Unit 2 Inspiration: Book Project

Veronica Flores

Arizona State University

OGL 482: Pro Seminar II

March 30, 2024

 For my book project, I chose to read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. This book is

all about how to focus on specific work goals for people who live in a busy world. Newport talks

about how it can feel impossible to feel successful at work when we are always doing shallow

work. To understand the rest of the paper, I am going to define shallow work and deep work as

defined by Newport. “Deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free

concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new

value, improve your skills, and are hard to replicate” (Newport, 2016, p.3). This is talking about

the time that we can be most productive during the day. “Shallow work: Noncognitively

demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not

create much value in the world and are easy to replicate” (Newport, 2016, p.6). I chose to read

this book because it was highly recommended by my mom who swears by the routine. She often

has trouble balancing her workload and has implemented some of the techniques from the book.

Since I am similar to her in certain aspects of the workspace, I figured there could be tools that

are beneficial for me as well.

Deep work is an important part of being productive during the day and focusing only on

the task at hand in a distraction-free environment. Being able to produce the best work you are

capable of in a specified amount of time means that you are going to have to learn deep work.

Newport talks about how valuable deep work is especially in our society where we are constantly

developing new technologies that take work to understand. Newport has an idea “The Deep

Work Hypothesis: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the

same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who

cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive” (Newport, 2016,

p.14). He mentions that there are people who are naturally creative and work well with
technology and will easily be able to adapt, but those who struggle with this can still be on the

same level as them with work.

My review of this book in its entirety is that it is a helpful book that brings awareness to

an issue that is not necessarily talked about. As technology has advanced, people have been

forced to adapt to new environments or be left behind. Those who have adapted quickly are able

to be successful because they have the ability to pick up new things quickly. For example, people

who have been successful in the social media industry were at the forefront of the curve in

setting trends for others to follow. He talks about how hard it is for people to learn how to utilize

deep work. Focusing on work can take a lot of brain power and it should be done earlier in the

day. Newport’s four tips for following the deep work method are to work deeply, embrace

boredom, quit social media, and drain the shallows.

To work deeply means to take time to focus on the work without any other distractions,

and in this section, Newport also talks about the importance of downtime to contribute to deep

work. Embracing boredom is the idea that you need to allow yourself to be bored in order to

focus otherwise you will unintentionally keep your mind busy. Quitting social media is

self-explanatory, but it is because of all of the negative effects that social media has on the user.

Many successful people do not see social media as beneficial because of the time wasted and

meaningless interactions. Draining the shallows is essentially listing your whole day and

prioritizing the tasks that need to be done and the ones that can be pushed back should the day

get away from you. All of these tips are beneficial for learning to implement deep work in daily

life. I would describe this book to others by mentioning how they can use the skills taught in the

book to become more productive in their lives. I would also mention that this book is a good

realization of the reality of living in such a busy world. I would recommend this book to a
colleague or student who is focused on learning organizational leadership studies because this

book can be applied to many different professions.

The three lessons that resonated with me the most are the idea of social media being

meaningless, the idea that deep work is rare, and the techniques of how to work deeply. Social

media has slowly taken over every aspect of our lives, both at home and at work. The book talks

about the culture of connectivity and how we have been accustomed to believing that we need to

reply quickly, especially when it comes to work. We are expected to reply to people quickly

through both email and instant messaging, and it could be considered rude not to reply quickly.

Newport talks about a study done by Leslie Perlow at Harvard Business School who asked her

participants to take a day out of the week to be completely off any communication. They worried

that they were jeopardizing their careers by doing this, but found positive results. “The

consultants found more enjoyment in their work, better communication among themselves, more

learning, and a better product delivered to the client” (Newport, 2016, p.54). In a business

setting it can be easier to try to send an email to get an answer to a question quickly, but doing

deep work on your own can help you stay focused.

