In today's knowledge economy, the ability to perform "deep work" is becoming increasingly valuable yet also increasingly rare. Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work, argues that by cultivating the skill of deep work and making it the core of our working life, we can produce at an elite level, master complicated information, and achieve great results.
What is Deep Work?
Newport defines deep work as:
"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."
In contrast, shallow work is:
"Non-cognitively 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."
The key idea is that deep work generates significantly more value than shallow work. The ability to quickly master hard things and produce at an elite level is essential to thriving professionally in today's economy. As technologies like AI and automation advance, those who can learn complex topics quickly and produce high-quality work will have a major advantage.
However, the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at the same time that it is becoming increasingly valuable. We are losing our ability to focus and concentrate deeply due to the distracting nature of modern technology and work environments. Open offices, email, social media, and smartphones fragment our attention and make it difficult to sustain focus.
As a result, most knowledge workers spend their days doing shallow work - tasks that are not cognitively demanding and could be easily replicated. This work tends not to create much value and is unsatisfying. Only a small percentage of people are cultivating their deep work skills. Those who do will thrive and produce at an elite level.
The Rules of Deep Work
To help cultivate the skill of deep work, Newport proposes four rules:
1. Work Deeply
The key to developing a deep work habit is to ritualize it and make it a regular part of your working life. You need to decide on your deep work philosophy, build rituals and routines to support it, and make grand gestures to lock in the habit.
There are a few different philosophies of deep work scheduling:
- The monastic philosophy involves eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations and spending virtually all your time in a state of depth. This is only feasible if you can control your schedule.
- The bimodal philosophy involves dividing your time between deep and shallow work, dedicating a few consecutive days when you will work deeply with no distractions.
- The rhythmic philosophy involves creating a regular habit of deep work sessions at a particular time each day, like a daily 4-hour deep work block each morning.
- The journalistic philosophy involves fitting deep work wherever you can into your schedule. This requires you to quickly switch into depth mode.
The key is to ritualize the habit, giving it a specific time, location, structure, requirements, and process. Make grand gestures like booking an out-of-town hotel room for a weekend to complete a project. Over time, the rituals and routines will shift your mind into a state of unbroken concentration whenever you need it.
2. Embrace Boredom
To improve your ability to concentrate deeply, you need to wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much of our time outside of work is also spent consuming digital distractions. This trains our brains to expect an influx of new stimuli and makes it hard to concentrate.
Instead of taking breaks from distraction, take breaks from focus. Rather than checking social media or email whenever you have a free moment, schedule breaks from focus to give in to those distractions. The rest of the time, resist those urges and build up your concentration.
Productive meditation - focusing your attention on a single well-defined problem while doing something physical like walking or jogging - is a great way to build your focus. Memorizing a deck of cards is another exercise that can strengthen your ability to direct your attention.
3. Quit Social Media
Social media fragments our time and attention, reducing our ability to concentrate and work deeply. The shiny allure of likes, comments, and superficial connections is addictive and distracts us from cognitively demanding work.
Newport suggests quitting social media entirely, or at least radically cutting back. Take a 30-day break from the services you use and evaluate whether your life was significantly diminished without them. In most cases, the feared FOMO doesn't materialize.
Apply the "law of the vital few" to your internet habits. Identify the small number of online activities that provide a large positive impact and focus on those. Eliminate the rest that offer little benefit compared to the time and attention they consume.
4. Drain the Shallows
The final rule is to ruthlessly eliminate or minimize shallow work to make more time for depth. Treat your time with respect and cull the shallow, low-value activities.
Schedule every minute of your day, on paper, like a financial budget. Assign work hours to specific blocks - deep work, shallow work, breaks, etc. If your schedule gets disrupted, revise it on the fly. This daily habit keeps you accountable and ensures you make progress on the things that matter.
Quantify the depth of every activity by asking: "How long would it take to train a smart college graduate with no specialized training to complete this task?" Use this to identify and minimize shallow work.
Become hard to reach. Make people who send you email do more work. Don't respond to every message. Craft responses that minimize your future involvement. This frees up more time for deep work.
The Importance of Downtime
While doing deep work is important, it's equally vital to balance it with adequate rest and downtime. Spending time in nature, exercising, enjoying hobbies, and connecting with loved ones is essential to support deep work.
Trying to work deeply in every waking moment is unsustainable and will lead to burnout. The goal is to work deeply during your focused sessions, then completely detach from work in your off hours. Have a strict shutdown ritual at the end of the workday where you review any open tasks, make a plan for their completion, then close out of work mode entirely until the next day.
Downtime aids insights, recharges your energy levels, and is usually more productive than the low-value shallow work that we often busy ourselves with in the evenings. Hobbies and time with loved ones are not distractions, but essential components of a balanced life that enables elite-level deep work.
Conclusion
Deep work is the superpower of the 21st century knowledge economy. The ability to quickly master hard things and produce at an elite level is more valuable than ever before. At the same time, deep work is becoming increasingly rare as people lose their ability to resist distraction and concentrate deeply.
By cultivating deep work as a skill and making it the core of our professional life, we can produce incredible value and thrive in an increasingly competitive economy. Cal Newport's four rules - working deeply, embracing boredom, quitting social media, and draining the shallows - provide a practical framework for transforming our work habits.
Deep work is meaningful and satisfying, but also requires intention, ritual, and discipline to make it a reality. With the right strategies and habits, we can all learn to leverage the power of deep work to advance our careers, master complicated skills, and achieve great things.