Helpful book, very frustrating read. Many many times I wanted to throw this book across the room. So often with the genre you find a great concept that could fit nicely in an article has been stretched out to a book (or even a career).
I’m not going to waste too much time skewering the guy, thankfully these two people have already done it so perfectly.
Mara Lucien – Book review: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Some guy on google reviews – don’t know who he is, but he doesn’t miss:
Woof. I’m reminded of Nassim Taleb’s view of academics which is, to paraphrase: ‘Its a giant circle jerk where value is derived by getting referenced by other academics’.
ANYWAY – here is the shocking part. After reading this book I started to schedule Deep Work periods in my day, starting with 45mins to 1 hour. I kept alist of items i wanted to work on and I’m finding it a really effective means of getting things done. I combine with an Atomic Habits approach of ‘Cue/Craving/Response/Reward’ to give myself both reminders and rewards for deep work sessions and I’m definitely getting more done.
Four Rules for Deep Work to remember:
1 – Work Deeply.
- Montastic Work – remove yourself from the world
- Bimodal Work – Divide year up into periods
- Rythmic Work – Regular Work every day
- Journalistic Work – Grab hours and minutes where you can
Build a ritual:
- Where you’ll work and for how long (eliminating interruptions)
- How you’ll work once you start
- How you’ll support your ability to do work e.g. food/drink/bathroom
The 4 disciplines of execution, per Clayton Christensen, are:
– Focus on the wildly important. “Say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.” — David Brooks, The Art of Focus
– Act on lead measures.
– Keep a compelling scoreboard. e.g. “deep work” hours tracked
-Create a cadence for accountability.
Regarding downtime, Newport says:
– Downtime aids insights.
– Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply.
– The work that evening downtime replaces is usually not that important.
2 – Embrace Boredom, Create blocks where you can veg out.
3 – Quit Social Media – I’m already there my man.
4 – Drain the shallows
- Schedule every minute of your day.
- Quantify the depth of every activity.
- Set (or ask your boss to set) a shallow work budget
- Finish your work by 5:30 or some other set time – use a shutdown ritual
- Become hard to reach – use a scarcity mindset when it comes to your time.
Notes from a small Life 