Deep Work: Newport, Cal: 9780349411903: Amazon.com: Office Products (original) (raw)

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• 5 out of 5 stars
  A persuasive argument + a detailed action plan for how to be a high performing knowledge worker using deep work
  Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2016
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  Deep Work is the execution/tactical companion to Newport's last book, So Good They Can't Ignore You and it doesn't disappoint.
  These books should be taken together as a whole because they give you the WHAT, the WHY and the HOW for being an elite knowledge worker.
  So Good they Can't Ignore you shows you why building valuable and rare skills, which Newport calls "career capital" is the number one most important thing for finding a job you love (not "finding your passion"). Building that capital allows you to find a job where you can have creative control over your work and more control over your time, which allows you to do "deep work," aka deliberate practice (and the 10,000 hour rule for expertise, Gladwell, Ericsson and others). There are also 2 other factors, choosing a domain or mission or project where you will have a postive impact on the world, and choosing to work with people who you like being around, which aren't covered much but Newport assumes you should be able to figure out on your own.
  Summary of what you need to be So Good They Can't Ignore You
  1. Rare and valuable skills (aka career capital)
  2. Creative control over projects
  3. Control over your time (which allows you to do deep work, virtuous cycle)
  4. Work that has a positive impact on the world
  5. Working with people you enjoy being with
  Here's the formula:
  -Use deep work to learn fast and build up rare and valuable skills.
  -Then apply these rare and valuable skills to the right projects so that you can build up career capital.
  -Then cash in the career capital to get more creative and time control over your job.
  -All the while, try to pick jobs and projects that have a positive impact and allow you to work with good people.
  -However, these are usually also things that you need to trade in your career capital (rare skills and experience using them) in order to maximize.
  -Don't try to save the world or have a big impact until you have the career capital to match. Otherwise you will probably fail. You have to earn all these perks via building career capital by using deep work.
  So Good They Can't Ignore You doesn't spend much time explaining how to actually implement deep work (deliberate practice) into you life. It tells you to focus deeply, stretch yourself cognitively and get constant high quality feedback on your work/output.
  That's where Deep Work comes in. Deep Work shows you exactly WHY deep work is so important (as opposed to Shallow Work), especially for modern knowledge workers, and why the way most people work, with constant interruptions from social media, email and their phones, is holding most knowledge workers back from being successful and competitive in today's job market.
  The first part of the book argues for why Deep Work is important. If you have already bought into the idea, you can skim this part, but I found the examples and people he featured to be very interesting so it's worth a read. Just don't expect a lot of tactics until part 2.
  Chapter 1 explains why deep work is VALUABLE. Our economy is changing, and the days of doing the same thing over and over for 40 years until you retire are over. Newport lays out an interesting theory for 3 types of workers, Superstars, Owners and High Skill Workers and makes a convincing and important argument for the importance in the future of being able to work at higher levels of abstraction and work with intelligent machines.
  In this chapter he also makes a case for the two critical skills for knowledge workers:
  1. Learning Quickly
  2. Producing at an Elite Level
  This conclusion informs the rest of the book. If you want to be good at these two skills, the most important thing to be good at is deep work.
  Chapter 2 focuses on why deep work is RARE. He shows how distractions are becoming more and more common for knowledge workers, and that attention is becoming more and more fractures. Newport makes a good case for how complex knowledge work is often hard to measure, so managers measure busyness instead of output that relates to bottom line results (KPIs). Busyness as a vanity metric. People end up optimizing for looking busy instead of getting real work done, and everybody plays along with this charade.
  Chapter 3 goes into why deep work is MEANINGFUL. Meaning is a key part of Newport's argument because the whole book links back to the Passion vs. Rare Skills debate…which is a better strategy for finding a job you love? If the job isn't meaningful, then deep work doesn't fully answer the question of how to best find a job you love. Newport give 3 theories on why deep work is meaningful, a psychological, neurological and a philosophical reason.
  That's it for part 1.
  In Part 2, Newport tells you how to implement deep work into your day to day life with 4 rules.
  Rule 1 gives you a bunch of strategies and examples of how to integrate deep work into your schedule. He offers different strategies depending on what kind of work you do. The Grand Gestures part of this chapter is really good, you learn about Bill Gates Think Week and same famous authors who go to secluded islands or build cabins to get a lot of deep work done when necessary. There is also a section here on execution using the 4 Disciplines from Clayton Christensen's work. The point on lead vs. lag measures is really good.
  Rule 2 covers the idea of embracing boredom. Newport gives a number of strategies for doing two important things: improving your ability to focus and eliminating your desire for distraction. At first these seem like the same thing but Newport explains why they are actually two different skills. For example, someone who is constantly switching between social media and infotainment sites can block off time for deep work but they won't be able to focus if they can't control their desire to always have instant gratification and constant stimulus. The point about making deep work your default, and scheduling shallow work in between is also a game changer.
