Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.

professional satisfaction, Dreyfus and Kelly’s interpretation of craftsmanship as a path to meaning provides a nuanced understanding of why the work of those like Ric Furrer resonates with so many of us. The look of satisfaction on Furrer’s face as he works to extract artistry from crude metals, these philosophers would argue, is a look expressing appreciation for something elusive and valuable in modernity: a glimpse of the sacred.

Consider this quote from the coding prodigy Santiago Gonzalez describing his work to an interviewer: Beautiful code is short and concise, so if you were to give that code to another programmer they would say, “oh, that’s well written code.” It’s much like as if you were writing a poem.

Whether you’re a writer, marketer, consultant, or lawyer: Your work is craft, and if you hone your ability and apply it with respect and care, then like the skilled wheelwright you can generate meaning in the daily efforts of your professional life.

It’s here that some might respond that their knowledge work job cannot possibly become such a source of meaning because their job’s subject is much too mundane. But this is flawed thinking that our consideration of traditional craftsmanship can help correct. In our current culture, we place a lot of emphasis on job description. Our obsession with the advice to “follow your passion” (the subject of my last book), for example, is motivated by the (flawed) idea that what matters most for your career satisfaction is the specifics of the job you choose. In this way of thinking, there are some rarified jobs that can be a source of satisfaction—perhaps working in a nonprofit or starting a software company—while all others are soulless and bland. The philosophy of Dreyfus and Kelly frees us from such traps. The craftsmen they cite don’t have rarified jobs. Throughout most of human history, to be a blacksmith or a wheelwright wasn’t glamorous. But this doesn’t matter, as the specifics of the work are irrelevant. The meaning uncovered by such efforts is due to the skill and appreciation inherent in craftsmanship—not the outcomes of their work. Put another way, a wooden wheel is not noble, but its shaping can be. The same applies to knowledge work. You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work.

A deep life is a good life, any way you look at it.

ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia (a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential),

“The goal of the machine,” David explained, “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.”

It is, in other words, a space designed for the sole purpose of enabling the dee...

For now, the Eudaimonia Machine exists only as a collection of architectural drawings,

you’re a disciple of depth in a shallow world.

You might not have access to your own Eudaimonia Machine, but the strategies that follow will help you simulate its effects in your otherwise distracted professional life.

Unfortunately, when it comes to replacing distraction with focus, matters are not so simple. To understand why this is true let’s take a closer look at one of the main obstacles to going deep: the urge to turn your attention toward something more superficial. Most people recognize that this urge can complicate efforts to concentrate on hard things, but most underestimate its regularity and strength.

People fight desires all day long.

The five most common desires these subjects fought include, not surprisingly, eating, sleeping, and sex. But the top five list also included desires for “taking a break from [hard] work … checking e-mail and social networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music, or watching television.” The lure of the Internet and television proved especially strong: The subjects succeeded in resisting these particularly addictive distractions only around half the time.

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

over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits.

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.

If you suddenly decide, for example, in the middle of a distracted afternoon spent Web browsing, to switch your attention to a cognitively demanding task, you’ll draw heavily from your finite willpower to wrest your attention away from the online shininess. Such attempts will therefore frequently fail.

Decide on Your Depth Philosophy

You need your own philosophy for integrating deep work into your professional life.

(As argued in this rule’s introduction, attempting to schedule deep work in an ad hoc fashion is not an effective way to manage your limited willpower.)

monastic philosophy

Is this what Jack should deploy for his portfolio or website building?

This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

Persons who wish to interfere with my concentration are politely requested not to do so, and warned that I don’t answer e-mail… lest [my communication policy’s] key message get lost in the verbiage, I will put it here succinctly: All of my time and attention are spoken for—several times over. Please do not ask for them.

The bimodal philosophy believes that deep work can produce extreme productivity, but only if the subject dedicates enough time to such endeavors to reach maximum cognitive intensity—the

Grant remained famously open and accessible. In some sense, he had to be: His 2013 bestseller, Give and Take, promotes the practice of giving of your time and attention, without expectation of something in return, as a key strategy in professional advancement.

Buy and read

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

He keeps a calendar on his wall. Every day that he writes jokes he crosses out the date on the calendar with a big red X. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld said. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

Implement this

Another common way to implement the rhythmic philosophy is to replace the visual aid of the chain method with a set starting time that you use every day for deep work. In much the same way that maintaining visual indicators of your work progress can reduce the barrier to entry for going deep, eliminating even the simplest scheduling decisions, such as when during the day to do the work, also reduces this barrier.

To this day, my uncle remembers Isaacson’s impressive work habits: It was always amazing … he could retreat up to the bedroom for a while, when the rest of us were chilling on the patio or whatever, to work on his book … he’d go up for twenty minutes or an hour, we’d hear the typewriter pounding, then he’d come down as relaxed as the rest of us … the work never seemed to faze him, he just happily went up to work when he had the spare time. Isaacson was methodic: Any time he could find some free time, he would switch into a deep work mode and hammer away at his book.

I call this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the journalist philosophy.

This approach is not for the deep work novice. As I established in the opening to this rule, the ability to rapidly switch your mind from shallow to deep mode doesn’t come naturally. Without practice, such switches can seriously deplete your finite willpower reserves. This habit also requires a sense of confidence in your abilities—a conviction that what you’re doing is important and will succeed. This type of conviction is typically built on a foundation of existing professional accomplishment.

Ritualize

“every inch of [Caro’s] New York office is governed by rules.” Where he places his books, how he stacks his notebooks, what he puts on his wall, even what he wears to the office: Everything is specified by a routine that has varied little over Caro’s long career. “I trained myself to be organized,” he explained.

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.

In a New York Times column on the topic, David Brooks summarizes this reality more bluntly: “[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”

This strategy suggests the following: To make the most out of your deep work sessions, build rituals of the same level of strictness and idiosyncrasy as the important thinkers

Where you’ll work and for how long. Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts.

• How you’ll work once you start to work. Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured.

How you’ll support your work. Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth.

These questions will help you get started in crafting your deep work ritual. But keep in mind that finding a ritual that sticks might require experimentation, so be willing to work at it.

Don’t Work Alone

Execute Like a Business

Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important

As the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, “The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.”

I am finding this out and it has really stumped me that I am not getting ahead in my backlog

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation to “spend more time working deeply” doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. To instead have a specific goal that would return tangible and substantial professional benefits will generate a steadier stream of enthusiasm. In a 2014 column titled “The Art of Focus,” David Brooks endorsed this approach of letting ambitious goals drive focused behavior, explaining: “If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.”

For example, when I first began experimenting with 4DX, I set the specific important goal of publishing five high-quality peer-reviewed papers in the upcoming academic year. This goal was ambitious, as it was more papers than I had been publishing, and there were tangible rewards attached to it (tenure review was looming). Combined, these two properties helped the goal stoke my motivation.

I’ve bought the book

Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures

Once you’ve identified a wildly important goal, you need to measure your success. In 4DX, there are two types of metrics for this pur...