TLDR
Summary : Important and interesting read .. Good practices on time management, prioritizing work and cutting out noise. Lots of real world examples on how successful people become productive and successful. Creating and not compromising on quality deep focus time is super critical for information workers in this day and age of Social media chatter. This book also advocates points on keeping Email, social media usage minimal and boxed.
Rating : 9/10
Notes
Carl Jung famously succeeded Freud and pioneered 'Analytical Psychology' . Carl's success in the 1920s-1940s was his capacity to do 'Deep work' unobstructed . Carl built his own Temple or 'Tower' in Zurich where he would go on vacation many times and write his books and circulate thoughts . Carl definitely credits his 'Disconnect' and deep focus as two things that immensely helped him get popular. Jason Ben the coding super star from Start up world attests to how he quit a successful financier career , immersed into the hot Tech scene . Despite the fast changing scenes of the coding world and tech constructs . Ben totally disconnected from internet , social media and focused on reading tech books in his room . He used notes and post its to transfer the knowledge into his company. Bill gates famously uses think weeks to unplug and goes into a remote ski resort and just reads all the books he wants to . Gates's 1995 netscape memo that rocked the internet world was written during his 'Think week' . The author shares his foray into deep work and focus time stating just like Rowling he stayed clear of Social media and the constant 'Shallows' to instead keep going without distractions. Nicholas Carr the author of shallows identifies constant chatter that distracts us as 'Shallow' eg: Social media , emails, whatsapp, RSS feeds etc. He advocates dedicating spells of windows to focus on Shallows and not constantly look at them every minute of the day. Use rest of the work for deep work is the mantra. Early on 'Deep work' was confined to only the highest intellectuals and prime knowledge workers but the world has evolved with so much distractions and Knowledge economy is pervasive that Deep work is now a necessary across fields in verying capacities.
Sertac's book talks about Deep work and identifies three categories of highly successful people who are successful because they employ deep work in some shape or form a) Highly creative people who can interact with modern intelligent information systems eg: Data scientists like Ned Silver who specialize in finding patterns like Traffic , Voter sentiments and predicting election and other results b) Absolute elite super stars in their field who are the very best eg: Ruby on Rails creator and programming Viz Hansen c) Venture capitalists sitting on piles of cash. Sertac says while it is hard to go after c) .. Most people should keep learning and focusing on 'What to learn' to become either a) or b). Both A) and B) in today's economy can afford to operate Remotely and will still be sought after by companies , people for the highly productive output often coming at lower cost. One example of this is the famous book writer of 'Give and take' Adam Grant . Grant writes atleast 5-10 highly successful , productive essays or books in a year . He works in batches / spells and focuses his time and energy almost solely on his task at hand . Example every Fall he teaches students in university focusing only on that at an elite level . Every spring and summer his focus is entirely on writing and publishing. This focused less distracted approach has made him who he his, grant has researched extensively on Deep work and focus and is a master of doing it. The Author argues in putting spells of time every day to focus on important things that we need and says most successful people do multiple things sequentially. There is good research stating that if you get randomized most people keep residual discussions , ideas from prior meeting and therefore the next meetings or work don’t carry that much intensity - those that can 'Context switch' expertly delving deep into what they do are the most successful ones truly.
Studies show that open office space is a hindrance with constant chatter, sounds, people stopping by to get deep work done. FB, Google and other tech companies have fallen into the common trap that Open office space leads to more adhoc chats, good collaboration , strong bonding etc. However they missed the point on Deep work. Emails and Ims (which are even more toxic) have a way of switching off people from their focused work. Many successful authors cite lack of Social media presence for their success. A leading study showed that Emails and constantly responding to them drove up cost of the org and drove down productivity as humans dipped their levels to respond immediately to what was recent with less quality work. Also shows open ended mails like give your thoughts etc is criminal on people reading the emails as they end up spending far too much time to understand the context , thread etc before putting 2 cents in the matter. Following ground rules like quality templates , context etc might help . Even blocking meeting time to move things forward has its benefits.
