Name: Vojtech's review of Deep Work by Cal Newport
Item: Deep Work
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Cal Newport

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results. 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. 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.

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep Work

Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves your attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term 'deep work' on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead - distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mindset that foster a practice of distraction-free productivity at work, and now, in DEEP WORK, he shows how anyone can achieve this elusive state. Through revealing portraits of both historical and modern-day thinkers, academics and leaders in the fields of technology, science and culture, and their deep work habits, Newport shares an inspiring collection of tools to wring every last drop of value out of your intellectual capacity. He explains why mastering this shift in work practices is crucial for anyone who intends to stay ahead in a complex information economy, and how to systematically train the mind to focus. Put simply: developing and cultivating a deep work practice is one of the best decisions we can make in an increasingly distracted world.

Christina Farkona

 blocks. If you’re not sure how long a given activity might take, block off the expected time, then follow this with an additional block that has a split purpose. If you need more time for the preceding activity, use this additional block to keep working on it. If you finish the activity on time, however, have an alternate use already assigned for the extra block (for example, some non-urgent tasks).

When you’re done, have a set phrase you say that indicates completion (to end my own ritual, I say, “Shutdown complete”).

support your commitment to shutting down with a strict 

 that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right.

if you deployed smart routines and rituals —perhaps a set time and quiet location used for your deep tasks each afternoon— you’d require much less willpower to start and keep going. In the long run, you’d therefore succeed with these deep efforts far more often.

[…] It’s crucial, therefore, that you figure out in advance what you’re going to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin. Structured hobbies provide good fodder for these hours, as they generate specific actions with specific goals to fill your time.

. In other words, this strategy suggests that when it comes to your relaxation, don’t default to whatever catches your attention at the moment, but instead dedicate some advance thinking to the question of how you want to spend your “day within a day.” 

I call this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the 

once you’ve hit your deep work limit in a given day, you’ll experience diminishing rewards if you try to cram in more.

Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires.

Ständige Ablenkung ist heute das Hindernis Nummer eins für ein effizienteres Arbeiten. Sei es aufgrund lauter Großraumbüros, vieler paralleler Kommunikationskanäle, dauerhaftem Online-Sein oder der Schwierigkeit zu entscheiden, was davon nun unsere Aufmerksamkeit am meisten benötigt. Sich ganz auf eine Sache konzentrieren zu können wird damit zu einer raren, aber wertvollen und entscheidenden Fähigkeit im Arbeitsalltag. Cal Newport prägte hierfür den Begriff "Deep Work", der einen Zustand völlig konzentrierter und fokussierter Arbeit beschreibt, und begann die Regeln und Denkweisen zu erforschen, die solch fokussiertes Arbeiten fördern. Mit seiner Deep-Work-Methode verrät Newport, wie man sich systematisch darauf trainiert, zu fokussieren, und wie wir unser Arbeitsleben nach den Regeln der Deep-Work-Methode neu organisieren können. Wer in unserer schnelllebigen und sprunghaften Zeit nicht untergehen will, für den ist dieses Konzept unerlässlich. Kurz gesagt: Die Entscheidung für Deep Work ist eine der besten, die man in einer Welt voller Ablenkungen treffen kann.

Regeln für eine Welt voller Ablenkungen

Konzentriert arbeiten

Anton Stallboerger

Sobald Sie ein überaus wichtiges Ziel identifiziert haben, müssen Sie ihren Erfolg messen.

Carla Schwarze

E-mail is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

To b great at something is to be well myelinated.

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.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets... it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. 

If you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say "no" to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say "yes" to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.

[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.

There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration - that there is some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where... but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.

Nikita Pashinsky

1. Your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master;

2. You receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.

Shallow work: non cognitively 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.

Deep work: professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to the limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Vojtech

Has some good tips but nothing out of the ordinary which almost every other self-help book covers 

Ayesha 

As a white male in a capitalistic society, I feel qualified for criticizing this book for lopsidedly using white males as examples of deep work and equating one’s success with their monetary worth. 

