Idea #1: Deep Work Is Important
Newport argues that deep work allows you to do two things critical to your performance in the information economy:
- Learn and master new skills: Newport explains that technology and best practices become obsolete quickly in the information economy. In order to stay relevant over decades, you must continue to learn challenging new skills-which requires focus. (Note: Experts have pinpointed several actions that usually lead to skill mastery: First, determine if your goal is attainable and ensure that the skill is relevant to your career. Then, find a method that aligns with your learning style and allows you to take on the skill bit by bit, instead of all at once. Finally, rely on others-find a mentor who can coach you and help you reflect on your progress.)
- Apply the skills to increase your output: Once you’ve learned a skill, you need to do something useful with it. Consider the simple rule: High-quality work produced = Time Spent x Intensity of Focus. (Note: The key here is that what you do with your skill must be useful. In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker explains how to determine if your work is effective-useful work that improves your performance and comes with application of Newport’s rule- or just efficient-productivity for the sake of increasing output that’s not necessarily useful or high-quality.)
Idea #2: Deep Work Is Difficult
Newport explains that deep work is difficult because our world bombards us with near-constant distractions. He outlines three major ways that modern workplaces derail workers’ ability to engage in deep work.
- Open floor plans: Open floor plans were meant to increase collaboration. But Newport explains that they’re a continuously distracting environment, where every conversation is heard, and one person can disrupt dozens of people. (Note: Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies were already starting to rethink their open floor plans, finding that putting so many employees in a shared space was creating too much distraction. For these companies, the pandemic highlighted the heightened risk of disease transmission in open shared spaces and accelerated their decision to leave open floor plans behind.)
- Instant communication: With instant-messaging tools like Slack and texting, people can interrupt your work on-demand. According to Newport, as a result of this, we stop being deep thinkers and become human network routers. (Note: We’ll look at actionable steps to make instant messaging less distracting in the section on building your deep work environment, for instance using the platform’s features to notify senders that you won’t be responding immediately.)
- Social media: On social media platforms, conversations continue endlessly, 24/7. The new content you see always seems novel and productive, but it doesn’t move you closer to the major things you really care about. (ote: The addictive quality of social media is due to our attraction to variable rewards: rewards that happen at random times, rather than in a predictable pattern. You can’t predict which refresh of your newsfeed will reward you with interesting information or likes, so the action never loses its appeal.)
Idea #3: Deep Work Is Fulfilling
Shallow work is deceptively bad because it feels productive and meaningful. Answering emails feels like you’re doing something. Staying on top of the office conversation in Slack makes you feel updated on what’s going on. In contrast, Newport says, deep work actually moves you meaningfully toward happiness and fulfillment. Deep work is when you’re most capable of tackling your thorniest problems. Because these problems often yield the largest rewards, deep work is often far more rewarding than shallow work.
(Note: Newport mentions in an interview that he didn’t originally intend to include a chapter on the fulfilling aspect of deep work. However, as his research went on, he found so many accounts of people whose deep work practices led to a deeper sense of happiness and fulfillment in their work, he felt that he needed to include it.)
Newport explains that the fulfillment that comes from doing deep work aligns closely with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas on “flow.” Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and author of Flow, found that when people concentrate on a worthwhile task that pushes them to their cognitive limit, they experience a state of flow, or a sense of contentment and purpose.
(Note: Because flow occurs when you’re working hard at something.you believe is important, it naturally would be more likely to happen when you’re doing deep work in support of your goals than when you’re scrolling through Reddit comments.)