  Rule 3 is about social media sites and infotainment sites. This rule isn't as strategic as the other ones, it's mostly about making a side argument that these networking sites aren't as important is you think they are. He gives some good strategies for measuring what sites and services you should include in your day to day life based on the total collection of all the positive and negative effects. This sort of critical thinking and measurement usually doesn't get applied to these kind of sites.
  Rule 4 is about draining the shallows, meaning going through the process of eliminating as much as possible shallow work from your daily schedule. This is more tactical chapter, (This and Rule 1 are the most useful of the 4) you learn how to plan out your day, how to stop from bringing your work home with you with an end of day ritual and how to manage your email so that you cut down on the amount of time you spend in your inbox each day. There is also a strategy for how to talk to your boss about deep work so you can get permission to re-arrange your schedule to be more productive.
  Overall Thoughts:
  This book, and Newport's previous book So Good They Can't Ignore You, are some of the most important books you will read on planning your career.
  Most people spend little to no time on these decisions, or just go with the flow or with how other people approach things, even though this planning process will affect the next 4 to 5 decades of their life.
  Most people's thinking is still stuck in the industrial economy way of thinking…it makes sense thought, our education system is also stuck in this way of thinking. Deep work gives you a solid, actionable plan and doesn't leave anything out that I can think of.
  1,041 people found this helpful
• 4 out of 5 stars
  increasing sales is far more likely to be useful than doing taste tests
  Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2017
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  In 1995 the term “disruptive innovation” was coined by Harvard Professor, Clayton Christensen to describe how certain types of innovation change industries. But this is rare. Most innovation doesn’t amount to much, and fizzles out despite extensive quantitative research and Herculean advertising efforts.
  In this book, Christensen et al, offer a simple but profound insight which they call the ‘Theory of Jobs to Be Done.’ The purpose of this insight is to shed light on why people adopt an innovation in large enough numbers to make it a success, and how to identify innovations that will be adopted.
  ‘The job to be done’, they assert is the causal mechanism for successful innovation. Using this insight enables companies not only to create but also to predict new innovations that will succeed. Phrasing the innovation in this manner allows for a deep understanding of the customers’ need at a more profound level.
  To introduce this concept, the authors describe (among other examples,) the “job of a milkshake.” Why would someone “hire” a milkshake? What “job” is the milkshake expected to perform? “We all have jobs we need to do that arise in our day-to-day lives and when we do, we hire products or services to get these jobs done,” the authors explain.
  If you can answer this question, increasing sales is far more likely to be useful than doing taste tests, demographic surveys and purchase studies.
  When looking for an answer to this question (an actual case), the researchers were surprised to find that an oddly high number of milkshakes were sold before 9:00 a.m. to people who came to the fast-food restaurant alone. Doing taste tests, demographic surveys and purchase studies would not yield the quality of information that came from asking this question: “Excuse me, please, but I have to sort out this puzzle. What job were you trying to do for yourself that caused you to come here and hire that milkshake?”
  It turned out that they had long and boring rides to work and needed something to keep the commute interesting. Coffee doesn’t do the job well because it gets cold too quickly, eating bananas makes you feel too full, but hiring a milkshake does the job well. It is thick enough to sip, lasts long enough, and remains pleasurable through the journey.
  Approaching the study from the ‘job to be done’ perspective is quite different to fast-food restaurants asking a patron to give feedback in one of its customer surveys to the question: “How can we improve this milk shake so you buy more of them?” A single dad coming to a restaurant with his young son would answer the survey very differently to the same man when he buys a milkshake for his morning commute. The milkshake is hired for very different jobs, in two very different circumstances.
  So how can one identify innovative opportunities if compiling data-rich models only makes businesses “masters of description but failures at prediction”? “We believe Jobs Theory provides a powerful way of understanding the causal mechanism of customer behaviour, an understanding that, in turn, is the most fundamental driver of innovation success,” the authors explain.
  So how is Jobs Theory to be applied so that you create products that customers will not only want to buy, but will even be willing to pay premium prices for? Simply put, customers don’t buy products or services: they pull them into their lives to resolve highly important, unsatisfied jobs that arise.
  Jobs are never simply about the function of the service or product. The circumstance is central to their definition, not customer characteristics, product attributes, new technology, or trends. Just think of how you would hire a baby-sitter – who would you trust with your children?
  “It’s important to note that we don’t ‘create’ jobs, we discover them,” the authors explain. This is a 180 degree shift from viewing innovation as creating what no-one has ever seen before, and then trying to stimulate a need.
  Jobs can be discovered in many ways. One is just watching the customers you do—and don’t—already have, and looking for the job that they want done. Do many DIY customers in your hardware store need technical assistance?