The book does contain useful approaches to protecting one’s time, and I would recommend it for that. 

Doug Lane

As a white male in a capitalistic society, I feel qualified for criticizing this book for lopsidedly using white males as examples of deep work and equating one’s success with their monetary worth. 

The book does contain useful approaches to protecting one’s time, and I would recommend it for that. 

heleen de boever

Had to put this aside about 70% in, as Newport's patronising rhetoric and corporate, profit-oriented rationale felt just profoundly alienating (and, let's be real, quite nauseating). If you can look beyond those, he elaborates on some valuable ideas.

Gavin

Quite shallow. He uses himself and Carl Jung as exemplars of the method - "I published 4 books in 10 years" and so on - but why should I judge either of them to have made a positive impact, merely because they published a lot? 

Lots of cherry-picked anecdotes in the normal bad self-help mode, with no attention to survivorship bias. Deep Work has the same feel as the disgraced 
  Why We Sleep
: empirically sloppy exaggeration of a plausibly ultra-important topic. Unlike Walker, Newport is not explicitly claiming scientific authority though.

The topic is networked technology as a force against individual productivity. There's a weak and a strong form:

 
  

   Weak: "You need to focus to do great work, or to learn new hard things. And work on the Internet is extremely vulnerable to distraction and tends to be less focussed." 
  

  

  

   Strong: "The always-on fragmentary state of being caused by addictive technology is disabling. It has lasting developmental effects, reducing your attention span, serenity, perspective." (Lanier, Carr.) 
  

 

Newport makes both claims ("Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work."), and the strong one is poorly justified to say the least. But the weak form is plausible and important enough on its own.

I wondered how much this was just a rehash of the Flow idea, and in fact Newport does give it its due. It seems fair to update the idea after 40 great years of tech and the culture of tech. (I had no mobile phone until I was 17, no smartphone until I was 27. My abstinence would be much harder now.)

The weak evidence could be forgiven if the claims were weaker, or if the tone was less pompous. Plus two stars for being about an important possibility, minus one for being unrigorous, minus one for tone.

Things I try to do:

* Track your amount of deep work hours every day.

* Protect your morning: get out of bed quickly and don't browse.

* Do "time blocking", earmarking a whole day for focused work

* Batch shallow work (emails, meetings) in one time slots, probably the evening.
* Leave your phone in a different room. 

He talks about scheduling your entire day, which I suspect is perverse. And "become hard to reach" is only possible for people who are already successful / in particular careers. ymmv.

Odaklanma Becerisini Nasil Yitirdik, Nasil Geri Kazanabiliriz

Pürdikkat

Okan Davut

** spoiler alert **
           Pür Dikkat sosyal medya kullanımı konusunda benim de atmam gereken adımlar konusunda düşünmemi sağladı. Bununla beraber iş günlerini daha etkin kullanmak adına farklı dikkatli çalışma yöntemleri üzerine bilgi edindim. Ve hem sosyal medya hemde odaklı çalışma konusunda adımlar atmamı sağladı. Kesinlikle tavsiye ederim.

Bouke van der Bijl

Forgettable. TL;DR spend less time on social media and focus on what you need to do or something and you might be successful but maybe not because the book is based on a couple anecdotes

Kelly

This just didn’t do it for me. 

Sure, there were some useful tips. But for the most part I found this to be impractical at best, condescending and preachy at worse. 

I really just don’t get the hype. 

I like the ideas of blocking off periods of deep work on my calendar, minimizing shallow work and distractions, using a habit tracker, and creating personal rituals. 

Other than that - this was full of fluff and miscellaneous quotes.

David Melvin

This book provides interesting insights on how to make your work life more meaningful. I only read the 2nd half because, based on the table of contents, it seemed to focus on practical ways to change your work life to fit this system, whereas the first part explains how why it is important to pursue deep work.

