong motivator to keep performing.
5. Digital Minimalism. Cal Newport has written a whole other book on this subject which I also highly recommend. The fewer social media and internet tools you use, the better. Newport recommends you adopt a tool only if its positive impact on your success and happiness outweighs its negative impact. Approach tool selection like a craftsman, focusing on those with the most potential impact and eliminating the rest. One of my favorite points Newport makes is that social media works based on a delusion that people want to hear what you have to say. Rather than stay on social media for hours on end, use your time as an aristocrat would — by rigorously self-improving. Funny thing is, this “aristocratic” approach is also precisely what Marx recommended. That’s right. Make deliberate use of your free time (including reading good literature!). Put more thought into organizing it — don’t just let online tools and their algorithms decide how your time is spent.
6. Embrace Boredom. Newport suggests that rather than taking breaks from distraction, you take breaks from focus. Do schedule internet madness time to distract from work. Schedule such time, but avoid such activity at all other times. Work with blistering intensity, by sometimes drastically reducing the time you spend on a task. Set tough deadlines at the edge of feasibility. Force work with “teeth-gritting concentration”. But when you rest, really rest. One particular thing Newport recommends is to spend time in nature. This piece of advice I have seen over and over, nature has a way of helping improve your levels of concentration. So go for a walk, have a picnic with your family, or walk your dog — you will feel calmer and it will be easier to concentrate on a tough task.
7. Drain the Shallows. Schedule your day. The point is not to fill it up, but to have a thoughtful and planned approach to your time. Newport strongly suggests finishing work by 5:30 and not working after that. This will force you to be disciplined and do what you can within the working hours, rather than count on all the others after the end of the workday. A clean break from work is best because it allows for a full-fledged shift to other activities in your life. If your mind treats your time as a scarce resource, it will value it more. So don’t send e-mails outside working hours. And don’t respond to those who do. Be similarly ruthless with your time spent on other activities. Don’t worry, over time, others will get used to your approach and start respecting your schedule.

I have to say, it has not been easy applying the principles of deep work in my life. I have found myself using the “journalistic” method more than the “monastic” method and moreover, cannot shrug off the feeling that my choice of the method is less a choice and more of a rationalization of how I end up spending my time. But every time I have been able to do deep work, with long, uninterrupted periods of concentration, the impact has been magical. I know this, I have experienced this and will therefore continue trying to squeeze more deep work into my days and minimize the shallow work.

Try it.