  You can also learn much about a Job to Be Done from people who aren’t hiring any product or service to do the Job. Airbnb reports that 40% of their “guests” say they would not have made a trip at all, or would have stayed with family, if Airbnb didn’t exist. As such, Airbnb is not in competition with hotels. There may be an entirely new growth opportunity right in front of you.
  Are people creating ways of working around a problem or just compensating for it? Banking giant ING saw the segment no bank wants, low net-worth individuals, who want a simple, inexpensive banking facility. They were being chased away by high banking charges and other barriers. ING created ING Direct that has no deposit minimums, is fast, convenient, and secures your money. Of course, you won’t see workarounds if you’re not fully immersed in the context of the consumers’ struggle.
  There are probably more jobs people do not want to do than jobs they want to do. Negative jobs are often the best innovation opportunities. Because most people don’t want to go to the doctor if they don’t have to, there are now more than a thousand MinuteClinic locations inside CVS pharmacy stores in thirty-three states in America.
  Innovation can also be identified in the unusual use of products. NyQuil had been on the market for decades as a cold remedy, but some consumers were using it to help them sleep, even when they weren’t sick. This led to ZzzQuil, which offers a good night’s sleep without the other active ingredients consumers didn’t need.
  Growth can be found where none seems possible. It is dependent on knowing what to look for, and the question to be asked: What is the Job here?
  There are gems in this easy-to-read book, with many examples of every point they make. No matter your line of work, this is a clever way to look for new business, but it must be done carefully and slowly.
  Readability Light -+--- Serious
  Insights High +---- Low
  Practical High -+--- Low
  *Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. .
  37 people found this helpful
• 5 out of 5 stars
  Build DEEP WORK Muscles to Replace Shallow Work Fat
  Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2016
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  Congratulations for making a New Year’s resolution to do regular physical exercise for weight loss and energy boost. This is important for you and all those who care about your wellbeing. However, to improve in your work accomplishments and professional value this year, you must build a different set of muscles: your ability and commitment to concentrate on focused work. In our hyper-active world of Internet-intensive temptation to spend time on relatively shallow and low-value activities, this has become exceedingly rare and underappreciated.
  In his valuable new book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central Publishing 2016), Georgetown Computer Science Professor Cal Newport teaches that the most valuable skill for today’s knowledge workers is the ability to do “activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” Those who possess this skill, create new value that is hard to replicate.
  You know this is true. Think about the achievers you know – whether they are entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, attorneys, engineers, physicians, therapists, sales reps, athletes or artists. The top producers commit to work that requires focused concentration, always carefully working to reduce distractions.
  But you might not recognize just how difficult it is to do and how addicted you are to relatively shallow activities. In fact, a McKinsey study found that knowledge workers spend on average 60% of their workweek engaged in electronic communications and Internet searches, including 30% of time devoted to reading and answering email alone. Newport advises that you score your own work behavior on these benchmarks. He warns, “ubiquitous connectivity generates a devastatingly appealing buffet of distractions” and may be derailing your valuable and meaningful productivity.
  Newport’s definition of his term “deep work” is instructive:
  Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
  One of the fascinating examples of a highly valued deep worker the Newport highlights in his book is Nate Silver, the statistician with an extraordinary record of accurately predicting the outcomes of elections and sports events, who is of particular prominence in 2016 as we enter another year of a presidential election in the United States.
  At the peak of the last presidential election of 2012, 70% of all traffic to the New York Times website was the blog with Silver’s election forecast, and less than one year later at the young age of 36, ESPN hired him away from the Times to contribute content to a range of programming including sports, news, politics, weather and entertainment. He knows how to use high-powered statistical software packages to analyze big data sets to generate answers to questions the masses want to know, and, as a result, commands the attention of eyeballs around the world. Silver’s high-skilled knowledge and proprietary methodology are elite in his field.
  As a result of deep work, Silver has two abilities that make him uniquely valuable in his field:
  1. The ability to master hard things;
  2. The ability to produce at a high level of quality and speed.
  These two abilities combine for what Newport calls the law of productivity, a formula that guides all top producers:
  Time spent X Intensity of Focus = High Quality of Work Produced
  In addition to the economic value produced by deep work, Newport devotes a long chapter citing numerous studies in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy and examples to explain how it is a source of meaning and satisfaction.
  The second part of the book Newport devotes to teaching us how to build the discipline of deep work. Like physical exercise using weight training and aerobics, all the methods are hard, requiring you to break bad habits and adopt new disciplines. But also like exercise, the good news is you can select from the many techniques he provides to suit your type of work, your personality and your values; it is not a one-size-fits all recipe. Here are five of many practical suggestions in the book:
  1. Manage Email:
  a. Review daily the subject lines of each email you sent that day. For each message, ask if it reduced distraction, proactively progressed your primary goals, delegated work where possible.
  b. Batch email reading and writing at specific times of day, and no more, resisting the temptation to view messages as they arrive.
  c. Discriminate about who and how you distribute your email address and be clear about the subjects that will get your attention.
  d. Ignore messages that will get you mired in unproductive communications.
  e. Write carefully thinking about the response you need and considering the limited time of others.
