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Notes on ‘Deep Work’

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I have finally read the book Deep Work where he describes the reasons and methods for focussing on maximizing “deep” work over “shallow” work. From the popularity of this book and my own experience with some of the strategies explained in the book, I believe it is worthwhile to experiment with Newport’s proposed system. To this end, I have compiled abbreviated notes of the book here with a focus on the methods, only mentioning the reasoning if it is critical for implementation. I have appended implementation notes for myself at the end of the post.


Definitions – key terms and ideas
Part I. The Idea – why care about deep work
Part II. The Rules – how to do deep work
Personal Implementation Notes – my personal notes on how accomplish deep work


Definitions

deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These effects create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate (pg. 3).

shallow work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate (pg. 6).

deliberate practice: Deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain (pg. 34).

attention residue: When switching between tasks, it takes time for our brains to fully switch attention to the new task. Instead, our brain keeps thinking about the first task (pg. 42).

metric black hole: Metrics about the “bottom-line impact of depth-destroying behaviors… fall into an opaque region resistant to easy measurement,” (pg. 55). An example is the amount of time spent on emails by employees.

principle of least resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment (pg. 58). An example is setting up regular meetings.

the any-benefit approach to network tool selection: You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible effect to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it (pg. 186).

the craftsman approach to tool selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal like. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts (pg. 191).

fixed-schedule productivity: Fix the firm foal of not working past a certain time, then work backward to find the productivity strategies that allow me to satisfy this declaration (pg. 236).

Part I. The Idea

Ch 1. Deep Work is Valuable

Ch 2. Deep Work is Rare

Ch 3. Deep Work is Meaningful

Part II. The Rules

Rule 1. Work Deeply

Strategy 1. Decide on your depth philosophy

Strategy 2. Ritualize

Strategy 3. Make grand gestures

Strategy 4. Don’t work alone

Strategy 5. Execute like a business

Strategy 6. Be lazy

Rule 2. Embrace Boredom

Strategy 1. Don’t take breaks from distraction, instead take breaks from focus

Strategy 2. Work like Teddy Roosevelt

Strategy 3. Meditate productively

Strategy 4. Memorize a deck of cards

Rule 3. Quit Social Media

Rule 4. Drain the Shallows

Strategy 1. Schedule every minute of your day

Strategy 2. Quantify the depth of every activity

Strategy 3. Ask your boss for a shallow work budget

Strategy 4. Finish your work by five thirty

Strategy 5. Become hard to reach

  1. Make people who send you e-mail do more work by adding a few obstacles or other options (pg. 243)
  2. Do more work when you send or reply to emails by directly addressing the goal of the communication of taking steps to successfully completing it (pg. 248)
    • called “process-centric approach to email”
    • do not get stuck in back-and-forth
  3. Don’t respond to all emails; it’s the sender’s responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile
    • Professorial E-mail Sorting: do not reply to an email if any of the following applies:
      • it’s ambiguous or hard to generate a reasonable response
      • it’s uninteresting
      • nothing really good would happen if you did respond and nothing bad would happen if you didn’t

Personal Implementation Notes

The following are notes for myself and are specific to my implementation of Newports recommendations.

For my current job as a graduate student, I believe I should follow the rhythmic philosophy of deep work with the possibility for intermittent use of the bimodal philosophy when possible or if there is specific motivation to do so. For the moment, I require the flexibility of this system so that I can take care of the shallow tasks required by my employers.

I have multiple different types of deep activities, specifically reading scientific literature, learning new skills/classwork, coding, and reading less structured texts (e.g. software development blog posts). I think these different activities will require different rules for their execution. For instance, the method for reading a journal article is different from a blog post and the freedom to search the internet should be different for each, too. I may want to develop general guidelines for each type of common task that can then be augmented for the specifics of each individual activity.

With regards to the rituals and grand gestures, I should think of an assortment of good places to do work around Boston. For instance, the Boston Public Library or Countway Library at HMS are good starters. These kinds of spots help put me into the correct mood for deep work. I should think about the options for transportation, too, including the MBTA and M2 shuttle (which I can take up to MIT and Harvard Yard for free anytime). I am not sure what other “grand gestures” I could implement as I need to be cautious with money, but maybe I will find a few good ideas over time.

I need to take several steps and develop a few habits to accomplish the 4DX principles. For starters, I want to create a central location to keep track of my projects so that I can then choose from the list for each activity. Preferably this will be a physical object that I can have visible at all times. In a similar vein, I want to have a physical scoreboard so that it is easy to see and interact with. I think I should organize my whiteboard for this need.1

The next order of business is to create a shutdown ritual. When creating my own, I should start with an analog of the algorithm that Newport uses (pg. 152) and then adapt it over time to better suit me.

Two methods for improving my concentration that I want to experiment with are the “Rooseveltian method” (pg. 167) and “productive meditation” (pg. 170). Some experimentation with “Roosevelt dashes” sounds interesting and potentially fun. For the productive meditation, I am not sure I would use it while running or exercising because I use those as valuable relaxation and head-clearing time. But perhaps while walking to and from places, I can replace some podcasts with training my ability to concentrate.

With respect to social media, I am already pretty close to zero use. The only apps I use daily are iMessage/phone/FaceTime, Snapchat, and YouTube.2 I live in a different state from my family and girlfriend, so texting or calling are the only way to communicate with them. And I only use Snapchat to send a few light-hearted photos and videos to my girlfriend every now and then so they do not take up space on our phones. YouTube is probably my biggest time-suck, so I need to watch my consumption more. Relative to the average American, I do not think I use social networks very much, so I do not think I need to make many changes here. I will experiment with only checking texts and calls at scheduled times and making sure to turn off notifications while I am working.

I definitely have the problem of not structuring my leisure time, primarily when plans change in the evening and leave me with a gap in my schedule. My solution is to put together a list of activities, hobbies, chores, etc. to do in my free time then peruse the list when I find myself in this situation. That way I do not just fall to watching YouTube videos.

Turning to the last Rule on draining the shallows. I want to develop the habit of scheduling my day every morning. I used to do this with a slightly different strategy than Newport describes, but I will try his black-based method now as it sounds very attractive. Next, I want to begin scoring activities using the “college grad” test before and after the scheduled block. That way, I can work to improve in my estimation of the depth of an activity. I will need to integrate this scoring system into the scheduling and weekly review process. Lastly, I will set a strict end-of-day time at 5:30 pm. From my own experiences, I have felt the issues that Newport outlines with carrying work into the night and would like to try his method to alleviate them.

Other books

  1. The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
  2. Hamlet’s BlackBerry by William Powers
  3. The Tyranny of E-mail by John Freeman
  4. The Distraction Addiction by Alex Soojung-Kin Pang
  5. Getting Things Done by David Allen
  6. So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
  7. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
  8. A World Without Email by Cal Newport

Think about using Cal Newport’s “time-block” planner.

< section class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  1. Maybe a future project for myself is to create a simple app that does this for me. It could be as simple as a SwiftBar app or as complicated as a pair of macOS and iOS apps. ↩︎

  2. I do use Twitter, but I implement the Joe Rogan method of just posting if I publish something new and getting out. ↩︎

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