How We Are Practicing ‘Deep Work’ in Our Team
I’m a fan of Prof. Cal Newport’s writing on ‘Deep Work’. As he defines it,
Deep Work is the Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to the limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. — Cal Newport.
As a contrast, shallow work is not cognitively demanding. A lot of it is logistics; often (can be) performed while distracted; does not create fundamental new value; and is easy to replicate/ delegate.
It is easy to look around and spot the trend that the ability to focus and dive deep in your work for hours is becoming increasingly rare. That’s just half the story. For knowledge workers, this ability is also very valuable. Its value in academics is largely obvious. Even in the corporate world, anyone who has worked at technology companies large and small may have seen this happen. The colleagues who are able to dive deep, understand an issue clearly, go back to the fundamentals when need be, are very productive members of the company.
This is an extremely potent combo, then — the ability to carry out ‘Deep Work’ day after day is a rare and valuable skill.
Three ways we have incorporated the principles of Deep Work in our team:
1. First half is for deep work — Till about mid-afternoon (~3 pm), we have specifically dedicated the time to Deep Work. When we arrive at the office at around 9:30 am, we say Hello to each other, and simply get to work. The atmosphere is conducive — there is hardly anyone around, no meetings are scheduled, and no deliveries show up. I don’t bother my team-mates with questions/ discussions/ non-work small-talk. We choose to read a detailed technical document which is key to our understanding of a particular project. We may design something with focus having understood some aspects of it.
2. Second half allows logistics, meetings, and other shallow work — Being a small team means the Founders themselves have to take care of various administrative items, operations, and legal compliance for the company. We try our best to schedule these for the late afternoon, in the post-lunch hours. It could be general meetings, networking, conference calls, cold calls, taking a look at carefully chosen tech newsletters, etc.
3. Talking about Deep Work — this has been of immense help. Deliberately committing to depth and rigor, acknowledging that this is what will put us on a long-term path of technical success and work satisfaction. We notice some great Deep Work practitioners around us, show those examples to each other; and also point to shallow workers as warning signals. We are trying to build this into our work DNA.
Where we need to improve –
1. Keeping everyone on the same page — When people start going deep, there is an inherent temptation in the engineers and techies to stick to an issue and have a drawn-out battle with it. At times, this is not necessary, and a course-correction is required where we regroup, go over the priorities, and help the team members focus on what’s truly important. Disparate, uncoordinated patches of Deep Work may not move the team forward, as a whole.
2. Better use of our calendars — Now that we have experimented with our day schedules, we need to improve upon our calendars. Not just setting deadlines, but clearly budgeting for the chunks of work that are crucial (“wildly important”, as Cal Newport puts it).
3. Making sure we stick with this — It is easy to start with a new, attractive concept. What makes a difference is how we, as a team, remain committed to going deep in our pursuits, thereby carving a niche with a strong core competence.
