Life Journey from a Reader’s Perspective — Book: Deep Work
Couple years ago, I landed in a dream company as a contract engineer, and at that time a good career was finally on my horizon. But because of the harsh demand in a very short period of time, and my inability to deliver the result by the expected deadline, I was let go from that position after one month.
Despite feeling a sense of desperation and disappointment in myself, I kept examining the last couple of days when I was at that job, thinking about what could I have done differently to keep that job. I recalled all the stress because my manager was constantly checking on the progress made by each team member, and he expected an immediate reply. I was very preoccupied with keeping up with the constant ‘beeping’ of the messages in the communication channel, afraid that I would miss anything important. That feeling of constantly needing to keep an eye on something got worse when I started to have a hard time with my task. My mental bandwidth for clear thinking was further reduced, and I could not focus on my work during regular hours. I only slightly felt at ease and made some limited progress after regular hours when the communication channel became silent.
After I was laid off, I saw the book called Deep Work: rules for focused success in a distracted world from my friend’s bookshelf. This book title captures my attention, because I felt the innate craving for “Deep Work”, even though at that time I did not quite understand what it means.
Then I started reading it, and that was the beginning of my journey of constantly reflecting on my work and life habit, and how they affect the way I think and live.
The first theme that captures me has to do with understanding what is ‘deep work’, the writer introduced it as ‘the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work (p44)’. Before that, he compared ‘busyness’ with ‘productivity’, to bring out our common delusion of feeling busy means being productive. At that time I really understood what he was trying to say, through my recent getting laid-off experience. And I agreed we live in a world that makes ‘deep work’ not easily attainable as the author mentioned in 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 toward behavior that is easiest at the moment (p58)’. This implication leads us to forge a ‘culture of connectivity’ where it becomes normal to run daily lives out of inbox and chat windows. This social norm underscores an important reality of deep work: ‘The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained.(p157)
How to achieve deep work?
The book did provide many helpful tips, but personally, I started to learn and incorporate these tips into my own life when I read other books discussing similar topics in great detail and methodologies. Nevertheless, to give credit to the author of Deep Work, I will list two great tips from the book here, and introduce other related books below, and I will write separate blogs for them in the near future.
Tip 1: set up routines & rituals to minimize willpower in transition(p100), which can be achieved by creating consistent deep hours and distractions (p102), or adapting Rhythmic Philosophy with Chain Method (p111)
See more context in “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
Tip 2: focus on the Wildly Important (p136), i.e., have a small number of ambitious outcomes
See more context in “The Bullet Journal Method” by Ryder Carroll,
“Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth,
and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
See you next time!
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
Psalm 1:3