Social media is a distraction from work even email and instant messaging. It is more

beneficial to set aside time in the morning to do some early deep work when the brain is the most

fresh, without any distractions. The book mentions how successful executives believe that the

use of social media is a waste of time. One famous person was quoted saying how people in real

life get sick enough of him talking, let alone all the people on social media who would see

pointless comments throughout the day. The book talks about taking thirty days off of all forms

of social media including emails and see if there is a change in productivity. Then you are

supposed to ask yourself if you were more productive and if anyone noticed you took time off of
social media. If the two answers are no then you should quit using social media to continue being

productive, but if the answers are yes then you should return to using social media. This is a

good way to tell if you should step away from social media in both work and personal life.

Being able to implement this social media experiment takes discipline which is an

important part of the entire process of deep work as a whole. One obvious point made in the

point is that deep work is rare in today’s society. Deep work is a skill that is not promoted by

many companies, in fact, the opposite is often encouraged. To be engaged in the community by

replying to messages or having office spaces that are shared provides many more distractions

throughout the day. Most companies want their employees to produce results and pressure their

employees to perform in these conditions. People have had to adapt to learning things quickly

and potentially not in the most effective way in order to be successful. Newport makes the point

that deep work is not necessarily good for business, but good for the individual. “Deep work is

hard and shallow work is easier, and our culture has developed a belief that if a behavior relates

to ‘the internet’ then it’s good regardless of its impact on our ability to produce valuable things”

(Newport, 2016, p.70). Therefore this book is beneficial for the individual to learn to implement

in their work life. The last main point that resonated with me after reading this book was the

rules for implementing deep work, which are the four rules mentioned above: work deeply,

embrace boredom, quit social media, and drain the shallows.

The reason these resonated with me more than any other point was because I can see how

the world is surrounded by technology and how we are distracted by everything. This goes for

work and personal life because we are all tied to our phones with all the access we have. My

sister-in-law has a job where she has the privilege to work from home four days a week and be in

the office one day a week. Most days she can go anywhere she wants or needs because she has
her phone with her meaning she has access to all of her work in her hand. Sometimes we will go

out to lunch and she will answer emails quickly or pause to make a phone call. On the other

hand, when I go out to a restaurant I notice how there are so many people that look at their phone

the entire time instead of engaging in conversation. We live in a time where social media has

taken over our lives, and it translates to the workplace as well.

We also live in a time when people do not want to work anymore. There are so many

places that are saying they need help plus there's the nursing shortage that is occurring right now

because so many people are leaving jobs. I think they are finding online jobs or becoming

entrepreneurs. Ever since small online businesses have been created, they have increased to the

point where we have so many options like Etsy for example. Another factor that contributed to

the idea that people do not want to work was the pandemic. When the world shut down,

everything was forced to move to a work-from-home environment, and I think that let people

know that this is possible. When the time came for people to return to work anytime from six

months to two years later, people had become comfortable working from home. Productivity has

decreased along with motivation, and performing deep work takes a lot of work.

The steps to work deeply resonated with me because they explained exactly the best way

for me to apply the work to my own life. My mom shared this book with me with the intention of

showing me how she has been able to transform her work life. The problem that my mom now

has is that she feels like most of her day consists of deep work because that is just the nature of

her job, new things are always being added to her plate. Therefore, she feels very drained at the

end of the day because she has been putting so much into her work all day. Now she just has to

work on taking time to have activities that are mindless in her afternoons to make up for the deep

work she did in the morning. I understand that the best time to work is in the morning when the
brain is the freshest, and it is important to set aside the time that you are working to be free of

distractions. Quitting social media, including email, isn't something that would be the best for

my job because I need to be in contact with my team. However, it would be beneficial in my

personal life because I spend a lot of time on social media when I could be productive in other

areas of my life.

The book that I chose to write about for my project connects to organizational leadership

courses because it shows how to be productive in the workplace. As a leader, I am in a position

to make changes within my team. Learning new skills that will benefit my team is important and

I can share with them how to be beneficial using deep work. Taking a note from Leslie’s page, I

could also request that my team take a day off of messaging to better their results. This way

everyone would be on the same page. In OGL 365, the Integrated Worker, there is a module that

focuses on counterproductive workplace behaviors. This book could help combat certain

counterproductive work behaviors because it will allow the workers to take off some of the stress

that is placed on them by all the communication.

