Deep Work

The idea of isolation and extreme concentration leveraged throughout the book felt like another banal, elitist, pretentious, easy-as-pie solution like acute minimalism promoted by YouTube self-help gurus: reduce distractions by locking yourself in a cabin in the woods and congrats, you're a next level genius!

In a world where network tools like Facebook are designed by the smartest engineers to make you addicted to their services, how do you make sure you get deep meaningful work done? Newport does a great job in summarizing a lot of the problems we face in our new distracted world and what steps to take to win back thoughtful work. Like all things, this requires planning, practice and a conscious effort to do more with our time without expending more of it.

This book is well worth your time if you keep checking your phone, can't do something for 5-10 mins without going to Facebook, Snapchat etc.

I love this book because not only does it discuss the concept about deep work (which basically boils down to - you do your best work and are the most productive when you're extremely focused) but gives solid tips on how to do it. I've written an in-depth review/run down of the book here: http://www.elizabethtai.com/blog/top-thoughts-from-deep-work-by-cal-newport and here http://www.elizabethtai.com/blog/how-im-structuring-my-life-for-more-deep-work

I've always been fascinated by the idea of “flow”. The ability to dig deep into a topic and concentrate on it for long periods of time takes some time to nurture and practice to get good at - and when I stop practicing it gets more difficult. The focus on deep work and the advantages it can bring in this book range from learning, to execution to producing the best work you're capable of.

Normalmente odio scrivere recensioni, penso infatti che la mia scrittura sia abbastanza mediocre e non penso di avere mai grandi concetti da aggiungere alle migliaia di recensioni già reperibili online, ma questa volta sento il bisogno di fare un'eccezione.
Faccio un'eccezione perché penso che Deep Work abbia in se il suo motivo di essere rivoluzionario: viviamo in un mondo iper connesso e iper pieno di informazione, e lo giudichiamo come un vantaggio, siamo spesso occupati ad essere occupati, non riusciamo a stare 10 secondi in coda alle poste senza scrollare il feed di Instagram. Cal Newport ci vuole dire che chiunque riesca a scappare da questa confusione invisibile può veramente dare un senso ai propri giorni e portare avanti la propria visione personale, invece che “reagire” alla quotidiana overdose di inter-connettività.
Rivoluzione consigliata.

Overall, the concepts in the book resonated with my past attempts to limit distraction in the work place, and get more done. The sentence structure and prose were long for my taste. On content, I think Deep Work pulled together concepts and research from other sources on working efficiently, and my main complaint is that too much of the justification fell to the authors personal anecdotes and experience. I would have preferred to see a wider range of interviews and sources, across different disciplines and careers, relating to the strategies suggested. This would have added more strength to practical application of Cal's advice. There is a long section on social media use, but fails to add any new perspective. I think this chapter would have been much better structured talking about the nature of digital distraction as a whole, and then making suggestions to manage and carefully select what you allow to consume your attention (including social media simply in the broader spectrum of app or phone usage).

The practical advices that I intend to apply:
1. Putting more effort into structuring my down time to advancing personal projects (creative outlets like drawing and painting, fitness focused on yoga and cycling, cooking).
2. On focused projects, think about how to chunk the work between ‘deep work' focused sessions, and actively seeking collaboration to improve the overall end product.
3. Read the referenced Christensen book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, as I've see these concepts being applied at work but not the source of the execution strategy before.
4. Try to ‘close the loop' more efficiently in email with more specificity in responses, try not to allow simple threads to get dragged out.
5. Extend ‘meeting free time' focused currently on output production (doc writing, launching campaigns, etc.) to include research time and more longer term thinking. I'm going to try the advice to not just disable notifications, but work offline completely sans internet for these time chunks.
5. Implement an end of day shutdown ritual to clear out any remaining threads, and schedule the next day. Cleaning up incomplete tasks to not dominate my attention until the following day.

I was actually really upset at this book. I am not sure if it was due to being stuck in traffic while listening to it or just the overall message of this book did not resonate with me. We can all agree that if you had the ability to focus on your work you'd get better results, sure. But after listening to this book with overall generalizations that fit the mold of either journalism or tenor track professorship, I could not see a path to adopt anything more than the basic understanding that one could benefit from some focused time.

And then the few examples in this book where the author found success were periods of time that were outlandish and abusive. Bill Gates sleeping on his keyboard because he was in “deep work”, the author himself thinking of mathematical equations while hanging out with his child. The whole premise of this book was that you could succeed with creating time for deep work, but then example after example were people pushing themselves beyond normal deep work to succeed.

Maybe I missed the point, but I was very upset with the examples of what I would classify as the 10x engineering mentality which I am not sure is something I am willing to promote.

This book is about knowledge work, and nurturing your ability to focus within the context of the knowledge work framework. The problems that Cal addresses in this book are all too familiar to me and my own experience in the Corporate landscape. Email, Slack, endless meetings, department heads that block any sort of productive work for their own purposes, etc. Cal brings the problems to light, allows you to put your own problems in the place of his, and to then do the work of finding solutions to these issues the best way you can, in the situation you find yourself in.

This book has brought me back to a place of awareness.

If you want to do the things you want to do, then find a way to do them. If it is a priority to you, you will figure out how.

I'm glad I found this book when I did and that I read it.

It was a great reminder to me, to focus on work when at work, and life when I'm outside of work.

And never letting the two intertwine.

This is a book which provides anecdotes as to why focusing is good. It then explains how to focus. This is cool, but not worth the time it takes to read it. It's a snack masquerading as a three-course meal, and while the snack isn't a half bad snack, it's simply not the same as the meal you expected.

Good message, bad page count. Like most Newport books, the content to page ratio is frustratingly low.

I've always been fascinated by the idea of “flow”. The ability to dig deep into a topic and concentrate on it for long periods of time takes some time to nurture and practice to get good at - and when I stop practicing it gets more difficult. The focus on deep work and the advantages it can bring in this book range from learning, to execution to producing the best work you're capable of.

responding to a fellow reader's interpretation —

the cabin is not the solution. we are infinitely complex and unfortunately, we are the solution.

event + response = outcome is a philosophy i was taught by the current michigan athletic director in an education class my senior year... we can only control our response to our circumstance, and we impact the outcome, but the event does as well.

adam sandler essentially said in an snl sketch around the same time, "wherever you go, there you are" :)

so like, me; i want to spark a creative project of some point in my adult life, but i haven't yet in my time. not having ample time and stability to focus and think destroys that. deep work invests into that. it definitely teeters on dave ramsey - core "just eat PB&J" advice, and doesn't account for the unfair nature of the world, but... nothing does :/

one more. jack white's lyrics to little room are below. this book is little room, but it's just the first two lines. it's on you to clear out the noise that distracts line 1-2's creativity versus lines 3-8 :) thank you, cal newport, for your insights on giving my brain room to breathe and produce. i'm always looking for my little room in a busy life, unfortunately!

"Well, you're in your little room

And you're working on something good

But if it's really good

You're gonna need a bigger room

And when you're in the bigger room

You might not know what to do

You might have to think of how you got started

Sitting in your little room"

The concept of deep work and shallow work is utmost important for all of us to understand in this distracted world.
The author is not the only one who is researching on the topic, but the book has done a very good job to bring this topic to light.
Everyone will benefit from this book. Young and old.