Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport (Epub)

Description

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

1. Work Deeply
2. Embrace Boredom
3. Quit Social Media
4. Drain the Shallows

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on 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 business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

An Amazon Best Book of 2016 Pick in Business & Leadership
Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller
A Business Book of the Week at 800-CEO-READ

User’s Reviews

Review Praise for So Good They Can’t Ignore You:”Stop worrying about what you feel like doing (and what the world owes you) and instead, start creating something meaningful and then give it to the world. Cal really delivers with this one.”―Seth Godin, author, Linchpin”Entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive advantage by building valuable skills. This book offers advice based on research and reality–not meaningless platitudes– on how to invest in yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. An important guide to starting up a remarkable career.”―Reid Hoffman, co-founder & chairman of LinkedIn and co-author of the bestselling The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career”Do what you love and the money will follow’ sounds like great advice — until it’s time to get a job and disillusionment quickly sets in. Cal Newport ably demonstrates how the quest for ‘passion’ can corrode job satisfaction. If all he accomplished with this book was to turn conventional wisdom on its head, that would be interesting enough. But he goes further — offering advice and examples that will help you bypass the disillusionment and get right to work building skills that matter.”―Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind”This book changed my mind. It has moved me from ‘find your passion, so that you can be useful’ to ‘be useful so that you can find your passion.’ That is a big flip, but it’s more honest, and that is why I am giving each of my three young adult children a copy of this unorthodox guide.”―Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick, WIRED magazine”First book in years I read twice, to make sure I got it. Brilliant counter-intuitive career insights. Powerful new ideas that have already changed the way I think of my own career, and the advice I give others.”―Derek Sivers, founder, CD Baby”Written in an optimistic and accessible tone, with clear logic and no-nonsense advice, this work is useful reading for anyone new to the job market and striving to find a path or for those who have been struggling to find meaning in their current careers.”―Publishers Weekly –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ On page 136, the author says, “I discovered the gap between what and how was relevant to my personal quest to work more deeply.” The first 135 pages of this book are the ‘what’. I’ll sum it up for you and save you some time: We’re all distracted because our brains like distraction and also because our bosses like us to look busy.” Pretty sure we all knew that by now. You still have to mine through the next 120 or so pages to get to the ‘how’ nuggets of deep work. The ‘rules’ that are mentioned in the title. I’ll give you some hints – routine helps, facebook sucks, and boredom is the birthplace of creativity. I wanted to love this book. I’m a writer, and staying focused is tough. But I felt a lot of this book was redundant and finding the nuggets of help and inspiration was annoying.

⭐ 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 You1. Rare and valuable skills (aka career capital)2. Creative control over projects3. Control over your time (which allows you to do deep work, virtuous cycle)4. Work that has a positive impact on the world5. Working with people you enjoy being withHere’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 Quickly2. Producing at an Elite LevelThis 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.

