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I’m a Systems Engineering student from Argentina, and last month I stumbled upon various posts about Deep Work by Cal Newport. I knew I needed to develop better habits for the coming semester, so I gave it a try.

Here’s what resonated with me the most.

What exactly is Deep Work?

Deep Work refers to activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that are highly demanding on your cognitive capabilities. Efforts that create value, improve skills, and are hard to replicate. Think about the last time you were studying or working, how many times did you check your notifications, DMs or social media? If you are like me, probably many times. That’s the opposite of Deep Work, what the author would call Shallow Work, performing tasks while distracted. Deep Work is becoming increasingly rare, due to the fact that we live in a distracted world. We are surrounded by online entertainment and social media, the latter is designed to grab your attention and provide you with infinite amounts of content for you to consume. So why is Deep Work valuable? In our new economy, where automation will take over many jobs and where technology develops faster than ever, the ability to master complicated things and produce at an elite level is, and will be, highly rewarded. According to the author, those who will for sure thrive in the new economy will be: knowledge workers who can work with intelligent machines, those who are superstars in their line of work and owners of capital that have the ability to invest in new technologies. Newport thinks about Deep Work as “the superpower of the 21st century.”

If we analyze productivity, we can narrow it down and to a simple formula:

high_quality_work = time_spent * work_intensity

By maximizing intensity in your work sessions, you get to produce more value. Time is limited and you can’t buy more of it, but you can develop the ability to increase your intesity level while studying or working.

Here comes Deep Work into play, if we can manage to concentrate in one task for an extended period of time, then we will be able output so much more than if we worked in a state of distraction.

Working deeply enables you to:

• Be able to produce more and better.
• Develop your ability to solve complex problems and learn hard things
• Work in a state of Flow, making it more rewarding

If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive — no matter how skilled or talented you are.

How do you incorporate Deep Work into your life?

In order to cultivate a Deep Work habit, the author presents different approaches and practices that will help you master the art of working deeply. First, define a philosophy for your deep work scheduling. Newport suggests different ways to incorporate depth, but the one that seemed more plausible for a student was the Rythmic Philosophy. It consists of having a rigurous routine for working deeply everyday for a set amount of time. This is inspired a bit by the Chain Method, popularized by Jerry Seinfeld. For example, spend one hour and a half every weekday learning a new technology. Once you have decided on what approach you will take to make Deep Work a habit in your life, the author presents practices to be succesful in this endeavour. I will summarize it in 4 main tips.

1. Ritualize and execute.

Make a ritual out of your deep work sessions. Build a strategy that defines: Where you’ll work and for how long (e.g in the library for 2 hours straight), how you’ll work once you start to work (e.g turning off your phone, keeping track of progress, etc)and how you’ll support your work (make sure your brain can operate! e.g start with a cup of coffee). Also to guide you toward effective action, Newport gives insight into a framework called “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” or 4DX. It focuses on HOW to execute business strategies, and the author describes how he adapted it to reach his goal of working deeply. Here is an article about 4DX.

2. Embrace Boredom.

Allow yourself to be bored and give your mind a break, for example: quit the habit of checking social media everytime you feel bored. Even if you want to concentrate, it’s hard to shake off the addiction of on-demand distraction. “Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”

3. Cut down on social media.

Set a threshold on the time and attention that you spend on social media, and reduce the amount of tools like these that you use on a daily basis. Most of these tools provide little to no benefit to your life, but nonetheless we tend to have and use everything we can. That is what the author calls “The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection”, this means ignoring all the negatives that come along with these tools and just focus on the small extra benefit of using it.

Newport proposes a “Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection”. Which consists in only adopting those tools that have a positive impact on your life outweighing its negative effects. Stick to a set of a few tools, the vital ones, and don’t be afraid to go offline for a couple hours.

4. Schedule Your Day.

The book suggests to dedicate a page of a notebook everyday to schedule evey hour that you spend working or studying, dividing your workday into blocks that you can assign to activities. This schedule should guide you through the day and if you can’t keep it from breaking, just rewrite the blocks. The goal is to always have an idea of what you are doing with your time as the day unfolds.

This type of time structuring is really helpful when you have lots of things going on in your day. Taking 5 minutes to carefully write down what you will be spending time on can be surpisingly useful because it is easy to allow your time to go away when the day is open and without structure.

Acquiring a Deep Work habit is not something that can be done in a few days, but I am certainly changing my study and work habits for the better. When you really focus in your work, things get done really fast. I recommend this book if you feel like you can’t get stuff done and feel constantly distracted.

You can buy the book on Amazon.