  2. Meditate on Productivity
  a. Devote time to think about a single problem or challenge during exercise and commute times.
  b. Be mindful of your focus throughout the workday.
  c. Imagine you have no connectivity at several times of your day. Ask what you could/should do with time when you have no connectivity, like during time on an airplane.
  d. Focus on completing work you know is valuable, rather than just getting things done and crossing them off your to-do list.
  3. Schedule Every Minute of Every Day
  a. End your workday at a specific time because our capacity for deep work is limited.
  4. Conduct Cost/Benefit Analyses of Activities
  a. Quantify the depth of each activity in terms of advancing your goals
  b. Say “no” to activities that will not produce desirable output
  c. Adjust or modify your work environment, whether you have complete control or inherit certain conditions created by your employer (such as the open floor plan championed by Facebook).
  5. Develop and Follow a Training Regimen to Build Concentration Muscles
  a. Read books instead of blogs, increasing protein intake and reducing carbs.
  b. Exercise your mind and memory to strengthen your ability to concentrate intensely.
  c. Make regular time for developing a new skill, like learning to dance, learning a foreign language, playing bridge or chess.
  Deep Work contains many more suggestions of how you can train your ability to concentrate and produce quality work that is valued. I strongly suggest you read it and set up your program to exercise your work muscles. Just as you trim your body fat with physical exercise, your new discipline will increase your professional productivity dramatically.
  31 people found this helpful
• 5 out of 5 stars
  A very deep yet accessible approach to living the life you really want to live
  Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2016
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  I’m predisposed to like Cal and his approach. I’ve been reading his blog since 2009. It’s not an exaggeration to say that his perspective has been a game changer for me that came during a time where I could have easily drowned.
  I was once an academic (now lapsed) capable of consuming and summarizing 4 books a day while studying for comps and writing a dissertation. I then went to the private sector and discovered how things like weak corporate cultures and poor management offer few visible consequences of average behavior or rewards for being exceptional. The disruption in personal discipline is severe. Concentration suffers. Bars are lowered.
  A dozen years later (and later than I would have liked) I realized I was underperforming. I remember the day I was told by a mentor I was drowning and would be yanked out of the pool before I did the company any harm. I had to really knuckle down and focus. I started to search for help and found Cal’s blog. From there I started my own personal quest.
  Deep Work is the culmination of a very thorough and thought-through approach not just to productivity, but to living a life worth living. For those of us who read Cal’s blog regularly, it’s another remarkable milestone on a long journey.
  This book provides a sound framework on how to become more focused, where the goal is not the focus itself but the benefits of that focus. The obvious benefit is improved productivity, but this is about more than just work efficiency. Cal makes a compelling argument for focus in all aspects of life and the benefits it brings both personally and professionally. He presents a wealth of research on how our brains work, as well as practical guidelines that will help anyone build the foundation on which focus can be built. Just as importantly, he offers a number of real-world examples that show the value of focus and debunk myths about multitasking, the "importance" of shallow activities (like email, internet surfing, and social media obsessiveness), and the perception that being thoughtful about how you use your time somehow prevents serendipity.
  For me, Deep Work fills two meaningful gaps in Cal’s ideas. One of them relates to having the discipline to succeed and what’s at stake without it. Discipline is the unknown in each of our personal equations. It varies considerably and is difficult to change. Deep Work offers a number of methods to facilitate personal discipline. It is this aspect of the book that speaks most to me. Cal is steadfast in his own desire to think and rethink in search of improvement. His character is stubborn and resilient, but without the rough edges that often accompany these traits. I didn’t realize this until I joined his live webinar supporting this book. In it, close to the end, he effectively apologizes for being driven and ambitious. I found this a very genuine confession, a brief but telling glint of humility that leads me to conclude, correctly I believe, that he is a fundamentally a decent person. In the end this is his strong suit, and so much the better for those of us whom he has helped.
  The other gap he fills relates to how his ideas could be applied to the nonacademic lives that most of us live. For those chained to the oars of the slave ship bobbing through rough seas of office politics or weak managers or bad corporate cultures, the lessons are actually more relevant. They just require slightly different implementations. This aspect of the book was less eye-opening to me given that I had subscribed to Cal’s approach as a knowledge worker myself. In fact, I have used his approach to help some of my own employees (particularly first-time managers) reorient themselves and how they spend their time.
