In a world of distraction, the ability to deep work is king.
To remain valuable in the new economy, mastering the art of quickly learning complicated things is paramount.
This kind of task requires
ingraining a crucial ability called deep work to stay competitive in a globally
competitive information economy.
However, a 2012 McKinsey study
found that the knowledge worker on an the average is spending more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in
electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a
worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mails.
Cal Newport in his Wall Street
journal bestseller book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted
World has a valid reason to state that
‘the reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is
well established: network tools’. It is quite evident that the rise of
social media networks combined with ubiquitous access to them through smart
phones and networked office computers has fragmented most knowledge worker’s
attention into slivers.
There is increasing evidence
today of the knowledge workers not been involved in cognitively demanding tasks
qualified as deep work but rather in more logical style mundane tasks, which
the author refers to as shallow work. To substantiate with an example, say, if
we set about trying to brainstorm different approaches to a problem at hand,
that is deep work. If we just answer a reply all in a department, that’s
shallow work. The author observes that if our nature of work is primarily
shallow in nature and does not warrant intellectual abilities, we increasing
lose our capacity to perform cognitively challenging work referred to as deep
work by the author. Therefore, the proposition of the book is based on the
hypothesis that the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare
at exactly the same time when it is becoming increasingly valuable in our
economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it
the core of their working life, will thrive.
The entire book has two goals,
pursued in two parts. The first part (in the form of rules) tries to convince
the reader that the deep work hypothesis is true. The author states that
machines are replacing human abilities in the present organizational context.
Employers today prefer new machines to recruiting people. Therefore, in this
new economy, three groups of people will have a particular advantage if they
wish to overtake: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent
machines; those who are the best at what they do; and those with access to
capital. Newport in his book has impressed on two core abilities for thriving
in the new economy: ‘the ability to quickly master hard things’ and ‘the
ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and quantity’.
The question arises, how does one cultivate those core abilities? And it is
here that the readers arrive at the central thesis of the book. The author
states that ‘the two core abilities just described depend on your ability to
perform deep work’. However, the dependence on these abilities of deep work is
not immediately obvious; it requires a closer look at the science of learning,
concentration, and productivity.
Learning hard things quickly, one must focus intensely without any
distraction.
Therefore, the author states that
serious learning is an act of deep work that materializes through deliberate
practice. The core components of deliberate practice are in the form of
attention on a specific skill one need to master and receiving proper feedback
to correct one’s approach. The author highlights that the practice of deep work
should not only be promoted by ambitious individuals, but the strategies are
also expected to boil down to organizations with a hope to get the most out of
their employees. While defining business as a proxy for productivity, Newport
states that ‘in the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be
productive and valuable in their job, many knowledge workers turn back towards
an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible
manner which is shallow in nature’. This potent mixture of job ambiguity and
lack of metrics to measure the effectiveness of different strategies allows
behaviour that can seem ridiculous when viewed objectively to thrive in the
increasingly bewildering psychic landscape of daily work (Issacson, 2013). The
author cites examples to describe the mindsets and biases that have pushed
business away from deep work towards more distracting alternatives.
Another issue muddying the
connection between depth and meaning in knowledge work is the cacophony of
voices attempting to convince knowledge workers to spend more time engaged in
shallow activities. The author has made three specific arguments to support the
claim that deep work can generate satisfaction in an information economy.
…
Six strategies
The book prescribes six
strategies (decide on your depth
philosophy, ritualize, make grand gestures, do not work alone, execute like a
business, be lazy) which are designed based on the science of limited
willpower. These strategies can be comprehended by the reader as an arsenal of
routines and rituals to maximize the amount of deep work. Some of these
strategies are deployed with simple heuristics to hijack one’s brain’s
motivation centre, while others are designed to recharge the willpower reserves
at the fastest possible rate. The author has tried to convince the readers that
there are many different ways and strategies to integrate deep work into one’s
schedule, and it is, therefore, worth taking the time to find an approach that
works for the reader.
Succeeding with deep work
requires rewiring one’s brain to be comfortable while resisting the distracting
stimuli (Krieder, 2013). This does not mean that one needs to eliminate
distracting behaviours. Rather, ‘it is sufficient that you instead eliminate
the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention’. Newport has proposed
strategies of scheduling Internet blocks that go a long way towards helping to
regain the attention with blistering intensity. The author has suggested
adopting one of his very own deep work training methods: productive meditation
which he practised during his post-doctoral associate tenure at MIT. By
returning one’s attention repeatedly to a well-defined problem, the process of
productive meditation helps strengthening the distraction-resisting muscles
while pushing one’s focus deeper and deeper on a single problem.
To master the art of deep work, the author advises to take control of
one’s time and attention from the many diversions that attempt to steal them.
For a knowledge worker—especially
one interested in cultivating a deep work habit—the author says, ‘you should
treat your tool selection with the same level of care as other skilled workers,
such as farmers’. To generalize his assessment strategy, the author has
proposed ‘craftsman approach’ to tool selection, a name that emphasizes that
tools are ultimately aids to the larger goals of one’s craft. The ultimate agenda
is that
if you give your mind something
meaningful to do throughout all in your waking hours, you will end the day more
fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your
mind to bathe for hours in the semiconscious and unstructured web surfing.
In a world of distraction, the ability to deep work is king.
It is in these deep periods of
concentration that knowledge workers create the most value. Fundamentally, a
deep work habit requires treating one’s time with utmost respect (Masicampo
& Roy, 2011). A good first step towards this respectful handling is to
decide in advance, ‘What we are going to do with every minute of our workday?’
It is natural, at first, to resist this idea, as it is undoubtedly easier to
continue allowing the twin forces of internal whim and external requests to
drive one’s schedule. In a nutshell, the book is best described as an attempt
to formalize and explain the attraction to depth over shallowness. Newport has
prescribed the rules towards ruthlessly culling the shallowness while sharing
the steps to cultivate the intensity of depth. Aside from the core content of
the book, personally we have really enjoyed all of the stories and anecdotes.
There are a lot of interesting titbits about the lives of famous and successful
people.
With a mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes
the reader in a journey through memorable stories—from Carl Jung building a
stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a
round trip to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air. Finally,
to cultivate an ability to produce real value in an increasingly distracted
world, and to recognize a truth embraced by the most productive and important
personalities of generations, past readers of the book may very well agree that
a deep life is a good life to live with. It is a monumental book that will
really help change the way people work, and live.
—Taken from Deep
Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World in Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision
Makers
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