Stoicism And Deep Work
I never imagined myself writing about stoicism. Truth be told, during my university I had a course on philosophy. I have no clue how I passed it, since my interest in the topic was close to zero. Think about it… on one side: an 18 years old student, passionate about software and games, enrolled in the field of Computer Science and Automation and on the other: Philosophy, the study of fundamental questions and knowledge.
But here I am…, over 15 years later, writing about stoicism and deep work. So, why now? Let’s begin from where all this started: Medium.
I am a big fan of Medium. I often find lots of articles from where I can extract valuable ideas both for my career development and personal interest. The subject that I was researching was regarding vital skills needed in this changing world brought by the Coronavirus. One of the mentioned skills was critical thinking and decision-making. This caught my attention as these skills I consider fundamental to any leadership role.
This was my first contact with stoicism. I have heard before about the term; I knew it is some ancient philosophy, but nothing more than that. The article states that Stoicism can help you make better decisions, keep you calm in stressful situations, and a couple other benefits. I was a bit skeptical, but it was enough to trigger my curiosity and search on Amazon for the best-rated books on this topic.
This led me to “The little book on Stoicism”, by Jonas Salgeb.[1] What I found impressive of the book, was how the author captured the essence of famous Stoics writings and to put them in a form that is so easy to read and related in our times. It is a splendid book for a quick introduction to the topic for a person like me, with zero background.
What is Stoicism?
I will not repeat here the definition from Wikipedia or something that can be quickly searched on google, but I will focus on the parts of the definition that spiked my interest.
Stoicism has an interesting view of the natural world, focused on how the human mind understands or should react to the surrounding events. The fundamental question that it tries to answer is:
“How to live a good life?”
Even now, as I am writing these words, I am impressed by how deep this question is. The answer will differ from one to another; what a good life means for me, most certainly is not the same for you. Can there be an universal answer?
It is no wonder that some philosopher spent a lifetime to answer this question. To understand how the stoic approached this question, let’s use the model from Jonas Salgeb’s book, so-called “The Stoic Happiness Triangle”.
Living a good life means you reach “Eudaimonia” which roughly translates to the state of flourishing, to be blessed and happy, to thrive both mentally and physically. This represents the center of the triangle and it is the ultimate goal.
To succeed with this goal, one must progress on the three pillars:
- Live with Areté
- Focus on what you control
- Take responsibility
Let’s start with the term that is the most unusual. Areté roughly means to express the highest version of yourself in every moment. Stoics believe that there is a gap between who we’re capable of being and who we are actually at that moment; and stating that it is our responsibility to reduce this gap as much as possible. (This reminded me of Tony Robbins’s book “awaken the giant within”, [2] and other self-development resources.)
In my career, I consider personal development and self-improvement a major stakeholder in any decision I made. I not only value the idea that we must do whatever in our powers to improve ourselves, but we should pass it and promote it to the people who we interact with and want to help.
Finding that Stoics shared similar principles a couple of thousands of years ago only reinforced for me self-improvement is the right path towards happiness and a thriving life.
Second pillar towards Eudaemonia is to focus on what you control. Specifically, the things that you have the highest influence are your actions (or reactions) and voluntary judgment. Stoics believe it is important to guard our mind from external circumstances and prevent them to affect our mood or our state of mind. Let’s take an example.
Do you have control if it will rain or not? Of course, you don’t. However, you have the control to decide if the state of weather will affect you happiness or not. Same thing can be said about the color of your skin, about how tall or thick you are, where you grew up or any other external conditions. Don’t let things like this affect your inner state. Recognize how you react and decide what actions you should take. Don’t let the world decide for you.
This brings me to the last pillar, which states that you are responsible for your happiness as well as unhappiness. Never blame others for negative emotions that you are feeling. It is you who decided and allowed them to affect you.
Be careful with what you want, as things outside your power are a source of emotional suffering. This does not mean, that you shouldn’t want better things and live a poor life. Take the example of Marcus Aurelius, the stoic philosopher that was also one of the five good roman emperors. His role could not be more further than a meager lifestyle. However, Stoics don’t look at material things as rightful owners, but as things borrowed from nature. And like all things (and people), prepare yourself every day that nature can take it back.
So, stoics tell us that is our responsibility to reach our full potential, to thrive and to flourish. The question that arrives is: how we can do this and what actions can we take every day to get us closer to this goal?
Deep Work
This brings me to introduce an idea developed by Call Newport in his book called Deep Work[3]: To prosper in our new economy we have quickly master new things and produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. The way to do that is through deliberately focus on deep work and limit the shallow activities as much as possible.
