Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

If you can create something useful, its reachable audience (e.g., employers or customers) is essentially limitless—which greatly magnifies your reward. On the other hand, if what you’re producing is mediocre, then you’re in trouble, as it’s too easy for your audience to find a better alternative online.

To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing—a task that requires depth.

This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated.

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

what we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore—plays in defining the quality of our life.

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

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

your ability to concentrate is only as strong as your commitment to train it.

Schedule every minute of your day.

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