  The value of Cal’s message is equaled by the clarity of his writing. Cal’s argumentation is well-structured, well-researched, and tight as a drum in its logic. He expresses himself fully and convincingly, but without the complex or ponderous prose that I’m used to in academic texts. He writes cleanly and eloquently, with little opportunity for misunderstanding. I’m pretty sure that’s deliberate.
  Cal has obviously dedicated himself to this topic for a benefit beyond just being a professional guru. While I believe (and hope) he profits from it, I also believe this is a derivative product of his more fundamental goal to succeed in what he finds important in his own driven way. I am hopeful that he continues to write and share his observations as his story unfolds.
  In sum, this is a rich and worthwhile book that will continue to give readers something to think about regardless of where they are in life. There is no secret to his methods of productivity. There’s nothing to buy. There are techniques that work, make sense, and can be practiced by anyone. If you follow them even in part, you’ll have a big leg up on everyone else.
  56 people found this helpful
• 5 out of 5 stars
  I would give it 7 stars!
  Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2026
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  The book is indeed deep, and it needs your full uninterrupted attention. It is rich 3 In 1 book, you read, learn and practice while reading and learning. You are practicing Deep Work while earnestly reading, uninterrupted!
  To start with the writing style, easy going flows smoothly and extremely enjoyable. The author has style and has a convincing style. He does not leave without addressing your doubts, will elaborate below.
  On the theory:
  The theory presented by Newport is Deep Work which overlaps with Andres Ericsson theory of Deliberate practice explained in his book, peak. It is brilliantly easy to absorb. He delivers real life examples, scenarios and stories, followed through with scientific findings or theory.
  We need to train ourselves to work in concentration without distraction. Train our brain to do Deep work without detractions. The author delivers four rules to achieve that:
  1. Work Deeply
  2. Embrace Boredom
  3. Quit social media
  4. Drain the shallows
  I was thrilled with the reference to so many wonderful and important books; Malcolm Gladewell-Outliers, Mihaly “Flow”, Gardner “Learning minds”, Aders Ericsson “Peak”, Geoff Colvin “Talent is overrated”, and Sam Walton “Made in America (actually is his biography, but has beautiful business insights one of which was quoted in the book on happiness of employees and customers), and many others that I haven’t read and as of starting this book I have ordered.
  Noting that, as a personal opinion, it is always important to read similar works, similar topics themes, consecutively, as it helps to retain the delivered knowledge as they all overlap at some point and deliver the same knowledge in different ways and styles with less or more explanation, helping our brain to store the knowledge.
  An important example that Is of relevance to work and skills, and how deep work helps you produce at an elite level, is on myelin and neurons:
  “You get better at a skill as you develop Myelin around the relevant neurons”.
  “By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you`re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits effectively cementing the skills.”
  I was really impressed and have so much respect for the author, why? As mentioned in my first paragraph, he leaves no room for contradiction or doubt, not attended to by himself.
  Example 1; he raises the example of CEOs, specifically Dorsey, “who thrive without depth”. Yet they deliver highly valuable work. This is raised as an exception to the theory, as highly paid CEOs, short of time, cannot afford the luxury of Deep long, uninterrupted work, “They have built a hard-won repository o experience and have honed and proved an instinct for the market.” They are “niches” that are “increasingly rare”
  Example 2; the initial case against Deep work was the mega open working space Facebook built, he comes later in the book to the theory “Don’t Work Alone”, he justifies what he means with the case of the 20Lab building, delivering what he calls “serendipitous creativity”. Working together in an open space with people from different backgrounds leads to chance encounters and a spirit of inventiveness. But this comes at the condition of privacy also to do deep work. 20 Lab was large common areas hub, spoke architecture with a combination of soundproof offices!
  I advise taking notes while reading to have a small summary of the book that you can always come back to as you deem necessary.
  One person found this helpful
• 4 out of 5 stars
  Deep work is important
  Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2024
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  The book emphasizes the importance of the so-called deep work, meaning hyperfocused and uninterrupted work on some heavily demanding subject. This importance is stressed concerning practical, and economic reasons, and to more philosophical ones. After that, the book shares more or less general and practical advice on how to do deep work.
  As the author puts it in the first part of the book, “Deep work is valuable, rare, and meaningful”. He supports this claim by analyzing work habits of, both historical and contemporary, successful figures, and also with a couple of research studies. I must say, referring to the peculiar working styles of such characters as Carl Jung, is very inspiring for me.
  Although I am more prone to more philosophical arguments, I have to admit that devoting a larger portion of this part to more practical arguments, has its point. Being successful in professional life, when one is a knowledge worker, requires him to be able to master hard skills fast, and have a deep understanding of certain areas of knowledge. The author also feels obliged to crack down on some pathologies in working culture, such as open offices or forcing workers to use social media. I would say that I am very unfamiliar with such phenomena, and therefore I am not the one to judge how serious are those issues or how much the average reader of the book needs the analysis of those subjects.
