Summary of “Deep Work” by Cal

Newport
Rules for focused success in a distracted
world

Written by Bookey
About the book
The rapid development of Internet technology and
smart products has provided people with a lot of
convenience. Meanwhile, all kinds of notifications
and messages mean people's working time has
become highly fragmented. The author keenly
points out that more than 60% of knowledge
workers' work time is spent on shallow work. This
type of work not only yields limited output value
but also permanently reduces people's capacity to
work deeply! This book describes how to train the
brain to eliminate distractions, improve deep work
ability, and create more value.
About the author
Cal Newport is a bestselling author and famous
blogger. He graduated from MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology) and is currently an
associate professor of computer science at
Georgetown University. He established the popular
American blog Study Hacks, which is dedicated to
decoding successful patterns in work and study.
This book contains a wealth of neurological,
psychological, and philosophical information that
demonstrates Newport's broad knowledge and
logical thinking ability.
Chapter 1: Overview
Hi, welcome to Bookey. Today, we will unlock the
book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a
Distracted World. If you probe into the
experiences of some prominent figures in history,
you will find that deep work is pivotal to their
success in their respective fields. American author
Mark Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer, was mostly done in a shed at the Quarry
Farm in New York. His workplace, the shed was so
far from the main house where his family lived that
they had to call him to dinner by blowing a horn.
The theoretical physicist Peter Higgs worked in a
nearly secluded environment and refused to use a
computer. When Higgs won the Nobel Prize,
journalists couldn't even locate him. The novelist
J.K. Rowling would stay away from social media
while writing Harry Potter. For the first year and a
half after opening her Twitter account, she posted
only one tweet: "This is the real me, but you won't
be hearing from me often I’m afraid, as pen and
paper is my priority at the moment." Unlike these
highly influential figures, more and more
knowledge workers are straying away from deep
work. FranklinCovey, a company specializing in
training to improve organizational and personal
effectiveness, has tracked more than 350,000
employees worldwide. According to its findings,
these employees have wasted 40% of their work
time on things that don't matter. In this speed first
web-centric era, people have embraced the Internet
and remain instantly connected. Knowledge
workers dedicate most of their work time to emails,
meetings, and social media, yet their essential tasks
have been delayed. In this business environment,
how can we yield valuable results and stand out in
the workplace? In an age of highly fragmented
working time, the approach to deep work proposed
in Deep Work makes even more sense. It helps
ordinary people become the winners of today's age.
In the meantime, we can get gratification from deep
work. While arguing for the importance of deep
work, Deep Work also provides a systematic way to
train our brains to eliminate distractions.
Furthermore, the book helps us improve our ability
to think deeply and thus create more value. The
author, Cal Newport, received his Ph.D. in
computer science from MIT and is currently an
associate professor of computer science at
Georgetown University. He is also a bestselling
author. Besides this book, Newport's bestselling
works also include How to Win at College:
Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's
Top Students, How to Become a Straight-A Student,
How to Be a High School Superstar: A
Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing
Out, and So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why
Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You
Love. He is also the founder of the popular blog
Study Hacks, which is dedicated to decoding
success patterns in work and study. In this
Bookey session, we will look at how ordinary
people can be the winners of our time by looking at
the following three parts: Part One: Why do we
need deep work? Part Two: What factors prevent
us from working deeply? Part Three: How to
cultivate the ability for deep work?
Chapter 2: Why do we need deep
work?