To clarify what deep work means, I will paraphrase Newport’s definition as professional activities that improve your skills and create value and are hard to replicate. Where shallow work are activities that are often performed while distracted, that don’t require a deeper understanding or advanced knowledge making them easy to replicate. Think in programming a complex algorithm vs creating a presentation with the latest metrics on bugs development.
I don’t want to imply that shallow activities are void of value. We all know that some meetings, some emails or slack messages are required for preventing blockers inside of the team. However, I believe that breakthroughs and game changing ideas can come where the mind has a state of tranquility not distracted by messages, social news or meaningless activities.
One advice on bringing clarity on how to differentiate shallow work from deep work is to ask ourselves:
“How long would it take (in months) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training in my field to complete the task?”
This question, proposed by Carl Newport, represents a practical tool in the arsenal of any manager as it removes the fuzziness that comes sometimes with some of our obligations.
Most makers need to have uninterrupted time to go deep on a problem, to create something that they are proud of. So the question that arrives is “How can we foster deep work?”.
There are four depth philosophies that we can choose based on our situation and personality: Monastic, Bimodal, Rhythmic, Journalistic
Since going into each of them and explaining their advantages and disadvantages would be too long for the scope of this article, I will address the one that works for me and recommend others to check the chapter entitled “Work Deeply” where the author provides examples of famous practitioners and deeper insights behind each philosophy.
The rhythmic philosophy of deep work involves turning deep work sessions into a regular habit. Between all four, it is one of the most commonly used by office workers. Even if the level of deep work does not reach the Monastic or Bimodal ones, I think it is a good place to start for everyone who wants to bring more focus to their lives.
The challenge is how to make these activities a routine. In his book Atomic Habits[4], James Clear teaches to create a habit we need to make it:
- obvious
- attractive
- easy
- satisfying
The way how I approach it, is to make deep work part of my morning routine. I have it scheduled in my calendar in TickTick[5], the app I am using for tasks management. As my deep work sessions start after doing a bit of gym, my body and mind are well refreshed to dive into a focused state. The early time works additionally for me, since most of my family is still sleeping, and until they wake up, I can complete two or three Pomodoro[6] intervals (circa 1.5h).
I take advantage of the “habit” feature and set a personal goal of X amount of deep sessions per week. The app will record my progress and will show what is my best streak of successful weeks that I achieved my target. As this number grows, it becomes very motivating to keep continue growing it and to avoid breaking the streak.
I found weekly targets more manageable than daily ones, as it gives me extra flexibility. For example, if I am prevented by whatever reason to work on Tuesday, I can still hit my target by moving my deep work session on Wednesday. The goal is to reach X amount of times per week.
Cal Newport shares an example from Jerry Seinfeld where he tells how he trains to become a better comedian. His approach is to write a joke every day and mark with an X the day in the calendar. After some days, those X will form a chain and your only role is not to break this chain. I also like this idea, because having a physical calendar makes it obvious and easy.
However you decide to implement your deep work habit, my only advice to you is to start small. One research shows that even one of most talented practitioners can only have 4h of effective deep work per day, usually split in two sessions. [7] Start with one hour, avoid distraction or other temptations and focus on creating value and bringing you closer to Areté, the highest version of yourself.
We are reaching the end of the article; I appreciate you if you could follow along. Now, let’s summarise the main takeaways:
- It is your responsibility to thrive and live a good life
- Focus on what you control and be aware of your actions and reactions
- Choose deep work over shallow activities
- Find the depth philosophy that works for you
Thank you for taking your time reading the article, I hope some of these ideas sparked your interest. Until next time, I wish you a great day, stay healthy and I leave you with this last thought:
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve” ~ Charles T. Munger
References
- J. Salzgeber, The little book of Stoicism: timeless wisdom to gain resilience, confidence, and calmness. 2019. — https://amzn.to/3jcvrV5↩︎
- A. Robbins, Awaken the giant within. 2012. — https://amzn.to/30fKCp5↩︎
- C. Newport, Deep work: rules for focused success in a distracted world, First Edition. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016. — https://amzn.to/2EDTkWD↩︎
- J. Clear, Atomic habits: an easy et proven way to build good habits et break bad ones : tiny changes, remarkable results. 2018. — https://amzn.to/33aVd6J↩︎
- https://ticktick.com/↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique↩︎
- K. A. Ericsson, R. T. Krampe, and C. Tesch-Romer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” p. 44.↩︎
