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Deep Work

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport, 2016

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Part I: The Idea

• Deep Work is valuable
• Deep Work is rare
• Deep Work is meaningful

this part is worth reading in its entirety — to summarize it here would do a disservice to the author’s work

Part II: The Rules

• Rule #1: Work Deeply
  • Decide on your depth philosophy
    • The monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling
      • shout out Donald Knuth & Neal Stephenson [who writes using Aquamacs, or at least he did in ‘08]
    • The bimodal philosophy of deep work scheduling
      • dividing one’s time between deep and shallow work, like Jung who went to his retreat for parts of the year
    • The rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling
      • scheduling daily deep work sessions
      • might be for you if you have to work with other people
    • The journalistic philosophy of deep work scheduling
      • fit deep work into your schedule whenever there’s a gap
  • Ritualize
    • where you’ll work and for how long
    • how you’ll work once you start work
    • how you’ll support your work
      • start with a coffee, have good snacks nearby, take walks, &c.
  • Make grand gestures
    • shout out J. K. Rowling and her baller lifestyle at the Balmoral
  • Don’t work alone
    • hub-and-spoke architecture
  • Execute like a business
    • “I know what I need to do. I just don’t know how to do it.”
    • The Four Disciplines of Execution
      1. Focus on the wildly important
      2. Act on the lead measures
      3. Keep a compelling scoreboard
      4. Create a cadence of accountability
  • Be lazy
    1. Downtime aids insights
    2. Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply
    3. The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important
• Rule #2: Embrace Boredom
  • Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus.
    1. This strategy works even if your job requires lots of internet use and/or prompt email replies
    2. Regardless of how you schedule your internet blocks, you must keep the time outside these blocks absolutely free from internet use
    3. Scheduling internet use at home as well as at work can further improve your concentration training
  • Meditate Productively
    • Focusing your attention on a single, well-defined problem when occupied physically, but not mentally
      1. Be wary of distractions and looping
      2. Structure your deep thinking
  • Memorize a deck of cards
• Rule #3: Quit Social Media
  • The any-benefit approach to network tool selection: “You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.”
  • The craftsman approach to tool selection: “Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your personal and professional life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.”
  • Apply the law of the vital few to your internet habits
    • Identify the main goals of your personal and professional lives, at a high level — but not overly specific, i.e. “x units moved in y time”
    • List for each goal 2 - 3 of the most important activities that can lead to achieving these goals
    • For each network tool, has it had a substantially positive impact on your most important activities? Keep it if it does; otherwise, discard it

  • The law of the vital few: “In many settings, 80% of a given effect is due to just 20% of the possible causes”

  • The packing party approach to quitting & mdash; stop using social media for 30 days [without announcing your intentions], then ask:
    1. Would the last 30 days have been notably better with that service?
    2. Did people care I was missing?
  • Don’t use the internet to entertain yourself
• Rule #4: Drain the Shallows
  • Getting a week’s worth of work done in four days at Basecamp
  • Schedule every minute of your day
    • But be flexible, please
  • Qualify the depth of every activity
    • How long [in months] would it take to train a smart, recent grad without specialized knowledge to do this task?
  • Ask your boss for a shallow work budget — What percentage of time should be spent on shallow work?
  • Finish your work by 5:30pm — fixed-schedule productivity
  • Become hard to reach
    1. Make people who send you email do more work
    2. Do more work when you send or reply to emails
       • “What is the project represented by this message, and what is the most efficient process for bringing this project to a successful conclusion?”
    3. Don’t respond