Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Deep Work - Summary - Review in PDF - The Power Moves
Deep Work - Summary - Review in PDF - The Power Moves
Trackers
Google Adsense
Google AJAX Search API
Google Tag Manager
Deep Work aims at making the readers more productive human beings.
But it can as well end up making you a better human being, with a life of bigger achievements, more fun and better
relationships.
How?
Read on.
Contents [show]
Bullet Summary
Deep work -the ability to focus and immerse yourself on a task- is the only work that will advance your life,
career and achievements
Train your deep work skills: the more you do it, the better at it you get
Design a life with habits and routines built around producing deep work
Deep work is taxing: once you’ve done enough, stop working. Otherwise you’re wasting time on shallow work
Full Summary
Deep Work is divided into two parts: the first part tells you what deep work is and why you need it. The second part
explains how to learn it as a skill and how to implement it in your life.
“ Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that
allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.
Deep work creates value for you and for the world.
Basically, you want to do less shallow work and more deep work.
Here are some example of shallow work.
Basically: the world is pushing you into shallow work. But if you are driven and want to deliver big results, you need to
buck the trend.
That is why if you want to achieve it is so crucial that you build the skill and culture for deep work.
Attention residue is the “mental contamination” that different tasks produce on each other.
Imagine you are writing a post on the best lessons learned from the book Deep Work. But you crave a distraction and want
to quickly check the emails.
Giving in to the distraction takes you away from your immersion in the task of writing and interrupts the flow.
When you go back to writing you need to “warm up again” from scratch. And the email you could not reply is still lingering
in your mind as your next “to do task”.
Now you need time to get into the writing mood again, and your mind is “polluted” by the task you’ve just finished in the
past and the one you still have to do in the future.
Attention residue is the reason why you should not constantly switch between tasks but rather stay focused on a single
one for as long as possible.
Cal Newport says there are two key components you need to develop to increase your deep work:
1. Work Deeply: you need to structure your life around deep work. Divide your days into time blocks. Each time
block is for doing one thing and one thing only
2. Embrace Boredom: it’s when we are bored that the craving for distraction gets us the easiest. You must train
yourself to stick with a task long after it’s gotten boring. To help fight the craving for distraction don’t fill your
day with tasks but leave out some time where you allow your mind to relax, wander and recuperate
3. Quit Social Media: they are designed to pull you away from deep life and they are the kings of distractions.
Quit them for 30 days and see if your results will improve
4. Drain the shallows: look at your day to day work and remove all the unproductive tasks. The example is a
company whose productivity went up after they removed Friday from the workweek: employees just were
focusing more during the other days to get the same amount done
Finally, Cal Newport recommends we develop routines that support deep work.
That’s why we should strive to conserve our willpower for what really matters.
Here is why you need rest and downtime and how to use it:
1. Plan downtime to recharges your batteries: downtime is a bit like plugging your phone to mains. It’s simply
something you have to do to keep enjoying all your top functionalities. Plan it into your days
2. Use downtime for inspirations: our unconscious has more power than our conscious mind. By taking breaks or
going for walks we can leverage the power of our unconscious to come up with ideas and solution
3. You waste time working too long: deep work is highly taxing and our capacity for deep work is limited (4 hours
on a whole day for masters with chunks of 60 to 90 minutes). Any work that we do outside of our (current)
capacity for deep work is most likely going to be shallow work and time filling
To make downtime an integral part of your life Cal Newport recommends that when you stop working, you stop working
for good.
No more checking emails, no whatsapp group with your coworkers and no mental cycles spent on work.
CONS
Not Always Accurate on Latest Research
Deep Work makes ego depletion -such as the idea that our willpower is limited- a central tenet for its recommendation.
However, the concept of ego depletion has been called into question, and I would have liked to hear some of that.
Not hearing counter-arguments reduces the authority of the author for critical readers like myself.
Extremists
At times, it felt too me like Deep Work was being extremists with its tenets. From deleting social media to not checking
your phone if you are waiting in line to not checking Iternet if you need a piece of information.
I can’t think of not using Internet while I write: it helps me write better, research information, double checking resources
and writing better reviews.
The idea of not checking your phone while waiting in line also seems like unnecessary time waste. You can use that
downtime to reply to what you need to reply to.
PROS
I won’t list a bunch of “pros” here for a simple reason: the concept behind Deep Work is life changing.
When you develop your skills for deep work you can do more and better with less time. More results together with more
free time, fun and better relationships?
The 4 Hour Workweek: a classic with a the typical Ferris’ tips on increasing your productivity
Essentialism: focus on less to do more
The One Thing: focus on one thing, leave out all the rest
The War of Art: let the dreams take you forward, but build processes to make dreams a reality
Outliers: the famous 10.000 hours rule is here
The Talent Code: goes deeper into myelin, “reaching flow” and best suited for sports or instrument players
(also quoted by Newport in Deep Work)
Mastery: Robert Greene’s take on what it takes to achieve mastery
Review
Right after I read -and loved- So Good They Can’t Ignore You from Cal Newport, I immediately put Deep Work in my
reading list.
In a way, Deep Work is less revolutionary as it repeats a few well known concepts of productivity. BUT.. It combines all the
research with personal experiences and insights in a way that the end result is an even more profoundly life changing.
The changes that Deep Work inspires lead to what Cal Newport calls “Deep Life”, such as a life free of distractions and
meaningless task. A deep life has deeper work, deeper relationships and deeper satisfaction.
Related
Get This Book FREE With Audible Trial (cancel any time)
More…? Try Blinkist Free Summaries
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Comment
Name *
Email *
two × two =
POST COMMENT