Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

“The Enlightenment’s metaphysical embrace of the autonomous individual leads not just to a boring life,” Dreyfus and Kelly worry; “it leads almost inevitably to a nearly unlivable one.”

“I’ll live the focused life, because it’s the best kind there is.”

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

There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration—that there is some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where… but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.

execution is more difficult than strategizing.

When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.

Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.

Don’t Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus.

To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.

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.