The Future of Work is Deep
The Human and Business Imperatives of Deep Work
In 2016, Cal Newport introduced a new term into the business lexicon: deep work. It’s an idea that has since taken hold of disaffected knowledge workers everywhere, due in no small part to the promise that they could finally start doing what they were hired to do — create value. More importantly, intertwined with this promise is something more nebulous — something fragile and fleeting. Dare we call it self-actualization? Anyone who has worked in a modern office knows the creeping sense that what you’re doing doesn’t really matter. It’s that unspoken but ever-present worry that your life is little more than a series of TPS reports. Deep work promises something different — it promises that we can be craftsmen who take pride in our trade (even if that trade involves sitting at a computer all day.)
I won’t reiterate the finer points of Newport’s work — suffice to say that deep work is all about ditching distraction and focusing on what really matters — but four years on from the publication of Deep Work, now seemed like an appropriate time to reflect on our collective progress in working more deeply. Regrettably, but perhaps without much surprise, I must report that we aren’t doing very well.
Organizations are hard to change, and yet, the necessity of change grows more…
