Cal Newport (2016) - Deep Work

INTRO

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 (p.6).

Network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while
simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused (p.10).

We have an information economy that's dependent on complex systems that change rapidly.
Some [technologies] didn't exist ten years ago and will likely be outdated ten years from now.
To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning
complicated things (p.15).

CHAPTER 1 - DEEP WORK IS VALUABLE

Brynjolfsson and McAfee's book, Race Against the Machine, provides a compelling case that
among various forces at play, it's the rise of digital technology in particular that's transforming
our labor markets in unexpected ways -the Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing
ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind (p.22).

Those with oracular ability to work with and tease valuable results out of increasingly complex
machines will thrive. The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent
machines or not? (p.24).

In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well
and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those
with access to capital (p.27).

To join the group of those who can work well with these machines, therefore, requires that
you hone your ability to master hard things. And because these technologies change rapidly,
this process of mastering hard things never ends: you must be able to do it quickly, again and
again (p.30).

CHAPTER 2 - DEEP WORK IS RARE

As knowledge work makes more complex demands of the labor force, it becomes harder to
measure the value of an individual's efforts (p.50).

It is objectively difficult to measure individual contributions to a firm's output. (...) Such metrics
fall into an opaque region resistant to easy measurement -the metric black hole (p.50).
The Principle of Least Resistance [doing what is easier at the moment], protected from scrutiny
by the metric black hole, supports work cultures save us from the short-term discomfort of
concentration and planning, at the expense of long-term satisfaction and the production of
real value (p.54).

Knowledge workers are tending toward increasingly visible busyness because they lack a better
way to demonstrate their value -"busyness as proxy for productivity" (p.57).

CHAPTER 3 - DEEP WORK IS MEANINGFUL

To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven
path to deep satisfaction (p.76).

CHAPTER 4 - RULE 1: WORK DEEPLY

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines
and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower
necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration (p.87).

"Great creative minds think like artists but work like accountants" (p.103). [Cited David Brooks]

Separate your pursuit of serendipitous encounters from your efforts to think deeply and build
on these inspirations. You should try to optimize each effort separately, as opposed to mixing
them together into a sludge that impedes both goals (p.116).

The division between what and how is crucial but is overlooked in the professional world. It's
often straightforward to identify a strategy needed to achieve a goal, but what trips up
companies is figuring out how to execute the strategy once identified (p.118).

"The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish" (p.118). [Cited the book "The 4
Disciplines of Execution"]

4 Disciplines of Execution:
- Focus on the Wildly Important
- Act on the Lead Measures (what really help make a change)
- Keep a Compelling Scoreboard (to track the measures)
- Create a Cadence of Accountability (regular reviews/meeting to check the evolution)

"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" (p.124). [Cited Tim Kreider]

A shutdown habit is not necessarily reducing the amount of time you're engaged in productive
work, but instead diversifying the type of work you deploy (p.127). [conscious and unconscious
thinking]

Individual's capacity for cognitively demanding work: for a novice, somewhere around an hour
a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand
to as many as four hours -but rarely more (p.130). [He mentioned a study by Ericsson (1993) -
the role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance"]

RULE 2 - EMBRACE BOREDOM

People who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy (p.138). [Cited Clifford Nass]

RULE 3 - QUIT SOCIAL MEDIA

Tool selection:
- The Any-Benefit Approach: 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
(p.161).
- The Craftsman Approach: identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in
your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors
substantially outweigh its negative impacts (p.165).

Put more thought into your leisure time. This strategy suggests that when it comes to your
relaxation, don't default to whatever catches your attention at the moment, but instead
dedicate some advance thinking to the question of how you want to spend your day (p.184).

RULE 4 - DRAIN THE SHALLOWS

Without structure, it's easy to allow your time to devolve into the shallow. This type of shallow
behavior, though satisfying in the moment, is not conductive to creativity. With structure, on
the other hand, you can ensure that you regularly schedule blocks to grapple with a new idea,
or work deeply on something challenging -the type of commitment more likely to instigate
innovation (p.196).

CONCLUSION

Nothing.