Deep Work

2.5 rounded down.

If you have to choose between buying and reading Atomic Habits versus buying and reading this book, I am of the belief you would find far more utility from Atomic Habits.

I really wanted this to be a book that I felt foundational to the way I structured my work going forward. Unfortunately, most of the practical information I felt was quite obvious and I already practice it. As an aspiring academic, I think maybe most useful things I learned from the book were that: memory training and other focus intensive tasks that are unrelated to your research/work can be helpful to train your brain to think more deeply on your actual work, and that there exist successful young Professors who end their work day at 5:30pm.

I went into the book already convinced of the value of deep work. As a result I found most of the content to be fairly useless. Most of the book felt persuasive in nature, as if trying to convince the reader of the value of deep work and that the techniques introduced are actually facilitative of deep work. To this second point, most of the evidence was anecdotal, and interesting but not very personal, nor deep, nor detailed. Most of it could've, ironically, been summarized on a buzz-feed article titled “30 quirky habits of the worlds most ingenious minds” or something like that.

To the first point, if you are someone, especially someone who is not in tech/startup world, who is already convinced of the value of deep work I feel you can easily skip the first half of the book. In fact I wish I had.

Overall I was quite disappointed, I think Professor Newport had a very unique opportunity as someone with a vast wealth of personal experience in high achieving environments and positions that he could've leveraged. If he wanted to support his arguments with anecdote, he could've used his own, as a Ph.D. student who graduated from MIT. I would've eaten a narrative book like this up if he supported each of his techniques with a full story of how it helped him in some unique situation, and how he developed these techniques throughout his career (much like the conclusion of the book) then supported this with sprinkles of anecdotes from other professors or scholars or something as supplements. This still would not serve the same purposes as Atomic habits which is highly centered on research supported techniques, but I think it would've offered a unique perspective worth reading about.

Overall the book was a bit of a slog, mildly derogatory, sometimes a bit finger-wavey, and pretty redundant but with some gems buried in the pages, but as some other reviewers have said these gems could've occupied 20pgs maximum if they were written concisely. The supporting evidence wasn't very supportive, so basically the techniques are more like very general tips or recommendations which are left to stand on their own merit, and could've been expressed in that many pages. In short, if you are even remotely interested in personal growth or bettering yourself, you're probably already doing most, if not all, of what this book suggests.