Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things.

The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

I’m comfortable being bored, and this can be a surprisingly rewarding skill—especially

The High-Skilled Workers

“The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?”

The Superstars

Once the talent market is made universally accessible, those at the peak of the market thrive while the rest suffer.

The rapid rise of communication and collaboration technologies has transformed many other formerly local markets into a similarly universal bazaar. The

The Owners

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.

If you can join any of these groups, therefore, you’ll do well. If you cannot, you might still do well, but your position is more precarious.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy 1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

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

deliberate practice.

(1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.

using the mind like a lens to focus rays of attention,

A good chief executive is essentially a hard-to-automate decision engine,

if you’re a high-level executive at a major company, you probably don’t need the advice in the pages that follow.

Just because your current habits make deep work difficult doesn’t mean that this lack of depth is fundamental to doing your job well.

To return to our question about why cultures of connectivity persist, the answer, according to our principle, is because it’s easier.

in the absence of metrics, most people fall back on what’s easiest.

Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

technopoly,

Deep work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and nontechnological.

deep work can generate as much satisfaction in an information economy as it so clearly does in a craft economy.

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

your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to,

“concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.”)

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

flow

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.