100 years ago, essentially all food was “organic.” Labeling a sweet potato “organic” or “conventional” was unnecessary.
Similarly, before the age of the amusement park that is social media and email, there was little need to distinguish between “deep work” and plain-old-regular work.
In today’s distracted world, that distinction is essential, as Cal Newport unveils in his 2016 book Deep Work.
I’m only on page 134, but here are my take-aways thus far:
This book is nicely tying together several books/concepts I have integrated during my 20’s
Namely: Flow, Daily Rituals, The Talent Code, and The Busy Trap. Newport refers to all four of these sources. The synthesis of this quartet is this: producing creative work and building tangible skill requires focusing one’s utmost, deliberate concentration on a challenging task. This is best accomplished by implementing habits and routines that create predictable grooves in one’s day, which immerses oneself to ride a wave rooted entirely in the moment.
There are several strategies for cultivating deep work
Monastic – minimize shallow obligations such as email (least accessible strategy for typical person)
Bimodal – Take a retreat for days or weeks to concentrate solely on your in depth work
Rhythmic – Work everyday at the same time, no matter what, a la Twyla Tharp
Journalistic – Find/schedule any spare time possible to dedicate towards deep work. This approach takes more skill, because it requires your brain to frequently shift tasks, which is not conducive to finding flow
I tend to fuse the Rhythmic and Journalistic approaches. But now, I’m brainstorming ways to incorporate Bimodal, which attracts me the most.
Open Floor Offices are overrated
In an attempt, to foster collaboration and creative interaction, companies like Facebook and Square have adopted open floor offices. Newport argues this is ultimately not worthwhile because it prevents solo, deep thinking, the heavy lifting needed to leverage long term productivity and growth.
My intuition says this is nothing but accurate.
Final Thoughts
We live in a world of notifications, status updates, and cultural expectations to respond to email immediately. And it’s so easy you can do it from the Great Wall of China. But how is this new technology affecting our attention spans and ability to do deep, meaningful work?
Maybe, it’s time to go back to the flip-phone.
