Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow (whether you think it’s philosophically good or bad) is exposing a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth—an opportunity that, not too long ago, was leveraged by a bored young consultant from Virginia named Jason Benn.

To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work.

As intelligent machines improve, and the gap between machine and human abilities shrinks, employers are becoming increasingly likely to hire “new machines” instead of “new people.”

“The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?”

Intelligent machines are not an obstacle to Silver’s success, but instead provide its precondition.

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.

The the groups who will win in this economy

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy 1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.

attention residue.

when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.

The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance.

“A ‘free and frictionless’ method of communication,” Cochran summarized, “had soft costs equivalent to procuring a small company Learjet.”

Sending and responding to emails cost Atlantic media millions of dollars

The 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.

technopoly,

If it’s high-tech, we began to instead assume, then it’s good.

we’ve made “the Internet” synonymous with the revolutionary future of business and government.

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.

Deep work, therefore, is key to extracting meaning from your profession in the manner described by Dreyfus and Kelly.

eudaimonia

“is to create a setting where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that’s at the absolute extent of their personal abilities.” Newport, Cal. Deep Work (p. 95). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

People fight desires all day long.

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.

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

This is why the minimum unit of time for deep work in this philosophy tends to be at least one full day.

when pursuing innovation—collaborative deep work can yield better results.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution,

Downtime Aids Insights

By way of Unconscious Thought Theory, which suggests that unconscious deliberation of a problem is sometimes useful in solving a problem

trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.

Zeigarnik effect.

the ability of incomplete tasks to dominate our attention.

Attention Restoration Therapy - Use of an “inherently fascinating stimuli” like walkinh in nature to restore your attentiveness

The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: 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.

Keep using this tool only if you concluded that it has substantial positive impacts and that these outweigh the negative impacts.

After thirty days of this self-imposed network isolation, ask yourself the following two questions about each of the services you temporarily quit: 1. Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this service? 2. Did people care that I wasn’t using this service?

deep work habit requires you to treat your time with respect.

Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your workday.