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.

Peter Higgs, a theoretical physicist

it was announced he had won the Nobel Prize.

Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

There are two reasons for this value. The first has to do with learning. We have an information economy that’s dependent on complex systems that change rapidly.

The second reason that deep work is valuable is because the impacts of the digital network revolution cut both ways. 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.

superpower of the 21st century.”

Race Against the Machine,

Average Is Over

Let’s pull together the threads spun so far: Current economic thinking, as I’ve surveyed, argues that the unprecedented growth and impact of technology are creating a massive restructuring of our economy. In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: 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 ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.

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

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

The two core abilities just described depend on your ability to perform deep work.

The two core abilities just described depend on your ability to perform deep work.

The dependence of these abilities on deep work

it requires a closer look at the science of learning, concentration, and productivity.

The Intellectual Life, Sertillanges argues that to advance your understanding of your field you must tackle the relevant topics systematically, allowing your “converging rays of attention” to uncover the truth latent in each.

To learn requires intense concentration

deliberate practice.

we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”

Ericsson and the other researchers in his field are not interested in why deliberate practice works; they’re just identifying it as an effective behavior.

The Talent Code

The Talent Code,

these scientists increasingly believe the answer includes myelin—a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner. To understand the role of myelin in improvement, keep in mind that skills, be they intellectual or physical, eventually reduce down to brain circuits. This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allow...

This understanding is important because it provides a neurological foundation for why deliberate practice works. By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapp...

The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neura...

By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly t...

if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to i...

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction.

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

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

attention residue.

The problem this research identifies with this work strategy is that 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.

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“People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task,” and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance.

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To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If

Deep work is not the only skill valuable in our economy, and it’s possible to do well without fostering this ability, but the niches where this is advisable are increasingly rare.

“A ‘free and frictionless’ method of communication

Google Scholar, a tool popular among academics for finding research papers,

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.

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

University of North Carolina psychologist Barbara Fredrickson: a researcher who specializes in the cognitive appraisal of emotions. After a bad or disrupting occurrence in your life, Fredrickson’s research shows, what you choose to focus on exerts significant leverage on your attitude going forward.

These simple choices can provide a “reset button” to your emotions.

skillful use of these emotional “leverage points” can generate a significantly more positive outcome after negative events.

Gallagher’s grand theory

“Five years of reporting on attention have confirmed some home truths,”

when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what’s right.”