  Let us move to the second part, in which we are given some practical hints and advice on how to work deeply. I would say the quality and applicability of the strategies differ a lot, and I am not sure whether the majority of knowledge workers can use them. I suppose that availability is a very controversial subject, and it would require a bit more detailed attention. I cannot however deny that the author sees the difficulties in stopping being available via email, and suggests some practical solutions.
  I am very sceptical about the chapter about social media. At least at the beginning, it sounds very pretentious, and I feel like the author just wanted to deal with some opinions that irked him. However, I almost do not use social media for a lot of time now, and therefore I might not see the whole picture.
  Concerning the rest of the content, when we overcome practical difficulties, then we gain a lot of very nice practical advice for transforming our work to be more valuable and meaningful. They form a pretty encouraging picture, which I believe is not just a non-realistic dream. I am a bit biased, as I am at the beginning of my academic journey, and my discipline is close to the author's discipline. I therefore like to read about an idealistic life in which I can work no more than if I had a full-time job, be successful, and still have some life beyond academia. The author claims that he has such a life, and I want to believe him.
  Because I share the profession with the author, even the most abstract methods he uses, such as meditation on some abstract problems, sound applicable to me. I will gladly try a lot of them.
  Overall, I think the book is very inspirational, and although I cannot verify its practicality for the average knowledge worker, I believe it can be practical for me.
  4 people found this helpful
• 5 out of 5 stars
  Deep Work is an essential component of a meaningful life in the information age
  Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2016
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  Most personal development books advocate secret shortcuts to success. The 4-Hour Workweek, an extremely popular title from author Tim Ferriss, detailed strategies for “joining the new rich” and traveling the world by working as little as possible. Cal Newport’s latest book entitled Deep Work by contrast is refreshing in its emphasis on extremely cognitively demanding work as the key to success and personal fulfillment.
  Deep Work is defined as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” Deep Work is contrasted with Shallow Work, defined as “Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.” Newport’s thesis is that the ability to actually concentrate on hard stuff is becoming rare due to addictive and distracting technologies from Facebook to Buzzfeed to email. Meanwhile, any job that can be replaced by a computer or someone in a developing nation will be, so deep work is actually more valuable than ever.
  Deep Work is the knowledge workers’ version of “deliberate practice,” the sort of which leads to expertise as found by K. Anders Ericsson in studies of violin players, golfers, chess grandmasters, and so on. Sheer number of hours of very challenging practice with the aim to deliberately improve one’s skills correlates with the greatest expertise, hence the "10,000 hours rule" popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. Expert violin players practice 3-4 hours a day, whereas mediocre players practice only 1 hour a day or less. Similarly, knowledge workers who spend 30-50% of their work day in completely focused concentration on important, difficult projects produce more value than knowledge workers who spend most of the time checking email, sitting in meetings, and distractedly trying to get a few things done each day.
  While Newport emphasizes the benefits in productivity and job security from Deep Work, I think the real benefits are in meaningfulness and life satisfaction. Newport has given a name to something vague I’ve felt was missing in my life. Now I not only have the vocabulary to talk about it, but also a model of how to live a deeply meaningful life in a sustainable manner.
  I’ve had a belief that to do a high volume of good quality work, it was necessary to be a workaholic, a belief supported by the exemplars of high achievement in my life. Not wanting to experience the obvious negative effects of workaholism, I’ve instead chosen to be a slacker. Newport presents a golden mean between the extremes of workaholism and slacking, activity and rest; that of spending 3 or 4 hours a day sequestered in highly concentrated periods of challenging mental labor, 90-120 minutes at a stretch, never working after 5:30pm, and managing all this by ruthlessly eliminating the inessential.
  This is a noble use of ruthlessness, versus Tim Ferriss’ ethic of ruthlessly cheating-within-the-rules or exploiting international labor markets for personal gain. The inessential ought to be eliminated; doing so ensures room for deep and important work. While Ferriss sometimes talks about eliminating the inessential, he frequently contradicts himself by recommending many unimportant things like expensive and needless supplements, or worthless accomplishments like setting a “world record” for number of tango spins in 1 minute, or cheating at kickboxing. Ferriss emphasizes laziness (“the 4 hour X”) and hacks that allow one to skirt effort, while Newport advocates hard, hard work for which there is no shortcut.
  Ultimately Newport’s Deep Work is not simply about doing better work, it’s about living a better life, balancing many competing priorities, determining which technologies aid your most important labor, and valuing your energy and your time as the precious and non-renewable resources they are.
  This book a must-read for anyone who does knowledge work of any kind and wants to live a meaningful life in our age of distraction.
  That said, this book leaves me with some questions.
