Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

If you can find some extra benefit in using a service like Facebook—even if it’s small—then why not use it? I call this way of thinking the any-benefit mind-set, as it identifies any possible benefit as sufficient justification for using a network tool. In more detail: The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection: 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. The problem with this approach, of course, is that it ignores all the negatives that come along with the tools in question. These services are engineered to be addictive—robbing time and attention from activities that more directly support your professional and personal goals (such as deep work). Eventually, if you use these tools enough, you’ll arrive at the state of burned-out, hyperdistracted connectivity that plagued Baratunde Thurston and millions of others like him. It’s here that we encounter the true insidious nature of an any-benefit mind-set. The use of network tools can be harmful. If you don’t attempt to weigh pros against cons, but instead use any glimpse of some potential benefit as justification for unrestrained use of a tool, then you’re unwittingly crippling your ability to succeed in the world of knowledge work. This conclusion, if considered objectively, shouldn’t be surprising. In the context of network tools, we’ve become comfortable with the any-benefit mind-set, but if we instead...

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