Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.

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

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

we live in an era where anything Internet related is understood by default to be innovative and necessary.

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

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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 to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”

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Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets … it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

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Tim Ferriss once wrote: “Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If