⭐ Newport starts out with a good (albeit obvious) idea that one can get much higher quality work done by getting rid of the constant distractions and interruptions surrounding us — like tv, smart phones, email, and social media. Thereby allowing your mind to become deeply focused on the task at hand. I think we can all remember times when we have achieved this state whether it was writing a paper, building a model, drawing a picture, reading a novel, writing a computer program, putting a puzzle together, etc. We can also all remember how good it felt to be that focused and that productive. So his premise for this book is a good one even if for no other reason than to point out how we have let social media take over so much of our time — that we have become constantly `on call’ and therefore don’t think as deeply about things anymore. That we should force ourselves to disconnect once in a while.The problem with Newport’s book is that the above ideas are not enough material for an entire book. So he needs to fill out the book with interesting stories and related facts. This is where Newport gets sloppy, goes off the rails, and ruins the book. He contradicts himself over and over. Starting out by saying one needs time isolated, undistracted, alone, to be totally focussed on a task for several hours at a minimum, and then contradicting this by saying we should work in teams, or first that we ignore the smart phone and later put a stop watch phone app on our desk which we can constantly glance at to make sure we stay there for a certain time, etc. He even inserts bizarre asides that are completely irrelevant to his `deep work’ topic such as card memorization tricks that have nothing to do with deeply concentrating on a task and entering the `deep work’ state. Newport’s editors at the publishing company clearly didn’t bother pointing out the many contradictions, irrelevant distractions, and non-sequiturs riddled throughout this book.`Deep Work’, as Newport calls it, is sort of the work analogue of rem sleep, it is a state of concentration that only comes after you work undistracted for a certain amount of time. The amount of time needed to achieve this state differs between people and you get better at it with practice. In fact, contrary to what Newport says, some people can do it without the isolation. They can simply put their phone in airplane mode and shut everything out. Like the guy on the subway reading or writing who is completely oblivious to everything around him. A bomb could go off and he wouldn’t even notice. In other words, contrary to Newport’s initial (contradicted later) premise, we don’t need to retreat to a proverbial `mountain shack’ to achieve this productive state. In fact, I am in the state now, writing this. Yes, the mountain shack helps, but it is not required.It became clear by the end of the book that Newport has decided to write Malcolm Gladwell type `techno self help books’ for two reasons: 1) to pad his resume, and 2) to make money.The first is clear by the importance he places on the number of books and articles people pump out (falling in to the `publish or perish’ trap of academia) repeating yearly publication rates over and over for himself and others — quantity not quality; and the second is clear by the importance he places on riches and rich people. How rich you will get, how irreplaceable and therefore highly paid you will be, etc., if you are a deep worker guy. Although this may just be his awareness of the values driving his target audience — i.e. tech entry level programmers types or software sales types who went into CS or business school to make money. In otherwords the type of high level software tech guy who idolizes Bill Gates and has never heard of Dennis Richie or Richard Stallman. (Newport himself not have heard of them either)It is also annoying that he talks forcefully about deleting your twitter or your facebook account and then reveals later that he has never even had a facebook account! That is like complaining about the number of people addicted to `game of thrones’, saying it is a worthless waste of time and they should stop watching it, only to reveal he has never seen an episode of the show!Look, I agree that social media is a distraction and one should not allow it to constantly interrupt your concentration throughout the day, but lets not start deleting every modern tool just because they can be addicting. Instead learn moderation! Alcohol can be addjcting too, but there are 10 people who enjoy relaxing with a scotch or glass of wine in the evening for every addicted alcoholic. Facebook provides pleasure and relaxation to people — which is exactly why it can be addicting. The secret is moderation, not elimination.Also, all of his talk about how long your mind can remain in `deep work’ mode per day is pure made up nonsense. Four hours? He has no clue. Nor should he. In fact, it is likely different for different people and completely dependent on how long you have practiced it. People have gone for weeks, months, or even longer in that state (when proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, Andrew Wiles went for 7 years!) Isaac Newton for example, would work so hard on a problem that he would forget to eat, he would dream about it, and it would totally consume him for weeks at a time. I heard a story, written by a fellow Cambridge professor and fellow member of the Royal Society who said Newton would emerge from his rooms, ostensibly to get some dinner, and would walk a certain distance lost in thought and completely oblivious to his surroundings. He would then suddenly stop and look around. Clearly having forgotten why he had left his rooms and he would then turn around, go back to his rooms, and continue working. Now that is what I call prolonged `deep work’ — forget about social media, not even hunger could interrupt Newton .Anyway, I could go on but I won’t bore you with further complaints.Read “On Writing” by Stephen King and you will get a much more substantial and informative discussion of how to work, to create, and to go ‘deep’. King’s version of “deep work” is outlined beginning on page 151 (sections 2, 3, and 4 of the part entitled ‘on writing’) and I think he really nails it. Stephen King is both prolific and humble (he is also filthy rich for those of you who think that fact is important), and he certainly proven he knows how to achieve deep concentration. Search “22 lessons by Stephen King” sometime. They apply equally well to any ‘deep’ creative task in my opinion.Summary: Make time in your life to go distraction free when you have an important creative endeavour to work on. Put your devices in airplane mode and retreat to your proverbial `mountain shack’. Do it as often, as for as long, as it takes to finish that creative endeavour. Then turn your devices back on and rejoin the rest of us out here in social media land. Tell us about your cool creation so that we can enjoy it as well and we can compliment you on how cool it is and how much hard work you did to accomplish it. However, don’t brag too much or toot your own horn too much okay? Let us do that. Your creation shows your value without needing adornments about your publication rate, your million tasks accomplished — and with children in their terrible twos!, your MIT education, your Georgetown professorial eliteness, and the rest. All that tooting just makes you look insecure.In fact, by the end of Newport’s book, it made me want to read a book written by his wife. I bet she would tell a revealing tale.