Let's look at the first part to understand why we
need deep work. Knowledge workers send and
receive emails from anywhere, anytime, and attend
meetings one after the other. They continually
switch their focus from one thing to another when
multitasking. They may look swamped but are not
creating much new value. In other words, they are
doing "shallow work." As opposed to shallow work,
the author of this book proposes "deep work,"
which refers to concentrating on a career activity in
an undisturbed state. This type of job stretches an
individual to the limits of their cognitive abilities
and creates new value and hones skills. Deep work
is a crucial ability to help ordinary people become
winners in the new economy. According to a pair
of MIT economists, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew
McAfee, an increasing number of people will lose
in this new economy as their skill becomes
automatable or easily outsourced. At the same time,
others will not only survive but thrive—becoming
more valued (and, therefore, more rewarded) than
before. In order to become more valuable, two core
abilities are crucial: first, the ability to quickly
master hard things, such as quickly learning
computer programming and grasping the
cutting-edge of medical research; second, the
ability to produce at an elite level in both quality
and speed. However, both of these core abilities
rely on our competence to work deeply. The first
core ability, the ability to quickly master complex
tools, needs to be acquired through deliberate
practice. In his research, Florida State University
professor K. Anders Ericsson has indicated that the
differences between experts and ordinary people
are changeable. The differences reflect deliberate
practice in a particular area. The intentional
practice that helps us become experts requires two
things: first, your attention is focused tightly on a
specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea
you're trying to master; second, you receive
feedback, so you can correct your approach by
keeping your attention exactly where it's most
productive. The deliberate practice to improve a
particular ability is precisely what deep work
describes as concentrating on a career activity in an
undisturbed state. Simply put, a state of deep work
is conducive to deliberate practice that allows us to
quickly master complex tools. Therefore, the ability
to master sophisticated tools closely relies on the
ability to work deeply. The second core ability is
to produce quality and speed at an elite level. The
author summarizes a compelling formula for
productivity: High-Quality Work Produced = (Time
Spent) x (Intensity of Focus). The author once
conducted a research study that found that the best
students in the country's most competitive schools
spent less time studying than lower-performing
students. This was because the best students could
maximize their concentration, thereby reducing the
amount of time they had to dedicate. The extreme
focus emphasized here is also what deep work
requires. It is only through maximizing absorption
that we can produce higher quality work in less
time. As a result, the rapid production of
high-quality work also depends on the ability to
work deeply. In addition to helping us become
winners in our time, deep work can also generate
satisfaction. Artisans like to continue cutting and
polishing their products with scrupulous attention
to detail, that is, performing deep work. In the
pursuit of perfection, artisans can obtain
gratification. While knowledge workers differ from
artisans with respect to job content, deep work can
also create satisfaction for knowledge workers. In
this regard, the author demonstrates his points from
neurological, psychological, and philosophical
perspectives. First, let's look at the evidence
from neuroscience. Stanford psychologist Laura
Carstensen did a neurological study that examined
the brain’s response when people were confronted
with positive and negative imagery. The research
findings showed that when faced with positive and
negative imagery, the amygdala, the brain’s
emotional center, became responsive in young
people. In contrast, the amygdala of older people
only responded to positive imagery. Carstensen
explained that perhaps older people had trained
their brains to ignore negative information and
enjoy the positive information so they could enjoy
life more. From this study, we can see that our
spiritual world depends on the object of our
attention. The author believes that when we are in a
state of deep work, we focus on meaningful,
positive things. Hence, engaging in long-term deep
work will place us in a positive state of mind.
Furthermore, when we give our undivided attention
to an important thing, we won't have to spend extra
energy to focus on trivial and unpleasant things. To
put it another way, doing deep work over time can
help you forget your worries and stay happy.
After discussing the evidence from neuroscience,
let's see how psychological evidence can provide
support for the satisfaction of deep work. In a
series of psychological studies, psychologists
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Reed Larson made a
discovery: the best moments usually occur when a
person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a
voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult
and worthwhile. Csikszentmihalyi named this
mental state "flow." He also wrote a book, Flow:
The Psychology of Optimal Experience on this
subject. When people concentrate on something
and don't want to be disturbed or interrupted, they
enter a state of "flow." When a musician is
composing music, and a programmer is
programming, they have effortless access to "flow."
The state of "flow" is accompanied by a high level
of excitement and satisfaction. Deep work is an
excellent state of work that creates flow. Likewise,
we have also reviewed the book Flow. If you are
interested in knowing more about "flow," search for
it on Bookey and listen to it. And finally, let's see
how philosophical evidence provides support for
the satisfaction that deep work brings. In All
Things Shining, philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and
Sean Dorrance Kelly claimed that artisans bring a
sense of sacredness to the world, which is
necessary to create meaning in life. On this basis,
the author points out that the sense of sacredness is
not unique to the craft industry. By contrast, any
pursuit that requires a high level of skill can
generate a sense of sacredness. Regardless of
whether we develop craftsmanship or other abilities,
we need to be highly focused on deep work,
exactly where the sense of sacredness comes from.
Embracing deep work in a career can give
knowledge workers a sense of sacredness, value,
and satisfaction from their everyday tasks. We
have now covered part one: why do we need deep
work? First, deep work can help ordinary people
become winners in the new economy; second, the
author argues that deep work can bring satisfaction
from three aspects: neurology, psychology, and
philosophy.
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