H Index is a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author's scholarly output and performance; measures quantity with quality by comparing publications to citations. So people in scholarly pursuits use this metric universally accepted and even Adam grant would have ascribed to this. However as more and more knowledge based workers come through especially in Tech field it becomes hard to quantify impact and contributions and thus they get into a frenzy of appearing 'Busy' few tactics like : Increased presence in office , Quick responses to Ims, sending mails in late hours or weekends etc are quite common. Marissa meyer famously banned remote work in 2013 citing internal memos of productivity at Yahoo. I don’t think she can do such a thing post pandemic in Google but that vibe remains on quantifying productivity. Internet based technopoly have spoiled people with good deep work habits to fall into the social media trap one example is the highly productive and focused author at Times Rubens who is tasked to write tweets along with scholarly editorials now! This age feels like if you are not in a Social media presence you are irrelevant for most Tech workers. However what is a boon for non tech / non knowledge workers like the famous blacksmith Ric Furrer who fulfills his meaning and purpose through absolute deep dedication to his profession. The author newport now cites besides economic and productivity benefits, Deep work also triggers neurological responses leading sense of fulfillment and purpose if employed well in any field eg: Medical, chemistry, sciences, art, computers etc. The next few chapters is to bring this argument to fruition.
The process of deep work is found out to be more rewarding through extensive research by the 'Flow' author
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi . In her book and thesis she gives countless data and examples to show how humans derive maximum fulfillment by stretching themselves on a hard task rather than being idle and relaxed. The counter point to the myth that relaxation is good is that humans need structure to function and a bunch of unstructured time does not help the brain or heart that much. Even supposedly (As in common belief) routine or boring work like blacksmithing , Testing bugs etc can be rewarding to the mind if humans are fully involved and doing at depth. Not only the posh and rewarding work of NGO, Start up etc can be creatively challenging even mundane activities can be made rewarding by giving full focus. The process of doing a wooden wheel is more important than the end which can be a common 'Wheel' . This argument urges non creators like tailors, doctors, lawyers, programmers etc to involve in the task and the process and eliminate distraction to achieve fulfillment . Distractions through TV, internet have added to the evolutionary distractions (albeit necessary) like food , sex, music, sleep to humans. Conquering distractions is pretty much the fight for elite mentality in this day and age. Cal newport gives the ideal solution to 21st century office space via the concept of THE EUDAIMONIA MACHINE
Which most FAANG companies have adopted in some shape or form . The one major painpoint is the 'Open office space' which is detrimetal to deep work. The 5 stages of this machine / environment is as follows
• The gallery - inspiration
• The salon - collaboration
• The library - investigation
• The office space - superficial work
• The chamber - deep work
Choosing Routines is crucial to cultivate Deep work and newport highlights few rules/ tips for this . A) Monastic practices - Strictly eliminating shallow distractions eg: Always focusing on P0s every day like urgent mails and deferring others to different shallow intervals. Staying clear entirely of Twitter, Social media. However this is not practical for most professions in this day and age. This brings rise to the next methodology - 'Binodalities'. Adam Grant allows 1 academic semester fully focused on conferences, teaching , academic distractions etc. Remaining 2 semesters just for deep work away from all the engagements for his thesis and writing. Carl Jung did this by escaping to his 'Temple' few weeks in a year and writing. Gates did the same by disconnecting few weeks. Not everyone will have the luxury of escaping away for few days or weeks and many professions dictates enagement every single day that brings up next model - Daily Rhythm and routines for deep work (Few hours). Many people devote early mornings or wee hours for writing , deep work eg: Darwin famously had blocks of time every day to go for 'Thinking walks' and writing chapters and so was Chappel. This discipline routine can suit most professions today. The next kind requires even more adept practice that is not 'explicitly' devoting chunks of time but using things as it turns up one example is Walter Isaacson expertly moving away from shallow magazine work (Time) to his upstairs office every few chunks typing away in type writers and writing amazingly in depth biographies of Franklin, Jobs, Da Vinci etc. Newport also did this for this book 'Deep work' but advocates only for those trained mind that can immediately move from Shallow to 'Deep zones' and not everyone can do it without practice and routines esp. unstructured and on the fly.
