So this was something recommended in the self-help talk at the NLB (I really should sign up for more talks) and since I really enjoyed Digital Minimalism, I decided to read this. Plus, I tend to get a bit reflective around December (or any other trigger, really), and I thought it would be nice to have one more perspective on work before I start thinking about what I want my 2020 to be like.

Deep Work is broken into two parts: the case for deep work and how to achieve it. 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.”

Deep Work by Cal Newport

This is opposed to shallow work, which is defined as

“Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”

Which sounds a lot like busy work to me. The argument of the book is that in this new economy, we are increasingly conflating work with shallow work because it’s easily measurable (and because we are getting more and more distracted). However, those who are able to master the art of deep work will end up being more highly valued because of what they can create.

However, not all workers need to master deep work for their job. If you are, for example, a manager who needs to coordinate projects, then your job depends on you being in constant contact with a group of people and you may actually need to be always available to put out fires.

Honestly, I don’t think my job needs deep work on a day to day basis. It might require creative thought in the longer term, but most of what I do is coordination between groups and I’m not actually creating something. That said, I also write and that is where deep work comes in handy (even if it’s not “professional”). So I was interested in Part 2, where Newport gives us four rules for deep work:

1. Work Deeply – deep work requires time and you must create that time.
2. Embrace Boredom – you need constant exposure to boredom in order to be able to train yourself to concentrate intensely. If you distract yourself the minute you’re bored, then you don’t get to strengthen your “mental muscle”
3. Quit Social Media – in most cases, social media doesn’t bring you enough benefits to warrant staying on it. This section brought up the “any-benefit approach to network tool selection”, which is an idea that we are justified using any social network as long as it brings us some benefit – something that I definitely used to practice! Newport, however, argues that unless there are significant benefits to social media, the little benefits we do get outweigh the costs of constant distraction.
4. Drain the Shallows – basically, you need to learn to get rid of trivial work in order to make time for deep work.

Although the rules are pretty broad, they do make sense. And I agree with the idea that you have to constantly work your mental muscles in order to grow it – I mentioned it before but writing at the start of NaNoWriMo was so much harder than writing at the end of NaNoWriMo.

Digression: the part on cutting down on social media reminded me of the argument in Paper. Mark Kurlansky argued in Paper that technology doesn’t change society, it arises as a response to the changing needs of society. But here, we have Newport arguing that these changes don’t fit our needs and we are, in fact, being herded down a path that does not benefit many people. So has social media changed society or has it evolved as a response to our changing needs? I’d argue both – it came about as a way to keep in touch but as business started to harness the power of targetted advertising, social media platforms started to use their technology to change our online usage patterns (okay, I guess you could argue that these advances result from a demand on the business side).

Overall, I really enjoyed this and found it to be inspirational. I definitely want to do more deep work in 2020 for my writing and this, coupled with Digital Minimalism, provided a blueprint for the way forward. I’d recommend this to other creatives who are looking for a way to produce better and more creative work.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva