When was the last time that you did work that was so immersive and focused that you lost track of time and space? If you’re like me, you probably don’t remember. Or if you do you’re possibly frustrated at the thought of how infrequent your ‘deep work’ sessions have been.
Well, welcome to the club! You are definitely not alone in identifying this problem. To help you with detailed diagnostics and helpful intervention, Cal Newport has laid out a clear case against the attention-draining world of distractions that we live in today, in his bestselling book titled Deep Work.
Get a copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692.
Why should you pursue deep work?
Here is the pager version of what this article is going to tell you: Deep work is important. Keep your phone away when you work. The banes of social media far outweigh its benefits. Plan your day to block long chunks of time to work deeply free from distractions. Busyness does not equal meaningful work that drives change.
In his book, Newport provides a compelling case for why a habit of working deeply is important not only in an economic sense due to its rarity and the value that it generates, but also for the sense of purpose and satisfaction that comes from it.
He elaborates on this point with the example of the modern blacksmith, for whom the deep work involved in making swords from bygone eras is a source of deep meaning and content. This essence of the philosophical argument is captured in a Matthew Crawford quote that Newport himself cites in the book: “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy”.
Alright, I can see why deep work is important. How do I work more deeply?
In Part 2 of the book, Newport begins to discuss methods and strategies that one could use to weave in deep work into your life. For this, one has to decide on their deep work philosophy – depending upon one’s professional and personal life goals. You can choose to cut yourself completely from the world, deliberately making it difficult for anybody to gain access to your time, or you could introduce a habit of blocking away periods of the day for deep work without any distraction and still have time for others.
All these strategies tend towards the same contention: deep work is important for success and purpose, regardless of the specific variables pertaining to the type of work that you do. You can check out more of Cal’s work at his website: https://www.calnewport.com/. Here’s the link to his podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0e9lFr3AdJByoBpM6tAbxD.
Social media isn’t helping you
This leads us to specific strategies that one could use to tackle the problem of shallow work. The often debated and unresolved question of whether social media should be as important as it is today is something for which Newport dedicates an entire chapter. His conclusion: you’re better off without it. It drains your time and attention, affects your mental health for the worse, and it cannot replace meaningful real-life relationships. All of this in turn affects our capacity to concentrate and work deeply. Drain the shallows as much as you can.
5 Tips to cultivate a Deep Work habit
Here are a few practical suggestions that you can employ to improve and further deepen your deep work habit:
If you can stick to it, plan every minute of the day. Of course, this is something that you should play around with as there are a lot of ways to go about day planning. Time-blocking is something that Newport uses for deep work and productivity — I have tried this myself and have found that it does not suit me; I use to-do lists, and have a system for how I use them.
Review your day at the end of the day to maintain accountability. Keeping score goes a long way to wire a deep work habit into your brain. I use a journal almost like a real-life accountability partner. Journalling helps me to identify patterns, both beneficial and harmful, for more long-term growth.
Find a physical space that you dedicate only for working deeply. Only have things that improve your capacity to meaningfully engage in deep work around you. Keep your phone away. Get water and snacks for when you’re hungry and need a break. In addition, add things to this cordoned-off space with things that might help you to increase the quality of your deep-work time.
Practice meditation and become comfortable with boredom. I know that meditation is an all-too-easy prescription in the self-help world, but this actually spotlights an important point: how your deep work capacity is influenced by other facets and practices in your life. The underlying mechanism, however, is the same: if you give in to distractions all the time, you won’t be able to tap into your deep-work potential. Like most things, you can’t isolate this problem.
Eat healthily, sleep well, and try to add habits to your routine that would bolster your effort to work more deeply. Building upon the previous point, I’d like to say that things work in tandem to give momentum to your attempt to bring about change in your life. You likely won’t see immediate results but keep at it. Troubleshoot when you notice that things are not going exactly as you planned them.
These are just a few things to keep in mind whilst you begin to bring about change to the way that you approach work in your own life. Be sure to expect challenges along the way; it isn’t meant to be easy. Don’t get frustrated because things don’t go according to plan.
Let’s get it!
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