Deep Work Quotes

“The journalist Mason Currey, who spent half a decade cataloging the habits of famous thinkers and writers (and from whom I learned the previous two examples), summarized this tendency toward systematization as follows:”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“As revealed in a 2009 magazine profile, “every inch of [Caro’s] New York office is governed by rules.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“depth and meaning.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“From Descartes’s skepticism came the radical belief that the individual seeking certainty trumped a God or king bestowing truth.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“refrigerated supply chain logistics company.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Knowledge work exchanges this clarity for ambiguity. It can be hard to define exactly what a given knowledge worker does and how it differs from another”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“that network tools are distracting us from work that requires unbroken concentration, while simultaneously degrading our capacity to remain focused.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell your personal information and attention to advertisers.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“If you give your mind something meaningful to do throughout all your waking hours, you’ll end the day more fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured Web surfing.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“carefully crafted titles and easily digestible content, often honed by algorithms to be maximally attention catching.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“even though he doesn’t particularly enjoy his work (seeing it as something to “get through”), “he persists in looking upon those hours from ten to six as ‘the day,’ to which the ten hours preceding them and the six hours following them are nothing but a prologue and epilogue.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“You “like” my status update and I’ll “like” yours.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“I’ll pay attention to what you say if you pay attention to what I say—regardless of its value.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“companies that profit from your attention have succeeded with a masterful marketing coup: convincing our culture that if you don’t use their products you might miss out.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“personalized information arriving on an unpredictable intermittent schedule”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“If you service low-impact activities, therefore, you’re taking away time you could be spending on higher-impact activities. It’s a zero-sum game.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Assuming that you could probably list somewhere between ten and fifteen distinct and potentially beneficial activities for each of your life goals, this law says that it’s the top two or three such activities—the number that this strategy asks you to focus on—that make most of the difference in whether or not you succeed with the goal.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Identifying what matters most in your life,”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“These services are engineered to be addictive”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“collectively call “network tools”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“ability to maintain their focus on essential information.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“This cycle of reviewing and storing variables, identifying and tackling the next-step question, then consolidating your gains is like an intense workout routine for your concentration ability.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“your mind, as it was evolved to do, will attempt to avoid excess expenditure of energy when possible.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“forcing you to resist distraction and return your attention repeatedly to a well-defined problem, it helps strengthen your distraction-resisting muscles,”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“resist switching to these distractions at the slightest hint of boredom.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“you can allow time-sensitive communication into your offline blocks (e.g., texting with a friend to agree on where you’ll meet for dinner), as well as time-sensitive information retrieval (e.g., looking up the location of the restaurant on your phone).”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World