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ABOUT
- Title: Deep Work
- Sub-title: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
- Author: Cal Newport, Ph.D.
- About the author: Cal Newport is a writer with multiple bestselling books and he also runs the popular Study Hacks blog on calnewport.com. He is also an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He completed his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth and Ph.D. from MIT.
- Pages: 287
- Published: 2016
- Link to book
HIGH-LEVEL SUMMARY
Deep Work is a guide to cultivating intense focus to succeed in the modern, distracted world. To perform deep work entails focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
This book is broken into two parts. The first part of the book will explain why deep work is valuable, why it is rare, and why it is meaningful.
Cal Newport will share research showing that deep work is necessary to improve your abilities. He will point out how influential figures from distant and recent history were committed to deep work. He’ll open your eyes to the opportunity presenting itself in the “new economy.”
Deep work is becoming rare as it is becoming more important. If you can cultivate this skill, you will thrive. This sort of superpower will enable you to quickly master new things and produce more results in less time.
Part two of the book will lay out tips and training for you to practice deep work.
Cal is a theoretical computer scientist who performed his doctoral training at MIT. Before being hired as a tenure-track professor at Georgetown University, he published four books, earned a Ph.D., and wrote a high number of peer-reviewed academic papers.
He couldn’t have completed those tasks without deep work.
RECOMMENDATION
TOP 25 TAKEAWAYS
WHAT I LIKED
BENEFITS TO YOUR LIFE AND CAREER
15 ACTIONS YOU SHOULD TAKE
1. Track your daily activities. Classify them as deep work or shallow work. This will raise awareness on how your time is split. Additionally, you can minimize the shallow work in your life.
2. Focus intensely on a specific skill and practice to develop more myelin around the neurons to perform that skill. This is how you will master it.
3. Batch hard, important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches.
4. To produce more high-quality work, maximize the intensity you work at. This will maximize results per unit of time.
5. Focus on one task at a time, for an extended period, before moving onto the next task. By not switching tasks frequently, you will avoid attention residue.
6. Avoid the Principle of Least Resistance. The easy route typically involves shallow work and won’t allow you to go deep and accomplish.
7. When you are busy, reflect on if you are being busy to feel productive or if you are actually busy with meaningful work. We busy ourselves with unimportant tasks to feel as if we are doing something.
8. Seek out opportunities to push your body or stretch your mind to its limits. It’s in these moments where you enter a flow state and feel satisfaction with trying to accomplish something difficult.
9. Try to create, designate, or find a space where you can perform the deepest possible work. This deep work chamber should allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow.
10. Google these different philosophies of deep work scheduling and use them to fit your needs: Monastic Philosophy, Bimodal Philosophy, Rhythmic Philosophy, and Journalistic.
11. Try making a grand gesture next time you need to complete a large, deep-work-requiring task. You can go off into the woods for a few days or check yourself into a luxury resort.
12. When you are done with work and have downtime, fully set into and embrace your downtime. Be lazy, recover, and recharge.
13. Implement productive meditation into your everyday life. For example, instead of listening to music while you walk or drive, play nothing, meditate, and think.
14. Play brain games that work on your focus and memory. Personally, I use the Peak app and also practice dual N-back training. Like a muscle, working out your ability to concentrate will improve it over time. Concentration is a pillar of deep work.
15. Find a hobby other than the internet to entertain yourself. You will end the day more fulfilled than if you instead allow your mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured web surfing.
RESOURCES
Deep Work can be found on Amazon at this link here if you are interested in reading.