4 Reasons Why Deep Work is So Fulfilling

Human beings, it seems are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging- Cal Newport

If you’ve ever spent an entire day checking email and logging into Facebook, you know that you get to the end of it and feel like shit. You’re exhausted, your brain is fried, and you feel like you’ve done a lot, but accomplished absolutely nothing. As I’ve said before excessive social media use is like the cognitive equivalent of being an athlete who smokes.

There was a day in 2014 when I checked email using my phone over 100 times, waiting for World War 3 to start. The world didn’t end. That day I decided to delete email from my phone and realized that nobody ever changed the world by checking email. I decided to take Jake Knapp’s approach to my smartphone.

If you’ve been keeping up with what I’ve been writing here on medium, you know that I’ve been raving about the concept of Deep Work and Cal Newport’s new book. The more I spend my time immersed in deep work, the more I’m realizing why it’s so fulfilling.

1. Deep Work Leads to Tangible Results

If you’re one of the few to cultivate a deep work ability, which means training yourself to do it, and building schedules that protects and makes time for it, you’re going to thrive. You’re really going to thrive in our current economy. You’re going to be very successful. Your life is going to be much more meaningful. You’re going to enjoy your work much more — Cal Newport on The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

If you look at people who have cultivated a deep work habit, you’ll notice that they have a combination of high volume and high-value output.

• Cal Newport wrote a manuscript and 5 peer-reviewed journals in a year because of his deep work habits
• Adam Grant wrote 2books and has become the youngest tenured professor at Wharton because of his deep work skills.
• Ryan Holiday has written 3 books in 3 years because of his deep work skills.
• I completed a 45,000-word manuscript in 6 months, and only missed one deadline, which I attribute entirely to deep work. That was in addition to producing more than 100 episodes of the Unmistakable Creative, writing dozens of articles on Medium, and a few other creative projects.

It’s hard to argue with the fact that deep work produces tangible results in our lives.

2. Deep Work isn’t Dopamine-Driven

Texting, e-mail and the number of likes we collect, the ding, the buzz, and or the flash of our phones that tell us “You’ve got mail,” feels amazing. As it should. We have associated the dopamine releasing feel of “ooh something for me” with getting a text or email or the like. — Simon Sinek

For every website, you visit that has notifications built into it, you’re getting surges of dopamine. Every like, every message, every page view, every email and every comment causes a surge in dopamine. According to Simon Sinek’s research the fulfillment from dopamine is highly addictive, but doesn’t last. As Darya Rose pointed out in a recent post, it’s not about the dopamine.

3. Deep Work Creates a Lasting Sense of Fulfillment

Deep work, on the other hand, isn’t dopamine-driven at all. When you spend your time immersed in deep work, you hit flow, increase your momentum, and you end up being incredibly prolific and productive. If you have ever gotten so lost in your work that you’ve lost track of time, you know how good that feels. You get to the end of the day and feel like the king or queen of the world.

4. Deep Work Makes You More Valuable

According to Cal Newport, because our personal and professional lives are increasingly driven by sources of distraction. The skill of doing deep work is becoming rare, and as a result much more valuable. The time I spend immersed in deep work is the 20% of my activity that creates 80% of the value in my life and my business.

The more time I’ve spent immersed in deep work, the more fulfilling it seems to become. And the less shallow work of mindless consumption has any appeal.

Listen to the Unmistakable Creative Interview with Cal Newport

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. Every Sunday we share the most unmistakable parts of the internet that we have discovered in The Sunday Quiver. Receive our next issue by signing up here.