5 Lessons From Cal Newport's "Deep Work"

Why quality over quantity matters in work too. • Wisdom Hit #1

Deep work. What it even is? It’s a skill. A skill to concentrate deeply on a difficult task for long periods. No notifications, no smoke breaks, no breaks whatsoever. Just getting into the flow and following it. Sounds good? Let's take a closer look.

1. Your brain is not good at switching attention

Multitasking = 0 tasking. It’s a sexy concept to do many things at once, but your brain works better when you focus on one thing at a time. And against intuition, things get done faster that way.

2. Batch hard, intellectual tasks

The reason is simple - your brain is not able to maintain laser focus for long periods of time. My sessions last 90 minutes each, which can be considered too long, but I don't mind. It’s about finding what works best for you after all.

3. Set the time for your work

Suppose you decided to work on a personal project every day from 18:00 to 19:00. How hard it will be to do the work on the first day? Hard. What will the first day look like after a week of such work? Easier. And the first day after a month of doing so? Now, it’s routine.

Doing something in the same timeframe is a very simple, but not so easy to stick to, trick that can set you ahead with your goals.

During those work hours, make yourself unavailable. Cal gives examples of some successful people that go “ghost mode”. So literal, that they can’t be contacted whatsoever. You don't have to go to such extremes, just remove distractions. Again, very simple concept, but difficult to implement.

The graph below shows how hard it is to start working: