I ran across the quote “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me” Shakespeare, Richard II as I was listening to Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport while jogging/walking the dog. The quote and the content of Newport’s book made me decide to feature my second time through Deep Work in our Re-read Saturday feature. Today we begin. I am reading the Kindle version, it is hard to take notes and think deeply while jogging. The book consists of an introduction, seven chapters, a conclusion and end matter. We will re-read this book over 10 – 12 weeks which equates to a projected end date in early June.  Get a copy and read along. 

A few weeks ago I suggested that we were going to re-read Dynamic Re-teaming, Second Edition by Hiedi Helfand. That was the plan, I had even moved my paper copy of the book to my active reading queue. But best-laid plans and all… I was introduced to Deep Work during an Agile Alliance Meeting discussing the reinvention of Agile. When the moderator, Ellen Grove, mentioned that the book Deep Work was a way to re-think work, I was intrigued. That bit of serendipity put me on a path where Cal Newport and William Shakespeare collided on the streets of Avon Lake, Ohio. 

During my initial trip through the book along with the ideas on improving focus and PRODUCTIVITY, I was struck by the number of experiments I could envision running to validate how I could implement the ideas. I have begun a few ahead of the re-read (I don’t think that is cheating 🙂 ).

Introduction

The introduction of Deep Work is a must-read because it lays out the basic premise of the book and two critical definitions: those of deep and shallow work. 

“Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

“Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”

— Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

Do you know how much deep work you perform in a typical week or workday? I know I do not, but I am pretty sure it is less than I would estimate.

Based on the two definitions the author posits:

 “The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

— Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

The author’s premise is that deep work allows knowledge workers to make great leaps, and we need to focus on maximizing the amount of deep work we do. This sounds easy however consider the definition of deep work. The phrase “distraction-free concentration” jumps out at me. I can’t tell you how many alerts popped up from MS Teams while I wrote the draft of this paragraph – several. I have Slack turned off and removed Discord or it would have been worse. Each alert was a distraction. Newport makes the point that most knowledge workers are trapped doing shallow work and believe the culture of work does not give them the ability to have control. As a coach who actively works with leaders and teams, I have seen the trend toward shallow work accelerate during my career. One critical component controlling the amount of shallow work is work intake, which is why Jeremy Willets and I wrote Mastering Work Intake. 

The experiment of the week:  Pick a day, any day, and total up the time you are creating high-value work. For example, if you are a coach, the amount of time you are interacting with the people you are coaching rather than writing status reports, answering emails, checking LinkedIn, or watching TickTok videos). The estimate won’t be perfect but it might be eye-opening. 

Buy a copy of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport and read along.