  Deep Work is a book about finding meaning through work as well as success in life in Late Capitalism. The proposed solution to being outsourced or automated in a hyper-competitive global marketplace is to become indispensable by practicing in a way that leads to profound expertise. However, most new jobs in the economy are in the service sector. Quite a few service jobs won’t allow for Deep Work, for example Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse workers, Bus/Uber drivers, call center employees, administrative assistants, and so on. Do these workers have any opportunities to practice Deep Work on the job in a way that cannot be commodified?
  Newport at one point suggests that these entry-level jobs do not, therefore the worker should develop deeper skills to increase their opportunities for deep work. But when and where can a service industry worker develop their skills, especially if they are already working full-time or more? The best time to develop skills is while you are being paid, and Newport advocates not doing anything work related after 5:30pm. It seems that the only way for such a person to get ahead would be to add an additional 3-4 hours of deep work into their schedule on top of their 8+ hours on the job, but this would necessarily lead to lower cognitive performance from overwork and inferior rest. Since expertise is about total hours spent in deep work or deliberate practice, an economy where the deepest workers thrive rewards the privileged.
  Also by definition if rockstars are some of the only people in a field who will thrive, the system is inherently unjust, privileging a tiny minority while the overwhelming majority suffers. Is Deep Work only for the 1%, and therefore the 99% are destined to lead meaningless and shallow lives? Will Deep Work counter the trend towards increasing inequality, or will it further this disturbing phenomenon, or neither? Is there a way we can increase the opportunities for Deep Work for all workers, not just the professional elite?
  Shallow Work is defined as basically busy work that presents a veneer of being productive, whereas Deep Work is the opposite: focusing on very cognitively demanding work that is personally and socially important. But some of the examples of Deep Work involve very showy displays of work such as number of published papers or (I imagine) lines of code written. Everyone knows it is easier to write 5 shallow books than one truly deep one. Could one be a better researcher by publishing fewer, higher quality papers? Does “publish or perish” really create better academic institutions? Does number of published papers make for a good researcher or professor? Does number of citations even make for a good paper?
  Many paradigm-changing papers or works were ignored at first. As physicist Max Plank allegedly said, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." Is high craftsmanship always valued and appreciated in a field, or do other values make something more popular or financially lucrative? For instance, a better program might be one which is more elegant, requiring fewer lines of code to do the same thing. But lines of code is a showy metric that appears to be better, despite being more shallow. While Newport's official "lead" metric for success is hours spent in deep work, he also emphasizes the metric of number of academic papers published. Newport’s previous books were on academic success, which is largely defined as getting straight A’s in difficult classes. Is Deep Work just trying to get an “A” in life, or is it truly working on what is important, even if one is not rewarded externally as much as the person who plays to the crowd/rules? Is it “he who dies with the most published and cited papers wins?” or is it “he who writes the most meaningful and deep papers wins?” What if the crowd's values for success in your field are wrong or shallow?
  Is Deep Work actually deep, or is it merely technical? It seems like many of the examples involve learning a highly specialized technical discipline, and/or perhaps inventing something new in a highly specialized technical discipline. But is technical skill and proficiency what truly matters in life? To take the example of masterful musicians who K. Anders Ericsson studied: is mastery in musical performance merely a matter of technical proficiency? Clearly without technical proficiency, one cannot reach a level of mastery in music, so some high degree of technical proficiency is necessary. But just as clearly, musical performance that only contains technical mastery is missing something equally as important, making this technical ability insufficient. Newport’s previous book was about developing skill instead of following your passion, but a technical musician who lacks passion makes for a cold and unmoving performance. Is Newport underestimating the importance of passion or heart in expertise because it is more challenging to measure or teach?
  I know several people who are back in school right now. All of them spend many hours a day studying very cognitively demanding material in a highly focused manner, but none are superstars. Why is this? One (my wife) doesn’t even have a Facebook or Twitter account, and studies in a very focused manner for hours at a time, and yet is still very slow compared to her son, who can write a nearly good paper in literally 1/10th the time. (He plays hours of video games every day.) Is she lacking some crucial study skill? Another is a PhD candidate in the biological sciences and basically works round the clock. Why isn’t she a superstar in her field given her long hours of difficult study? (She is doing well, but not head-and-shoulders above similar PhD students.) Is she not resting enough or focused enough while she works? Hours spent in a highly focused manner on cognitively demanding tasks is clearly an important thing, but also clearly not the only relevant variable in producing outstanding results. What are those other factors that determine extreme results and are they learnable?
