Summary: Modern life today sometimes to me, resemble a food tasting event instead of and enjoyable full and hearty meal. We engage in shallow things and not put in the time to apply deep work and focus on something meaningful, and yet we expect great results and to be successful. I for instance, over the course of the day, dealing with my teams, constantly get distracted from accomplishing things during the office day. Having to deal with challenges and problems which take us away from engaging in deep quality work that creates value and significance and is hard to replicate. This book by Cal Newport builds on the lessons from his other book, So good they can’t ignore you, which I reviewed earlier in this podcast. He defines deep work as: "Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capacities to their limit.” Like the book the One Thing, we know that multitasking cannot be done. We assume when we switch rapidly between tasks, we are multi-tasking, but we are not, we are simply switching rather than actually doing both at the same time. Cal Introduces us to the Value of Deep work. In today’s distracted economy, those of us who will thrive are those who have the ability to rapidly master hard things and those with the ability to produce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed. Both of these require the ability to engage in deep work. Cal provides us a formula to this. High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus) To be able to learn things quickly, we need to apply intense focus without distraction. This will enable us to acquire the necessary mastery to perform at peak levels of quality and quantity. Allow me to leave you with this We are constantly distracted in todays modern world. Our work has rewarded us for multi tasking which has killed our ability to be ultra productive. It will not be easy, but we need to commit and take back, control of our time by removing distractions and letting our brains focus deeply and immerse in complex and deep work. Only by doing this, will we allow ourselves to really maximize our value in todays economy and thrive.
