This is the summary of the Part II of the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. I wrote this to consolidate what I extracted from the book and make it easy for me to review the ideas later. It can also serve as a nice intro to the techniques mentioned in the book.
Please read the actual book to get a deeper understanding of the deep.
Note on terminology; the usage of the word “rule” as the chapter headings is a bit misleading as it simplifies things a bit too much and negates the importance of the sub-headings (which should be mentioned clearly in the ToC). Which is why I will use the word “chapter” as the substitute.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Designing a Deeper Life
- Chapter 2: Train your brain for more cognitively demanding tasks
- Chapter 3: Choosing what to keep and what to erase from the face of existence
- Chapter 4: Be more mindful of your time and reduce shallow work
Chapter 1: Designing a Deeper Life
This chapter is about how you can start designing a deeper life for yourself.
Step 1: Get a Personalised Deep Work Philosophy
There are different ways of adopting deep work into your life based on the nature of your work and the characteristics of the life you currently lead. You should choose a structure that is aligned to your life. For example, if you’re a student and have to attend school/college, then shoving yourself into a cabin in the woods for a month for “deep thinking” won’t do you much good.
The list (of philosophies) is in the decreasing order of time for deep work you can afford per session.
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Monastic
TL;DR: just do deep work whole day, nothing else, 7 days a week. This is for the people who need to work on just one thing in a really well manner. E.g. researchers, novelists, etc. -
Bimodal
Carry on with your normal life and such but retreat to a week-long deep sabbatical (or equivalent). The deep work time per session should be more than a day. -
Rhythmic
Consistent, defined and protected sessions of small deep work sessions each day. Probably the most popular. (I follow this). -
Journalistic.
Anytime, anywhere. Intense. Not for beginners.
Step 2: Increase the probability of you engaging in deep work
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Schedule your deep work
Scheduling provides a low-level urgency.
- Use timeblocking and tracking to make sure that you are meeting your deep work quota.
- Do single-purpose deep work; i.e. working on only XYZ problem set.
- Treating deep work as non-negotiable could work as well.
- Sometimes lie to yourself about how important it is: it’s very important! Your life depends on it!
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Ritualise the sessions
Answering these questions beforehand (and noting them down) ensures that you won’t have to take decisions while in deep work mode. Takes the pressure off of your working memory.
- Where will you work and for how long?
- How will you work once you start to work?
Having a level of structure and rules keep you on track and promote replicability in the future. - How will you support your work?
Coffee, recharging walks, mindful and restful activities and systematised support system to make sure that you don’t burn out.
Treating this as a scientific experiment keeps things fresh.
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Make use of novelty and make grand gestures
People perform better when they add something new to the mix. Using this might help tackle big projects and engage in deep work sessions easily.
ADHDers often have to switch places and environments to be able to keep focusing. Going into different places for studying, using a different pen, anything that makes things feel new does the work as well. Having fun is important! -
Other ADHD Tricks that aid deep work
Strategies to tackle executive dysfunction in ADHD and engaging in deep work are very similar. These tricks, borrowed from the ADHD world, help deep workers as well:
- 10 minute rule to garner momentum.
- Using body doubling / accountability.
- Focumon and other gamification tools.
- Whatever works to get things done.
Check my ADHD toolkit for more such tricks.
Step 3: About gathering and distilling ideas
This is super useful when you’re a knowledge worker, researcher, college student trying to do something great. You want ideas, and you want them ideas to flourish into something useful. This is where Deep Work comes in.
Spend time with people gathering ideas, working out things and running through them.
Then spend time alone, in deep mode, distilling whatever you collected into something tangible/useful.
Solo deep sessions is where those ideas are actualised, but the un-Solo part serves as a catalyst to produce an idea.
It’s also useful to have a collaborator for some knowledge work. A partner to share ideas, discuss and debate. This keeps the brain open for new possibilities. But you work alone to make things happen.
Step 4: The 4 Disciplines of Execution
The business world uses the 4DX to help them work better and yield better output.
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Focus on only the wildly important; i.e. prioritise on 1-2 most important goals.
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Keep proper metrics
- Lag measures:
These are the results that you get. E.g. scores in a test, weight loss, etc. - Lead measures:
These help predict (and to an extent, define) the lag measures (results):
E.g. doing more problems -> higher score; better diet + HIIT -> more weight loss.
Choose the right metrics.
- Lag measures:
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Keep a better score
Something that clearly says whether you’re winning or not. Numbers, stats, not just vague binary questions. -
Accountability and periodic review
Did you do what you had planned? Why, why not? And what are you going to do next week, and such.
Step 5: Focus on downtime
Do activities that recharge you on downtime rather than the ones that numb you. For example, a student “should” do mindfulness meditation or napp instead of playing Minecraft after school to recharge.
- Also, have a proper “Shutdown Ritual” to transition from work mode to rest mode. Note: this can be incredibly difficult for ADHDers and may have to resort to drastic measures like Mom shouting till you stop working.
- Use Zeigarnik Effect to set up for the next deep work session.
Chapter 2: Train your brain for more cognitively demanding tasks
And the best way to do that is to get good at being bored.
Scheduled internet blocks ONLY.