  Is Deep actually compatible with More and Fast? In this book, Newport emphasizes being able to produce high volume of work quickly in order to survive and thrive in Late Capitalism. But does this emphasis on More and Fast sacrifice some level of depth that is only possible with Less and Slow? For example, in the psychological sciences as well as in pharmaceutical drug trials, it is difficult to get funding for longitudinal studies that track individuals over long periods of time, but deep and important information is found from these studies that cannot be replicated through short-term studies alone. Because of the lack of these studies (and their expense), we have lots of data on short-term effects of drugs but little information about the effects of these drugs after years of use…and many of these drugs continue to be used for years, such as SSRIs and other anti-depressant drugs. Deep Work does seem to eliminate much of what is unimportant, specifically mindless entertainment and needless technology. A life of Deep Work is certainly more focused and meaningful than one without. There are also some advantages to More and Fast. But what other Deep things are we missing out on by focusing on More and Fast work?
  Despite my questions, I found the book very moving and important, and I highly recommend it. In my own life, I will be seriously considering ways to make my daily work life revolve around as much Deep Work as I can sustain.
  255 people found this helpful
• 3 out of 5 stars
  A hodgepodge of obvious advice, jargon and interesting strategies and examples: 3.5 stars
  Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2016
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  Cal Newport's book "Deep Work" tackles one of the banes of our existence; the difficulty of focusing for long periods of time on a problem or a thought while being constantly distracted by a steady thermal current of updates from Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other “essentials” of social media. I can completely empathize with the problem Newport cites, partly because as a blogger I have been forced to contend with social media as an inevitable part of my life. For better or worse it seems like social media is here to stay, so how do you benefit from it while keeping yourself from falling prey to it?
  Newport starts by identifying the value of deep work to a productive way of life. It's not completely clear where the boundary between "deep" and "shallow" lies but the definition of deep work as activity that is carried on for sustained periods of time without distraction seems like a good general definition. What I enjoyed best about the book was the examples of well-known people achieving significant intellectual milestones in isolation: Carl Jung building a rural cabin to cogitate on psychology, or Bill Gates writing his groundbreaking memo on the Internet in 1995 during one of his 'think weeks' during which he would spirit himself away in a cabin with only books and his thoughts. Newport also identifies scores of famous personalities ranging from computer scientist Donald Knuth to futurist and writer Neal Stephenson who don't have any email address, Twitter presence or ready means of contacting them listed on their websites.
  The book is a hodgepodge of such interesting examples and advice that alternatively seems insightful and obvious. Newport's habit of coining new jargon for well-known problems with social media and their putative solutions can be occasionally annoying, but it can also serve to focus your attention on these problems. Among the problems Newport identifies is the "Any Benefit Approach" to network tools which basically convinces you that any incremental value you get from Facebook or Twitter is worth the vast amounts of time you spend on it. Newport also recognizes the crucial trap that all of us fall into; that of believing that we are somehow "falling behind" or "missing out" by not being on social media. To disillusion us of this trap Newport suggest a radical experiment (which sounds radical only because we are so addicted to social media); he suggests that we lay off all social media for a month, or at least a week. He guarantees us that at the end of this period we will find that a. We did not “miss out” on much and b. People did not miss us much. This seems like a worthwhile experiment to attempt. Another interesting approach Newport communicates is to think of social media not as an indispensable part of modern life which we are resigned to but as a set of tools; as craftsmen with any other set of tools, we can decide when exactly to use these tools and how much of them to use. Speaking of tools though, I as surprised that Newport did not mention Freedom, the Internet blocking service that I have found quite useful to avoid social media.
  Newport is certainly no Luddite who thinks Twitter is destroying us, but he is certainly questioning its tradeoffs, and exercises like the 30-day abstinence experiment he suggests would allow us to gauge this tradeoff. My own experience with Twitter over the last few years - an experience that did allow me to get about 4000 followers and publicize my blog posts - mirrors the very high cost/benefit ratio that he cites. Not only can Twitter get you emotionally riled up about ultimately minor or inconsequential issues but it also leads to very few benefits in terms of truly meaningful connections with interesting people. But other don't see it that way, and Newport categorically dismisses the positive spin that businesses ranging from the New York Times to Exxon have put on having social media presences as an essential part of their public image. He also has tips on how to organize and respond to emails so that they don’t constantly follow you even when you get home from work; the trick is to be occasionally ok with simply not responding to random or ill thought out emails, and crafting very specific responses that would “close the loop” and not allow the content to linger.
  Overall the book is an interesting read even if some of the problems and solutions that Newport identifies are rather obvious. In addition I think he is sometimes too glib in dismissing the benefits of "shallow work", especially the kind of collaborative efforts that are leading these days to insights through crowdsourcing. Nonetheless, Newport’s emphasis on the value of the kind of deep work that produces great literature, science, music and business memos should resonate with most of us. What I like is his ability to carefully organize even obvious material into implementable strategies. The real challenge as usual is to implement these strategies with dedication and perseverance. That requires being able to face frustration and invoke a level of self-discipline that can only come with effort. At the very least this book would inspire us to try.
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