Deep Work by Cal Newport
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Bibliography
- Author: Shortform
- Full_Title: Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Category: books
- Last Highlighted Date: 2024-02-05 22:42:27.293650+00:00
Highlights
- Cal Newport defines “deep work” as focused, uninterrupted, undistracted work on a task that pushes your cognitive abilities to their limit.
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- your ability to do deep work will determine how much you thrive in the information economy
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- Idea #1: Deep Work Is Important
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- Idea #2: Deep Work Is Difficult
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- Idea #3: Deep Work Is Fulfilling
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- Practice #1: Plan Out Time for Deep Work
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- Newport says it’s most effective to set time aside specifically for focusing on deep work.
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- Schedule Type 1: Seclusion
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- Schedule Type 2: Periodic
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- The book stresses that the period should be at least one full day to reach the maximum intensity of deep work.
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- Schedule Type 3: Daily
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- Example: Set aside the morning (such as 8 to 11 a.m.) for deep work, before jumping into shallow work.
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- (Shortform note: In The 5 AM Club, Robin Sharma notes that the most productive part of your day is the hour right after you wake up because you’re recharged and the world is relatively quiet and distraction-free. It therefore makes sense to try to schedule your deep work time block in the early morning.)
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- Schedule Type 4: Ad Hoc
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- Newport cautions that there is a limit to how much deep work you’ll be able to accomplish per day. Anders Ericsson, author of Peak, explains that most novices can only accomplish about an hour a day of intense concentration. Experts who have extensive practice can expand to up to four hours, but rarely are able to exceed this.
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- (Shortform note: For most knowledge workers, it’s not possible to only use the Internet at certain times of the day. But if you must use the Internet all day, try using website-blocking apps like Forest or Self Control to help remove the temptation to switch your attention away from deep work.)
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- Technique #1: Schedule Internet Time
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- Technique #2: Plan Out Every Minute of Your Day, and Quantify Depth
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- Newport recommends breaking down your tasks into half-hour blocks
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- Shortform note: You may feel discouraged if you aren’t able to follow your schedule or give in to distraction. Nir Eyal addresses this feeling in Indistractable—he explains that it’s essential to think of your schedule as an evolving experiment that you probably won’t get right on the first try. Instead of stressing out, think of ways to build a schedule better aligned with your needs.
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- Shortform note: Intense deadlines not only force you into focus mode but can actually make your work better. When you set an ambitious deadline, you create a moderate amount of emotional arousal—which, according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, is where you achieve peak performance. In other words, people really do “work best under pressure.”
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- Practice #2: Build Your Deep Work Environment
In addition to scheduling time for deep work, Newport encourages you to build an environment that supports deep work by reducing distraction triggers.
Step 1: Create a Deep-Work-Only Environment
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- Step 2: Get Rid of Distractions
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- ) Make sure your emails contain all essential information. Newport explains that when replying to an email, you should articulate: 1) the current state of things, 2) what the ultimate goal is, and 3) what the most effective next steps are.
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- Use the right metrics. The most useful metrics in deep work are leading metrics, or metrics you can use in real-time to tweak what your result will be. For example, Newport suggests leading metrics like the number of pages you’ve written or the number of new ideas you’ve generated. These give real-time feedback that helps you see how effective you are at deep work. In contrast, a lagging metric would be how many papers you’ve published at the end of 2021—at that point, you can’t go back and change your behavior in order to publish more papers in the year.
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- (Shortform note: You may want to add reflective time into your workday shutdown—research shows that employees who spend 15 minutes at the end of their workday reflecting on what they learned during the day perform about 23% better in their work than those who don’t take time for reflection.)
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