I believe that this book relates to the symbolic frame from Pro-seminar I because it is

centered around building an idea. The idea is that deep work is important to implement as a

worker and the symbolic frame is about creating an idea of the organization in other people’s

heads. In a sense, how is this organization going to conduct itself compared to other

organizations? Being a leader in an organization means that you can set the tone for the way that

you want people to work and this will in turn create a standard of practice that differs from the

general idea of work.

This book differs from anything I have learned while working on my organizational

leadership degree because it takes the focus off of the main part of the work. Most jobs want you
to have high productivity with mediocre working conditions as far as distractions are concerned.

This book talks about the benefits of getting rid of all distractions in the workplace and how that

can be beneficial for each individual. Companies are trying to find new ways to do things as far

as technology goes, which is a good thing, but we have to be prepared to do the deep work to

learn how to use these tools in a beneficial way. The main difference between this book and the

things that I have learned this far, is that we should communicate less to be more effective. I have

had several classes that encourage collaboration through communication. However, I think that

there can be a healthy balance between having meaningful conversations less times than

constantly staying connected with meaningless information.

The part of the book that I most identify with is being glued to social media and

connections at work. I am a person who is easily distracted and I know this about myself. To be

able to get work done I know that I need to put my phone down and turn on Do Not Disturb. This

way I can check the emails that are coming in at my own pace when I am finished with a task

instead of right in the middle. When I see something pop up I feel the need to reply to it for

whatever reason, and it will take me off my path of work. It is normally quick and I can easily

get back on track. However, bearing in mind that deep work takes effort and the best hours are at

the beginning of the day, I can adjust my day to make sure that I am getting the important things

done first. Then in the afternoon when I have more time I can check the less important things

like emails. Another good point of doing this is that most emails come in the morning so by the

afternoon I can reply to everyone that I need to before I am done with work for the day.

This book has impacted my idea of leadership by allowing me to have solutions for the

things that we may not think about. In order to be successful we are required to create a certain

amount of work by a certain time. This method can help people understand the way that our
brains work and work with the natural cycle of our day rather than trying to do average work the

entire day. I would be interested to see this information compared between men and women.

Men have the sun cycle so they are naturally more productive in the morning, while women have

monthly energy cycles with the moon. I am curious to see if they would be even more productive

with the deep work method on top of already being productive in the morning.

This book can make a difference in my future career because I can use the techniques to

plan my day to benefit my brain in the morning. I think the other big impact for me is the social

media aspect and making sure that I am staying off of my email in the morning to remain

productive. I am the type of person who needs to have some type of noise in the background or

else I cannot work, but sometimes this can backfire and distract me as well. The most important

thing for me in the future is going to be figuring out how to remain focused on my work even

with no distractions. My mind will just wander if I have nothing to focus on, so I need to make

sure I have a set playlist or listen to white noise in the background so that I am not distracted

trying to change songs.

If I could ask the author one question, I would ask what made them decide to look into

this. Was it because he was realizing this information about himself or did he notice it in others

and decide to find out more information? This would only add to my understanding of the

reasoning behind the information, but it is not super important. I would also want to know how

he found out about deep work and if he implements it in his daily life.

Deep Work is a book about taking the time to structure your day around focusing on the

hard tasks with no distractions at the start of the day to be the most productive. In doing so you

are working at peak performance to get the best results, and this method can be used at any level

in an organization. The author, Cal Newport, talks about how important deep work is but how
rare it is in today’s society. Many people go about their day working at the same pace and

continually being distracted by different things that pop up. Therefore, he gives four rules for

making a change to benefit your productivity and make the work easier on your mind. In the end,

this method of deep work has seen positive results in motivating people to continue to perform

this method.
 Works Cited

Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand

Central Publishing.