⭐ I have generally been a fan of Cal’s work, but had a mixed view on this book. TL DR: It has some good actionable steps, but with a lot of fluff about being more counter-culture and revolutionary than it is or needs to have.The Good1. Cal highlights actionable ways to 1) increase concentration and focus and 2) produce more work output. He specifically delineates between “shallow” low priority work and “deep” high-priority, high-payoff work and ways to identify which types of work fall into which category.2. Cal anticipates more of the (valid) objections and nuances to his thesis than I’ve seen him do previously. I thought his discussions on professions like CEOs that might not be deep-work appropriate, different ways to think about what social media improves your life, and going off-schedule to pursue an insight made the book much more well-rounded and connected to life.The Not-so-good1. The book is written as if it’s presenting “a new, flashy, grand theory of everything”. It’s not that. The idea of working in a deep, focused manner isn’t a new one or one that would shock people (as the book’s extensive citations show). But the book puts up a very intense battle against an army of straw men. I don’t think you’d find anyone who disagrees with the general notion of working intensely on your priorities; it’s making your life conducive to it (and getting done what you aim to get done when you sit down) that’s the hard part. So the book feels more to me like ideas you’d share with friends about how to be more productive than a revolutionary new idea, but you have to wade through *pages* of why this is *life-changing* and *flashy* to get to the more useful actionable steps.2. I think that deep work is a very large umbrella term that could be broken down. For example, the way in which brainstorming or writing an academic paper stretches your brain is very different from the way in which editing a paper (p. 228) stretches your brain. Cal identifies all of these as deep work, but more thought on how you attack very different types of deep work would be helpful. For example, the open-ended process of generating an idea and getting it on to paper requires a different process than the mind-numbing tedium of final paper edits. I would have liked more thinking through the “initial attack” and then the “follow-through”.

⭐ If you’ve never heard that concentration on a task leads to better outcomes, by all means buy the book.If you’re searching for strategies to accomplish concentration, you might find help here, but you’ll be trawling through an ocean of tangentially relevant opinions.If you are curious about the author’s psychology and life world, there’s an abundance of insight.But for most of us there’s little new here and very little that’s applicable outside of common sense: if you’re distracted, you loose concentration. If you’ve lost concentration, it will be harder to deliver results. To deliver results, set time aside, even if it’s only 30 minutes a day. And go work hard.But please don’t spend money on this book!

