Deep Work - Cal Newport

Notes

Introduction

Deep work - professional activities performed in state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive abilities to their limit.

Shallow work - noncognitively demanding logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.

Time spent in shallowness permanently reduces capacity for deep work.

Shift towards the shallow is exposing massive economic and personal opportunity for those willing to go deep.

2 reasons for value of deep work:

1. Can quickly learn complicated things.
2. You're able to produce your best work, which sets it apart from shallow counterparts.

Deep work hypothesis - "The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time 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."

A deep life is a good life.

1: Deep work is valuable

Technology is racing ahead. Skills and organizations lagging behind.

As machine abilities improve, gap between human and machine capabilities shrinks.

When only a human will do, companies will outsource those roles to stars.

3 groups that will thrive in new economy:

High-skilled workers

• People good at working with intelligent machines.

Superstars

• Remote work means best can be hired - they're universally accessible.
• Talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach needed level.

Owners

• Those with capital to invest in new technology.
• Bargain theory - money made through combo of capital investment and labor. Rewards return roughly proportional to input.
• Digital tech reduces need for labor, so rewards basically proportional to capital investment.

Owner can be unattainable without wealth, but other two are accessible.

2 core abilities for being high-skilled or superstar

1. Quickly master hard things.
2. Produce at elite level, in terms of quality and speed.

If you can't learn, you can't thrive.

If you don't produce, you won't thrive.

To advance understanding of field, you must tackle relevant topics systematically.

Need deliberate practice. Requires:

1. Attention focused on specific skill or idea you'd like to master.
2. Feedback so you can correct approach and stay focused.

More myelin (fatty tissue around neurons), the better.

Idea is to isolate groups of neurons firing to strengthen them.

Learning requires intense focus without distraction.

Batch hard but important work into long, uninterupted stretches.

High-quality work production = time spent * intensity of focus

Attention residue - attention stuck on a task different than one you're working on.

Avoid it.

Residue is thick if work on original task unbounded and low intensity.

Work for extended periods with full concentration, free from distraction.

There are individuals who thrive without depth (i.e. Jack Dorsey)

CEOs are basically hard-to-automate decision engines. Their value is in that, not deep work.

2: Deep work is rare

Big trends in business actively decrease people's ability to perfom deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends are dwarfed by the benefits that flow from deep work.

Knowledge work often defined by ambiguity and confusion. That's painful. Makes us seek distractions.

Difficult to measure cost of distractions, and value of depth.

Objectively difficult to measure individual contributions to an organization's output.

Metric black hole - metrics difficult to measure. Usually attached to behaviors that orgs think are beneficial (like email, or having a social media presence)

Without metrics that link a behavior to a bottom line, the least painful, trendy ones will get the most attention.

Principle of least resistance "In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment."

Standing meetings are essentially predefined personal organization. These meetings simply force them to take some action to make it look like they've made progress, rather than handling that with their own accountability systems.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

For many knowledge workers, measures of productivity are vague at best.

Busyness as a proxy for productivity "In the kabsence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner."

Extracting value from information is often at odds with busyness.

Neil Postman. 1990s. Technopoly Noted that we were no longer discussing the trade-offs surrounding new technologies, and instead just always assume high-tech is good.

To not embrace all things internet, would make you "invisible and therefore irrelevant"

Which is why companies thrust new technologies upon their employees even though it distracts them, costs money, and can't be clearly linked to their bottom line.

"Deep work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and nontechnological."

Deep work often requires the rejection of new and high-tech.

Because of all of this, depth will become rare, and therefore more valuable.