From the first second that we wake up in the morning we are tempted and distracted by many different things, one of the main things that cause distractions is our phones. In the book Deep Work, the author Cal Newport believes these distractions have a huge impact on our lives and having the ability to focus for long periods of time can help you stand out from the rest.

I recently read this book and here is my summary. If you would like your own copy you can get it here.

Deep Work And Shallow Work.

Shallow work is the tasks that you can do while you are distracted, like answering emails. Some shallow work is unavoidable but we should try to limit this kind of work as much as possible.

Deep work is what we should be trying to cultivate. Deep work is work that you do while you are extremely focused without distraction. Cal Newport believes that if you can increase the amount of deep work you have each day the more successful you will become.

After learning about this deep work concept a few months ago I have been trying to find ways to increase the amount of deep work I perform during the day. So far the results of doing this have been great. I can get so much more done when I am working on something without any distractions or breaks than I could have done otherwise.

In the book, Cal Newport talks about many things you can do to increase the amount of deep work you accomplish.

Attention Residue

“…when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.”

The idea of attention residue is one of the main reasons why working deeply for extended periods of time is so beneficial for our productivity.

This concept states that every time you’re switching from one task to another, a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the previous task. This makes it hard to work with the necessary focus and intensity required for deep work on the new task. As a result, you lose a little bit of productivity every time you switch tasks.

In the book, Cal mentions a study. Participants start off working on a set of word puzzles. half of the participants get interrupted while they or working on their puzzle and they are told they need to move on to a new and challenging task. In the other half, the researchers let the participants finish their puzzles first before the harder task. the researchers gave tests to the participants before they started working on the second task. The results showed that the group that was interrupted still had lingering thoughts about the puzzle they were previously working on. As a result , this group did worse on the second task.

So, if you are trying to increase your productive output, work for long periods of time with full concentration on a single task to avoid attention residue. In other words, work deeply.

The 4 rules of deep work

To maximize the amount of deep work you achieve you will need to use four principles :

Work Deeply Embrace Boredom Quit Social Media Drain the Shallows

1. Work Deeply

The amount of willpower we have slowly gets depleted from each decision we make throughout the day. We currently live in a world that actively tries to prevent deep work (this is also what makes deep work so valuable). In order to make things easier for us , we are going to need to add smart routines and habits into our working life.

In the book, Cal Newport talks about 4 strategies to introduce routines and rituals into our lives to enable us to do deep work on a regular basis.

Monastic: isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed

Bimodal: reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic. You need at least one day a week

Rhythmic : take three to four hours every day to perform deep work on your project

Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work and it fits your blocks of time. (Not recommended to try out first)

2. Embrace Boredom

Due to our fast-paced lives, we have very low attention spans. we have been re-wired to expect distractions. If we get the slightest feeling of boredom we just take out our smartphone to prevent it.

“To succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli.”

To solve this problem you can use a technique called productive meditation, This means you use your “unproductive” time to do deep thinking.

“The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally – walking, jogging, driving, showering – and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.”

The key to successful productive meditation is repeatedly returning your attention to the problem at hand and doing this whenever your mind wanders. You have to continually practice this in order to reap the benefits.

3. Quit Social Media

I personally don’t really use social media that much. So for me, it would be pretty easy to completely remove it from my life. however I do not do this, instead, I find ways to limit my access to social media and the internet while I’m working on something.

1. Track your time online – I use a software called rescue time. It keeps track of how you spend your time while you are using your computer.

3. Put up prevention barriers – 1. Turn of WiFi

4. set aside time for social media.

4. Drain the Shallows

Shallow work can be very destructive to even the most productive people. The problem is that people feel like they are getting a lot done when they do this shallow work but in reality , the things they are doing don’t really matter that much.

Quote: “Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated. This type of work is inevitable, but you must keep it confined to a point where it doesn’t impede your ability to take full advantage of the deeper efforts that ultimately determine your impact.”

Use a schedule to implement time blocking (link to a source for time blocking)

Try to batch tasks into time blocks instead of doing it throughout the day. Save things like emails and phone calls for a specific time of day.

Many people don’t like using schedules because they enjoy having their days being flexible. Try not to worry about sticking to your schedule to the tee. I normally adjust my schedules multiple times a day to fit my needs.

Ways I personally have increased the amount of deep work I have.

1. eliminating distractions – If something is a distraction for me and I have the ability to remove it from my life completely then I will try to do that.

Sometimes this can be hard to do when I find something that I don’t want to remove from my life completely I try to put barriers up that prevent me from impulsively getting distracted by something.

For instance, Video Games can be a big distraction for me because it is so easy to just jump into a game when I see my friends are also playing or when I am just bored. To combat this after I am done playing a game I uninstall it. This isn’t so I never play the game ever again. It is to give myself about a 20-minute barrier to playing video games because that is probably how long it would take to download.

This removes the impulsiveness of video games a lot for me.

2. Making it into a habit – I have read many books on how powerful habits can be and this is no exception when I first started creating periods of deep work was hard for me but slowly it started to get easier and my productivity skyrocketed. Useful tip: I always listen to music without lyrics while I perform deep work. Doing this acts as a catalyst that tells my brain it is time to do work, this is something I learned from a lecture by Marty Lobdell, in the video he talks about a study he did about this. You can learn more about this in a previous post I made here.

3. Making a daily schedule – Using a schedule just helps keep everything I want to work on organized. To make my schedules I use google calendar which is free and easy to use. (screenshot)

Get this book!

This book was a great read and I will give it 4 stars on my reading list. If you are interested in reading it as well you can pick up your own copy below. The book has a lot more information than what I posted here.

The author of this book cal Newport recently published another book and I will definitely be picking up a copy soon. You can find out more about that book on Amazon here.