⭐ Cal Newport gives us a very specific definition for the “Deep Work” in his title. Here it is.“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: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World is based on what the Cal Newport calls his 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.”Why do the hard work of deep work?Newport believes that the ability to do deep work will help you master hard things quickly and perform at an elite level. And he thinks that those skills are key to success in the coming decades. This book is about wringing the most value you can out of your time by spending some of it on deep work.Not a new idea, but an important onePeople have been writing about working in long, uninterrupted stretches of time for quite a while. You’ll find it in Peter Drucker’s book, The Effective Executive, written in the 1960s. Then it might make you more successful. Today, Newport thinks it’s a survival skill. He thinks that the world will be divided into two kinds of performers in the future. One group will not master deep work and will slide down the performance curve. The other group will master deep work and will be more successful and more satisfied.An important idea that pushes back against our work cultureWhat Newport is calling for in terms of concentration and effort goes against the grain of the current work culture. Today we think that being connected 24 hours a day and 7 days a week is normal. We don’t see anything strange about a person stopping in the middle of a dinner conversation to check email. Yet, that’s exactly the opposite of the behavior that Newport recommends.How to get the deep work doneThe author suggests six strategies for getting the deep work done. I found those interesting reading but not particularly helpful, with one exception. That’s the advice to: “Decide on your in-depth philosophy.”That will be particularly helpful for you because it gives you different ways to approach the idea of doing deep work, no matter what kind of situation you’re in. My only quibble here is that I don’t think you just decide and do it. I think you’ll try things out, find what works, and maybe combine the philosophies so that they work best for you.After going through some of the basics, Newport defines the problem accurately by noting that it is a problem of execution, not a problem of understanding. Knowing that deep work is important and understanding how it works won’t make a pinch of difference without an execution strategy.He recommends the strategy from a 2012 book called The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals. That book lays out four specific disciplines that Newport applies one after another to the process of doing deep work.Focus on the wildly important. Not just “important,” “wildly important.” Pick one or two things that will make the biggest difference for you and work on those. As many authors have said, you will accomplish more with a few goals that you concentrate on rather than with many goals that distract you and suck up your energy.Act on the lead measures. Measure what you need to do to get the results you want. Do that and the results will take care of themselves.Keep a compelling scoreboard. Keeping score and keeping records keeps you honest and helps you make more progress.Create a cadence of accountability. This is a lot like scrum. Don’t just do deep work. Have someone or a team that you’re accountable to and to whom you report regularly.Is this book for you?This is a good book, especially if you are new to the idea of what deep work represents: long, uninterrupted stretches of work that push you to your limits. The material on execution includes ways to work in teams and to mix creativity and innovation to produce more and better work.There are some things that you should be aware of before you consider buying the book. The first part of the book seems very helpful, but then effectiveness tails off. That’s not unusual in business books, which tend to start strong and then peter out. This one keeps going, but the second half of the book is not nearly as sharp or as helpful as the first.There are lots of powerful insights in the book. Even if you don’t buy the entire process, or if you buy it but don’t entirely put it to work, you’ll pick up some tips and tricks that will make you more productive. There’s one, for example, about not taking breaks from the distractions, i.e. checking your email. Instead, take breaks from your deep work. You work, you take a break and you do the distractions then.There was another one that was particularly helpful for me about developing a shut-down ritual at the end of the day. I’ve been working on things in a kind of deep work way for years, it’s what writers do. What I had not mastered was the ability to shift from my work day to home without a fairly long transition period. The close-out ritual has helped with that, though I’m still struggling to master it. The problem is with me, not the concept.On a personal note, I would have liked the book better if there were more business examples as opposed to academic examples of ways to make this work. In fact, I’d have preferred more examples from someone other than Cal Newport.Bottom lineThis will be a good book for you if you want to improve the amount and quality of your personal work. It will help you get things done with teams. It will give you a number of productivity tips, whether you go for the whole book or not.On the downside, the book is probably longer than it needs to be. The most important “downside” has nothing to do with the book. If you don’t put what you learn to work, it will have no value for you. In the case of deep work, that means making changes to your work routines and habits. It will take you months or years, not days or weeks, to get the value that’s here for the taking.

