140 Character Summary: Deep Work purposes the only way we can accomplish meaningful work is with uninterrupted, intensive focus on one thing and it teaches us how.
Here are the notes I took for myself while reading (aka listening) to the book:
Cal starts out by saying the way to get ahead in today’s environment is by
Mastering hard things quickly
Producing at an elite level in terms of quality and speed
In today’s corporate environment, people get a false sense of accomplishment and productivity by the number of emails that they send each day. Because it’s extremely hard to realize the value that you bring to your huge organization, people default back to a widget per hour metric like they measured during the industrial revolution times. From that standpoint, I can tell you that I’m doing a good job because I read X number of emails today and sent X out. This unfortunately is a very dumb metric.
Cal explains that the only way to truly accomplish elite level work is by engaging in what he calls “Deep Work.”
So what is Deep Work?
This is long, uninterrupted stretches of intense, focused work which in turn produces high value, high quality results. It can come in the form of a learning a new subject, finish writing a book, solving a complex equation or problem, or anything where something of meaningful is accomplished. Cal says this is extremely rare in today’s time and thus a gamechanger for anyone that can accomplish it.
In my opinion, the key aspect to achieve Deep Work is to be free of distraction. Cal points out numerous distractions that we all face every single day. And I for one am guilty of all of them; phone notifications, new emails, Facebook, Instagram, Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post, and really any other website with those addictive clickbait headlines.
Now it’s going to be pretty much impossible for you to jump in and try to accomplish long stretches and many hours of deep work without developing any type of deep work muscles. So Cal teaches a couple ways to begin to form these habits.
[I found myself absolutely awful at trying to stay focused on a single task and found this book speaking directly to me]
Developing Deep Work Muscles
Cal recommends you creating a daily practice in which you focus on deep work, even if it’s for a short amount of time. This daily practice is a common habit that I’m beginning to notice amongst highly successful people. Most great writers aim to write a mere 100 words every day because they know once they get into the groove, you actually end up writing several hundred if not thousands of words once you get going.
Elite Work = time spent on task * intense focus
Refrain
You also need to overcome your desire for a distraction. He literally means “embrace the boredom.” By resisting the urge to check your smart phone when you have to wait 15 seconds to ride up three floors on an elevator, your Concentration muscles will slowly but surely build up your ability to focus on deep work when you need to.
Upon finishing this book, I began to block off time to Focus on deep work and found I could not go more than a minute without checking my phone for a possible text message or new email or knew something to appease my attention. It’s apparent that my focus muscle is extremely weak. : (
How to train your mind to focus on deep work:
Don’t take breaks from distractions, take breaks from focus. Many people will try to schedule time for deep work amongst the busyness of life. Instead, schedule the busyness of life around your deep work. The subtle change will strengthening your focus muscles and will allow you to resist the urge to reach for a smart phone or start browsing the Internet. So during a working session, go ahead and write down the next time you are allowed to use your phone so that way you know when you can check your notifications, etc.
The goal is not to eliminate your usage of a connected device, but rather the urge to reach for one at the slightest hint that you may be bored. And extremely common example would be when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store. By resisting the urge to reach for your smart phone, you are building up your focus muscles.
A novice’s individual capacity of intense concentration is capped at about an hour a day. While an elite person can only handle about 4 hours of intense concentration. So your daily deep work capacity is limited.
To help Cal keep himself honest with not working nights and weekends, he performs an end of day ritual that I have also adopted:
Write down all the tasks and thoughts you weren’t able to accomplish today and schedule them for the next day or so.
Review your upcoming schedule so that you don’t have any surprises.
Once you’ve scheduled everything and cleared your work brain, turn off your computer, your work email from your phone, and go home. (I will also do a 10 minute meditation once I get home to really clear my mind) if you don’t clear your mind, you will think about it all evening and never give yourself a mental break.
Other random tidbits I picked up from the book include:
Willpower is limited and gets depleted as you use it. By Roy Balmister. It’s a muscle that drains. You have to develop this. Smart routines and rituals.
You must find the strategy that makes sense for you.
Some people will eliminate email altogether so that they don’t have to worry about it.
Science fiction writer Neil Stephenson doesn’t have an email or mailing address listed in his website. He wrote in an essay that if he gets long, uninterrupted chucks of time, he can write novels. But if his time is separated and fragmented, his productivity drops significantly.
Another option is what Cal calls “Bi-module” which means a person will dedicate part of their time to deep work and the remainder to shallow work. For example: you dedicate 3 days a week to deep work and the rest to shallow. Or you dedicate the winter to deep work and the rest of the year to shallow.
Rhythmic method: Every day you have to work on hard things consistently. Jerry Seinfeld would write jokes every day. Each day that he wrote jokes, he put an “X” on the Calendar. Now all he had to do was not break the chain.
Some folks use about 90 minutes in one time block.
Journalist approach: whenever you can find time, you switch your mindset into deep work. Work anytime you can find spare time. Not for novice because a novice doesn’t have the focus muscle to only work for intensively for only 20 minutes.
Ritualistic approach: you find and use the same method and location every day to work deeply. Don’t wait for insiparation to strike.
Change your location
JK Rolling checked herself into an expensive hotel so that she could get alone time and had the pressure of the expensive room to apply the pressure she needed to finish her book.
Bill Gates goes away to a lake cabin a couple times a year just think.
One guy was so desperate to find alone time that he booked a round trip ticket to Tokyo just to be able to write while on the plane. Once he arrived in Tokyo, he boarded his return flight and finished writing his book. He said it cost him $1,000 but the 31 hours of focused time allowed him the time and focus he needed.
Focus on the widely important: Identify a small amount of goals to actually work on.
Act of the lead measures: Identify the behaviors that influences the outputs
Keep a scorecard: A place to keep track of your lead measures. Cal uses tick marks to track the number of deep work hours he puts in. When he finishes a section or goal, he circles that tick mark and then counts to see how many hours of work it took to accomplish that goal.
Create a cadence of accountability: Use a team that keeps you on track
To stay energized day to day, it is important to Shutdown work activities, emails, and calls once the normal business hours are over for the day. No thinking about work or anything.
Here’s the science behind it: Downtime aids insights. Your subconscious mind needs time to think on its own to come up with an answer. Downtime helps recharge your energy.
A study proved that people who walked through busy city streets performed worse on a simple test than a group of people who just walked in nature where there aren’t many stimuli or avoiding getting hit by cars.
The work in the evening doesn’t produce valuable work. Since you’ve most likely used up your deep work capacity during the day, any work you try to accomplish at night won’t add any extreme value to your career or long term goal.
I highly recommend checking it out because it really opened my eyes to the distractions that all this modern age technology gives us. For all the advantages of being able to stay so connected with one another, the big disadvantage to all of this, is not being able to find interrupted time to get real, meaningful work done.
