In order to cultivate a Deep Work habit, the author presents different approaches and practices that will help you master the art of working deeply.

First, define a philosophy for your deep work scheduling. Newport suggests different ways to incorporate depth, but the one that seemed more plausible for a student was the Rythmic Philosophy. It consists of having a rigurous routine for working deeply everyday for a set amount of time. This is inspired a bit by the Chain Method, popularized by Jerry Seinfeld. For example, spend one hour and a half every weekday learning a new technology.

Once you have decided on what approach you will take to make Deep Work a habit in your life, the author presents practices to be succesful in this endeavour. I will summarize it in 4 main tips.

1. Ritualize and execute.

Make a ritual out of your deep work sessions. Build a strategy that defines: Where you’ll work and for how long (e.g in the library for 2 hours straight), how you’ll work once you start to work (e.g turning off your phone, keeping track of progress, etc)and how you’ll support your work (make sure your brain can operate! e.g start with a cup of coffee).

Also to guide you toward effective action, Newport gives insight into a framework called “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” or 4DX. It focuses on HOW to execute business strategies, and the author describes how he adapted it to reach his goal of working deeply.

Here is an article about 4DX.

2. Embrace Boredom.

Allow yourself to be bored and give your mind a break, for example: quit the habit of checking social media everytime you feel bored. Even if you want to concentrate, it’s hard to shake off the addiction of on-demand distraction. “Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”

3. Cut down on social media.

Set a threshold on the time and attention that you spend on social media, and reduce the amount of tools like these that you use on a daily basis. Most of these tools provide little to no benefit to your life, but nonetheless we tend to have and use everything we can. That is what the author calls “The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection”, this means ignoring all the negatives that come along with these tools and just focus on the small extra benefit of using it.

Newport proposes a “Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection”. Which consists in only adopting those tools that have a positive impact on your life outweighing its negative effects. Stick to a set of a few tools, the vital ones, and don’t be afraid to go offline for a couple hours.

4. Schedule Your Day.

The book suggests to dedicate a page of a notebook everyday to schedule evey hour that you spend working or studying, dividing your workday into blocks that you can assign to activities. This schedule should guide you through the day and if you can’t keep it from breaking, just rewrite the blocks. The goal is to always have an idea of what you are doing with your time as the day unfolds.

This type of time structuring is really helpful when you have lots of things going on in your day. Taking 5 minutes to carefully write down what you will be spending time on can be surpisingly useful because it is easy to allow your time to go away when the day is open and without structure.