⭐ I’m happy to see that only the first third of the book was dedicated to the theory supporting his ideas. The advice offered was good but mostly applies to persons who have already achieved some autonomy in their professional lives or have external support. This book could be better if more information was provided from people from other walks of life. We are not all on a tenure track for professor. Neither are we Bill Gates or some other tech guru. What are the strategies for a regular kid who has to earn a living through school to achieve deep work? A single mom? He mentioned J.K. Rowling as an example, but not the strategies employed by the struggling J.K. Rowling (a more valuable lesson I’m sure). He described how the rich version could afford to sequester herself in a fancy hotel and write. I’m more interested in how she managed the deep work on her first book when she was probably scared and desperate. I’m more interested in how people with challenges employ deep work and succeed. I’m not really interested in knowing yet again how people who have support and can take extended lunch breaks achieve deep work. Also, the advice on how to manage email and social media was not very nuanced. A little more research into strategies employed by people who need to read (and answer!) their email and maintain a social media presence would have improved this book as well.

⭐ Ordered this 48 hours ago on a whim and…it has consumed me.First off, howdy Cal! We’re neighbors! Loved the recommendation for Smith Meadows grass fed meat.Love the vernacular as well. Cal is an outstanding writer, and from one writer to another, superbly impressed by this. Favorite word I think is heuristic.I purchased the kindle version and actually got so, so much from this book that I copied into “Notes” for personal review that eventually I got a message error saying “copy limit reached”!There is just so much use included in this book, backed by an entirely action-driven plan complete with science-backed evidence. Cal stays clear more or less of the political and philosophical debates (he dabbles, but not much at all)I’m not a fan of people including summaries in their review, I think that’s wildly unethical actually, so all I will say is you’re looking for a way to become more efficient and successful, this book is not to be missed. Only regret not reading it sooner.P.s. During the reading thought of the potentiality of using Pavlovian cues to start/end blocks of deep work…perhaps a series of bells or sounds, each individual to the start or end of a particular area of deep work. This could potentially help the mind become more accustomed to the start and stop of said work.Love, love, love this book. Will re-read often! Thanks, Cal!

⭐ I came across Deep Work as a recommendation by someone on Hacker News. It was a thread on the best books read recently, and I forget which exactly… so I can’t post the referral link here…The reason why I decided to get this book was mostly that I wanted to take a break from the glut of technical reading I had been doing at the time. I also tend to like to read self help books, so it’s very fitting that I had gone with this particular piece.Deep Work definitely resonated with me as with all self-help books tend to do IF you already buy into everything a self-help books already suggests. As it turns out, I had already practiced most of the philosophies Professor Cal already advises.In summary, the deep work philosophy requires one to be very disciplined with their limited time and use that time effectively to get non-trivial work done. The non-trivial work in this case tends to be work that does not give one immediate satisfaction of productivity, but rather a sense of satisfaction of working towards a bigger goal or completed work with more meaning.How that gets done is mentioned by Newport in that to become effective and deep work we must:We live in an economy where we now need to possess a certain set of qualities to be successful. There are 3 categories: First the people who can use their tools effectively to do more than the people who are in the same position to innovate. Second, the people who possess highly technical skills who are sought after to contribute to the economic machine and finally the people who have enough capital to use to get things done. Most people can work to bring themselves into the first two categories.Treat our task and job as if completing it brings innovation to the world. Become a craftsman at what you do.Gauge whether or not the use of social media is actually necessary. They tend to be distractions.Plan and schedule effectively. Know when you are productive and take advantage of that time.We can only be productive for so long. (1–4 hours) Knowing this fact will let us know when to call it quits.Know when to call it quits. Don’t stress about the things that can happen after the work day. Just create a game plan for how to solve the outstanding issues for the next time you pick up your tasks again and come to admit that you are “at a good place”.Deep Work: LEARN NEW THINGS QUICKLY and BECOME AN EXPERT AT NEW THINGS.I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to become more productive, or needs confirmation if one already believes they are productive. For me, it was the latter. I wanted to make sure that I was on the right track personally for my own growth. This book did just that.If you’re not into self-help books, I would probably go to the local book store and give this one a skim anyway. 🙂