Many rituals are all about deep work and not just blocks or chunks of time eg: Rowling moved to edinburg castle to complete Deathly hallows as the constant pressure and eyes got to her. Bill gates famously in his thinking week in a remote resort got the eureka moment that internet was the next sensation and MS had to pivot fast and in a big way into Internet leading to investing in the iconc Internet explorer and MSN . There is a 4DX rules
• Focus on the wildly important. This means a small number of extremely essential goals. ...
• Act on lead measures. … ( Respond to only most important emails in your window in the day, Finish tasks in checklist)
• Keep a compelling scoreboard. … (Write x articles in a month or in a year )
• Create a cadence of accountability. ( Review / Retrospective weekly or monthly on what worked well and not well and how to change it)
Studies show that doing deep and unobstructed work for as specific period chosen yields max benefit to cut down overall work time . Example only P0 items in the day and progress that is tangible.
Downtime yields great benefit in recharging mind for very complex tasks. Studies shows nature walk helps much more than dwelling or even walking in busy roads. This activates the unconscious parts of brains to energize and think with more vigour. Embrace downtime in the right way like by solving and closing / winding down in a ritual and with closure to the mind. If there is no sense of closure for the day the mind keeps buzzing and stressed.
Embrace Boredom. Repititions and rituals is the game. However distractions can come in the form of internet and one way to get out is have 'Internet blocks' or internet sabbath. The blocks is better as you can have dedicated time for streaming, social media weekly or daily and not touch it otherwise. If your work involves a lot of internet then having frequent blocks but being disciplined about it is a great way. Roosevelt apparently was very diligent in planning his day - He worked hard at school between 8 to 4 and religiously studied few hours a day and had a 1 hour athletic time and that allowed him to be fully productive. Having blocks of distractions is the key takeaway .
Quit Social media - While this is near impossible today, what the author advocates is try to understand pros and cons on why a particular social media is necessary for you first . Once you study this most of the time by 80-20 rule the social media does not count on the 80% of high impact items that you want to achieve example - quality time with your friends or even marketing reach (which maybe true some extent but not in inception). Author argues that even for sustained marketing you need a careful strategy to hook and grow subscribers before you can post things at random. For most people who are productive in what they do like Malcolm Gladwell quitting twitter and chatter was a boon. For other successful people either they have a media management firm that takes care of the tweets or if they cant afford one like you and me keeping disciplined box time for checking and posting on FB / Twitter is the key eg: Install twitter once a month post things , check in that hour and then move out and completely uninstall for next 30 days, repeat and so forth. There should be no need for constant validations in most cases , easy to get sucked in.
Chapter 4 deals with important structure to weed out noise and distractions and having a structure every day for the brain prospers in structure and constant things to do than being idle. The idea for 4 day work week cramming ppl to make hard choices for high impact work in that period is a case in point. Having blocks of productivity chunks or using To do list with P0 items on top and shallower items on bottom is another advocacy of the author. Having fixed time schedule like fixed work day , work week etc often forces hand on productivity and makes people value their time more. Learn to say no to unncessary meetings and wherever necessary question assumptions and need for giving your time , be stingy by default. Multiple people have prospered with being stingy , focused on time and fixed scheduling as the author says. Emails means don’t reply to everything have one or two filters with stringent rules and timings to check. Many successful people even have people to scan for predefined rules and even charge people for their time that way they only spend time with those who really really need their service. Always say no as the default and get programmed to say No and that way people / scheduler have to convince you for why you are required. Don’t respond to open ended invites or emails that ask for availability. Trying to be as specific as possible like Agenda , are we really needed , is the cadence workoutable (Say location, time, day and total time needed). Rejecting as a default and asking more context will actually increase respect in the eyes of people.
Newport discusses in conclusion how he improved his no. of publications per year from 2 to 4 by simple changes encouraging deep work like separate shells to work that are not invaded. Newport has become very stingy with his time asking several Why questions and seeing if his involvement is really necessary and says its very important. Also the importance of cutting down constant chatter by Social media, IM, Outlook etc is crucial for clear productivity.
