Memorable Quotes
- Ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.
- You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.
- I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.
- Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on / Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to.
- Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it.
- Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure.
- To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.
- Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.
- The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
- Wooden wheel is not noble, but its shaping can be.
- You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work.
- Once the talent market is made universally accessible, those at the peak of the market thrive while the rest suffer.
- Talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.
- Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.
- To master the art of deep work, you must take back control of your time and attention from the many diversions that attempt to steal them.
- Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets … it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
Why I Picked Up This Book
If you have read my previous book reviews of Atomic Habits and Building a second brain, you will remember that those books focused on two key areas : The science of Habit formation and the Art of organising knowledge effectively. Together, these books gave me a fresh perspective on how to approach work and helped me break down tasks into chunks and execute tasks more systematically.
But was it a silver bullet to all of my productivity problems?? Sadly, Nope!
Although these two books cleared a lot of problems in my productivity journey, I found that there were still some tasks, that I missed or left incomplete. Upon reflecting on my journal entries of the past few days, It became clear that there were still missing pieces to the puzzle. The following issues popped up :
- How long should I execute a task?
- What exactly must be executed and when?
- The problem of motivation and willpower especially on cognitively demanding tasks
A number of people have talked to me about motivation and willpower and how they can act as the fuel for achieving your goals and completing tasks. But I am very skeptical about impact of these variables on different types of tasks especially cognitively demanding tasks. As a computer science student who constantly grinds and works on solving different kinds of problems, I have dealt with a lot of cognitively demanding tasks and have observed this is not the case. Sure, it works for many of the tasks and does give a boost but relying on these two variables alone is not enough. Motivation and Willpower and inherently nondeterministic in nature. Motivation tends to fluctuate and depends on many internal and external factors, while Willpower is finite and can be easily depleted. Together I think these both make poor foundations for sustained productivity, especially for cognitively demanding tasks.
After going through the blurb and skimming through a few pages of Deep Work, I realized that Newport was trying to address the same kind of problems I was struggling with.
That’s what made me pick up the book.
Personal Reactions
Personally, I found Deep Work to be an engaging and worthwhile in nature. Its still not a silver bullet for all my productivity problems but it definitely helped. Infact it was kind of an eye opener for me because after applying some of the ideas presented in this book and restructuring my schedule, I was able to optimize my time, acomplish more and significantly reduce distractions in my life. Like most books, it has its strength’s and weaknesses.
Strength’s:
- The book is well structured, which makes it easy to follow and digest.
- It offers practical advice on how to minimize shallow work and increase the propotion of deep work in your daily life
- Many of the ideas presented in this book are accompanied with case studies, which serve as useful reference or models for applying the concepts in real life.
Weaknesses:
- At times, the book feels repetitive. The same ideas of focus and concentration are repeated again and again in a way that it did feel boring to me.
- While there is novelty in the framing, many of the concepts overlap with other popular productivity books. That said, this is somewhat expected since most productivity frameworks draw from similar roots: cognitive psychology, behavioural psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics.
One aspect that I particularly appreciated is that, the book clearly defines its target audience. Deep Work is not for everyone, and blindly following its advice may not be effective for all. The author acknowledges this which is great.
Another strength is the balanced approach. When I first saw the book, I genuinely thought it was not practical and would make me adopt a monk mode approach to my productivity problems but thankfully that was not the case. Instead this book guides you in recognizing distractions, reducing them gradually and integrate deep work into your schedule in a realistic and sustainable way.
I categorize productivity books into two types : Science based and Tool based. Science based books focus on the underlying research and emperical evidence, while Tool Based books offer direct strategies and Techniques. Deep work clearly falls into the latter category. Infact, most productivity books, that I have encountered are tool based. What sets this book apart though is its emphasis on practical, easy-to-apply advice rather than rigid rules or one size fits all templates. That is what makes it especially useful.
Quick Summary i.e TLDR
Deep Work by Cal Newport is a productivity book, that emphasizes the value of focused, undistracted work in a world full of distractions. The book centers around two core concepts : Deep Work - Focused, cognitively demanding tasks that create real value and Shallow Work - Non demanding, low-value tasks often done while distracted. Newport explains why deep work is crucial in today’s economy, arguing that it enables you to learn hard things quickly, deliver better results and gain a professional edge. He also provides practical strategies for scheduling your time, sharpening your focus, minimizing distractions and building habits that support deep, meaningful work.
Things that I find interesting about this book
Deep Work / Shallow Work
- Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
- Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
The Deep Work Hypothesis
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.
Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
There are different philosophies as to how you can implement Deep Work in your life. Choosing the philosophy depends on your occupation, control over work schedule etc.
The Monastic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
- Basically dedicate large blocks of time for performing some deep work task and eliminate all shallow work (i.e email, meetings, social media).
- Useful for people who have significant control over their work schedule and can isolate themselves from distractions.
- Effective for writers, researchers, software developers etc.
The Bimodal Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
- Suitable for most of the people.
- Basically divide your time into blocks of deep work and shallow work so that some obligatory shallow tasks like email are not left unattended.
- For each day, you plan in advance the Deep Work blocks and Shallow work blocks in a flexible way.
The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
- The goal, is to generate a rhythm (habit) for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep.
- The main benefit of this technique, as we learned from Atomic Habits as well is that, this reduces the mental energy needed to switch into Deep Work mode.
- We can rely on ideas like Temptation Bundling and Habit Stacking from Atomic Habits to make it easy for us to perform this habit.
The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling
- Intended for experts of their field, this approach relies on fitting deep work wherever you can into your schedule. This name is a nod to the fact that journalists, like Walter Isaacson, are trained to shift into a writing mode on a moment’s notice, as is required by the deadline-driven nature of their profession.
- It is difficult to pull off but if you are confident in the value of what you are trying to produce, and practised in the skill of going deep, it is a robust way to squeeze out large amounts of depth from an otherwise demanding schedule.
Why being Lazy is Not Bad
- Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets … it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
- At the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning—no after-dinner e-mail check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shut down work thinking completely.
- Reasons
- Downtime Aids Insights (Basically our unconscious mind solves the problems)
- Downtime Helps Recharge the Energy Needed to Work Deeply
- The Work That Evening Downtime Replaces Is Usually Not That Important (Basically for incomplete tasks, you can use the Hemingway Bridge - Use Yesterday’s Momentum Today to work on them the next day without taking much tension).
Law of the Vital Few to Your Internet Habits
- Basically the idea is to apply the 80-20 rule for reducing time on internet or other network tools to reduce shallow work.
- Identify your personal goals, Calculate the impact of each network tool on your personal goal and then use only those network tools, that have a positive impact towards that personal goal.
Don’t Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus
- Don’t take breaks from distractions, instead take breaks from focus i.e Keep focus as the main point and the main thing that you do during the day and allow for small blocks of distractions in it.
The Principle of Least Resistance
- If there is no clear feedback on productivity / deep work, we will tend towards behaviour that are easiest in the moment.
- The reason we do this is to feel productive. Adding and completing more number of shallow tasks makes us feel productive.
- To overcome this, one can utilise the strategies present in the book for Deep Work and add clear feedback.
Parallels to other popular works
This book overlaps with the ideas present in Atomic Habits by James Clear, GTD by David Allen and Building a second brain by Tiago Forte
Wrapping (Do I recommend it or not)
Absolutely 100%. Deep Work is a pretty good book that teaches you how to focus better and reduce/eliminate distractions from your life. It also helps you identify what truly deserves your time and attention, making it easier to prioritise what matters most.