⭐ This book has assisted me greatly in improving my focus and work. I found the advice so important that I wrote a one-pay summary that I provide others when I recommend the book to them. Here is that summary.Deep Work: Activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive abilities to their limit. These efforts are crucial to accomplishing difficult tasks and improving abilities.Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-type tasks, often performed while distracted.Network tools work against deep thinking/work. Connectivity creates little tasks that upon completion falsely result in a productive feeling. Our brain always responds to distractions. Multi-tasking has attention-residue that causes inefficient performance and thwarts deep-thinking. Depth-destroying instances are difficult to detect. Behaviors that are easiest at the moment interfere with deep thinking/deep work. Busyness is not nor does it promote deep thinking/work, but is a seductive substitute for productivity. The least resistance is short-term satisfaction that avoids the discomfort of concentration that leads to real meaning and long-term satisfaction.Focus requires reducing and, for extended periods, eliminating distraction. The benefits are professional (more meaningful thinking and work) and personal (more meaningful thinking and time with those who matter). Deep thinking is connected to a good life.Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea (Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, Dominican friar & professor of moral philosophy)To learn requires intense concentration (an act of deep work). Deliberate practice focused attention and feedback to maintain focus.Replacing distraction with focus is difficult. Execution is more difficult than strategies.Work with others, but then often retreat to work alone. Deep thinking/work can occur with others (Collaborative deep work), but everyone must be committed to such efforts. Even then, the individuals often retreat to work alone.You must batch hard important intellectual work into uninterrupted stretches. Sometimes days, but never less than an hour. Establish times and distraction-free environments. The following are strategies. The bimodal and rhythmic strategies require great discipline!Monastic strategy – two or three times a year go to a quiet location for deep thinking, work, and relaxation.Bimodal strategy – dedicate clearly defined periods of time to deep thinking/work (e.g., one 8-hour day each week).Rhythmic strategy – set hard stretches of time each day for deep thinking/work (no shorter than 1-2 hour stretches).Journalistic strategy – shift into deep work on a moment’s notice.Routines and rituals are absolutely required (the most important meta strategy) for deep thinking/work. Establish:• Where you will work and for how long (schedule 30-minute blocks all day, batching similar things, particularly shallow tasks):• How you will work once you begin; and• Efforts you will make to support your deep thinking/work time.Create a stake (grand gesture) that makes more likely you will follow through with your effort at deep thinking/work.• Focus on what is extremely important. All activities require time. Spend 80% of your time/attention on high impact activities.• Act on lead measures; behaviors that will drive success on lag measures (what you are seeking to improve).• Maintain a scoreboard of hours spend deep thinking/working and link to accomplishments.• Establish regular accountability checks.• Establish downtimes. Put more thought into your leisure time and make purposeful choices.• Finish your work day at an established time. Create a shutdown ritual that includes (a) quickly reviewing email inbox to ensure urgent messages have been addressed; (b) transfer new tasks onto your task list; (c) skim task list and calendar for the upcoming days to be mindful of important deadlines/obligations and time-frame for completing tasks; (d) plan the next day; and (e) say out loud “shutdown complete”.• Wean yourself from distractions. Humans are suckers for irrelevancy. We struggle to stay on task. Fight against distractions.• Fight against looping (thinking repeatedly about what you already know). To do so, identify the relevant variables, then identify the next step. Consolidate your gains and being the process again.• Take breaks from focused thinking/work rather than breaks from distraction. Schedule breaks from deep thinking/work. Schedule internet breaks, but keep the times short.• Email promotes shallow thinking/action. Place out-of-office auto-responder on email during periods of lengthy deep work.• Establish self-imposed deadlines at the edge of feasibility. This will push you to focus.• When walking, record on my phone my thinking regarding deep thinking/work efforts.• Identify your tech/media use and remove those whose positive outcomes don’t substantially outweigh the negative outcomes.• Cognitive capacity is limited. Reflect on shallow activities and make wise choices when you must turn away from deep work.• Limit professional travel as it is disruptive to deep thinking/work.• Say “no” to most all requests that do not align well with your deep tasks.

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