Jimmy Cerone

A real game changer. Has me rethinking everything from how I write to how I walk.

Kevin

Deep Work and how it works scientifically was super-interesting. It's definitely worth reading because you'll learn how important deep work is and how easily it is to slip into shallow work. 

The only downside is that it sometimes feels like a blog post on 300 pages and listicle of "these 10 people did it like this", I'd prefer a more on-point book than an academical paper-length.

although some of its points where on spot, i didn’t enjoy this book. i didn’t appreciate his tone and the mindset around “work hard to be the best” and that your value is linked to your job excellence. 

it encourages the perfectionism struggle as well as low self-esteem issues. 

i picked up this book because people recommended it a lot, but i was feeling a huge resistance whilst reading it. like i don’t even want to consider a few of his tips.

some of this knowledge was valuable though, so i choose to take note of that, i’m grateful enough for just that, and i ignore his attitude for the rest of this book ✌🏼.

although some of its points where on spot, i didn’t enjoy this book. i didn’t appreciate his tone and the mindset around “work hard to be the best” and that your value is linked to your job excellence. 

it encourages the perfectionism struggle as well as low self-esteem issues. 

i picked up this book because people recommended it a lot, but i was feeling a huge resistance whilst reading it. like i don’t even want to consider a few of his tips.

some of this knowledge was valuable though, so i choose to take note of that, i’m grateful enough for just that, and i ignore his attitude for the rest of this book ✌🏼.

A seminal read on how to achieve great things with less time. Highly recommend for anyone who wants less wastage and more productivity. Easy yet powerful read.

Fred Rivett

Jowanza Joseph

Most of the time, productivity books like this one are very corny and have impractical advice for the modern age. This book is quite different. For this book, I spent a lot of the time reading it taking notes and making plans to implement what I have been reading. 

This is probably the most valuable book I will read this year (I still have 6 more I need to read to make my goal). However, parts of the book are a bit too preachy and not convincing so I can't give it a 5-star review. That being said, I recommend this book for anyone who wants to get a hold of their life and do more important things with their time.

Nick Gracilla

Writers, artists, craftspeople, scientists, inventors—creative work has historically benefited from deep work strategies. We’re most familiar with “monastic escapes” from everyday life and interaction, where the total focus can become immersion in the work for months at a time. While this approach isn’t realistic for most modern day high skilled knowledge workers, Cal presents other strategies to develop deep work skills that are. Our economy values the outcomes of creative work yet competes for our time and attention through distraction and ad-driven digital addiction. It’s never been more important to develop the skills needed for focused success.

Jessica

poprika

Great book for students and everyone who need to focus in their day-to-day tasks. A bit long at the end with all the advices, but i would recommend. Now i gonna be more conscious about my studies time and don't push myself too hard after past 4 hours mark

Eneko Uruñuela

Soo krass, mehr als fünf Sterne verdient!!

Mariam Raji

Swastik

A great book. Enjoyable to read and insightful.

Neil Murray

It’s inspired me to reassess everything that I consider ‘work’ and to start implementing (immediately) new practices and methods to ensure I focus on what’s the most valuable use of my time during working hours.

You could read the sample on Kindle and get the gist of the whole book.

Mark Phillips

Sayuri 

I read this book in the midst of confusion in my life. I heard from Hindz (a content creater) talking about this book as one of his favorite books in one of his Podcasts. It was a quick read yet rather a life-changing one. By now, knowing that it came out in 2016, probably almost everyone has heard of something that is written in this book. But still, reading this was a great reminder for me, how I could focus better, if I miss something to get into the zone so I would improve my knowledge management.

Dave Perkins

Requires deep focus to actually finish the book. Great lessons throughout though.

A unique perspective for those wishing to improve their focus and concentration at work and while they work.  Highly recommended.

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Deep Work by Cal Newport

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