“No internet” becomes the default. You have to schedule specific blocks where you get to use it. This cancels any scope of getting distracted.
If you have to use the internet for something related to work, write it down on a scratchpad and look it up later in the next scheduled internet block. Not before!
Internet (nowadays) is treacherous. Beware!
Engage in Rooseveltian intensity.
Work intensely on something that requires cognitive demand, in roughly half the time that you’d normally allocate. It’s mental calisthenics, and one improves in this skill with time. Start with an hour, move it up, up and up.
But not everyday, it’s better to do it occasionally. Eg. twice a week.
Engage in Productive Meditation
Similar to mindfulness meditation, but here instead of returning to your breath or to a sound, you return to a problem that you’re trying to solve. The problem can be a math proof, a new startup idea, personal stuff.
The objective is to train your brain to think deeply with time, not just for the productivity benefits. Best done when physically occupied (eg. walking, jogging, etc.). But beware of “looping,” i.e. re-iterating through the same information again and again. And of getting distracted.
This type of meditation needs structure (like a normal meditation involves certain rules), which develops with time as the brain rewires into being able to think better. It may also improve working memory for ADHDers.
Train your memory
This will help increase working memory (something that ADHDers lack quite a bit) and concentration. Because it’s all a muscle! It can all be built!
Additional benefits: you learn better techniques to memorise things and “encoding” information, which further increases your ability to recall and learn things efficiently.
Try: Memorising a deck of cards.
Chapter 3: Choosing what to keep and what to erase from the face of existence
A detour to the land of the Minimalists.
Curate your tools
Think about your current criteria of adopting a tool. How do you know that it’s going to be worthwhile?
Raise the bars. Just because a tool provides “some” benefits, doesn’t mean it provides “enough” benefits. Do some cost-profit analysis. Make sure that it doesn’t cost you more in the long run.
Be intentional. And less is more.
Goal-setting in professional and personal lives
- List out 2-3 “broad” goals for your professional and personal lives.
- List out the activities involved and their ROI.
- Then list the tools involved in the activities and evaluate whether they are serving any purpose.
- Weed out! Erase! Banish! Keep only the important.
No shallow entertainment after work
This ties to Step 5: Focus on downtime. Instead of spending time in shallow activities, spend time in doing things that recharge your capacity to do deep work.
A quote from the book:
“The brain needs only change, not rest, except in sleep.”
A high-quality activity can serve as a proper “garbage collection” for the brain between deep work sessions.
Pack up and go minimal
80% of the output is yielded by 20% of the input.
Similarly, evaluate what objects/tools/philosophies constitutes this “20%” in your life. What are the absolute non-negotiable. Be conservative. Be strict.
You can do this by packing up everything and putting them in cardboard boxes or equivalent of “clean slate” and pulling out something only when it has an use.
Build the 20%. Discard the rest. Be on the lookout for the “hey, I might need this someday” bias.
Chapter 4: Be more mindful of your time and reduce shallow work
Deep work is not about “hey, I guess I’ll lock in”, it’s about being more mindful of your time and methodically reduce shallow work from your life. It’s a life philosophy.
Scheduling and time blocking
The objective is NOT to follow it like a robot, but being more intentional. It’s “giving every minute a job,” as Newport says, because going with the flow doesn’t do you much good.
It actually allows for sponteneity more than you think, just that scheduled tasks are the default. You can always re-arrange and re-schedule.
Caveats: it’s hard for ADHDers to actually implement this in life. We’re mostly time-blind and it’s hard for us to estimate things.
It might be useful to supplement this with Justin Sung’s concept of scheduling which aligns with deep work but is more succinct.
Fixed-time productivity
Newport advices to set a goal of not doing anything related to your job/college/whatever after a certain time if you can’t get enough deep work done.
It’s very similar to Nate Soares’s idea of setting a “quality target”. You don’t have to do more. And you shouldn’t do more.
For example, if you’re a college student with a startup and want to focus on an idea, then you’d avoid doing anything related to college after, 6pm. Your time belongs only to your startup after 6.
This kind of distinction helps juggling multiple projects by preventing overflow, without compromising on output.
Deep and Shallow Work budgeting
Do some budgeting on how you much you want to do deep and shallow work respectively. Note that not all shallow work is avoidable.
Fixing a ratio would help you get more deep work done. Start with something easy to handle (like 60% deep, 40% shallow) and with time, deviate towards the “deep”.
Quantify the “depth” of an activity to decide whether you should do it.
How will you know if an activity is deep enough and not just looks deep? Doing deep work works best on things that require high cognitive demand. So, spending precious time and mental bandwidth on something “shallow” isn’t the best thing.
The filter / thought experiment:
“How much time will it take a bright highschooler to learn and do this activity?”
This tests whether the activity:
- requires cognitive demand or not
- requires a level of expertise
- involves deep sessions
The more time it takes for a high-schooler, the more worthy the activity is for a deep session.
NO!
Seriously, learn to say “no”! You’re allowed to say no, especially to the tasks that drain your limited resources (willpower, motivation and mental bandwidth) and which prevent future deep work sessions.
This immediately gives you a ton of headroom for higher quality activities.
This is about it. Thanks for reading!