Book recap and review: Deep Work by Cal Newport
I recently listened to Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport and thought it was a very worthwhile listen/read. The title is pretty self explanatory and the author delivers on his promise to provide some useful, simple (but not easy) to implement rules. The ones that stood out to me are:
Build the muscle of focused, intense concentration on the task at hand, through deliberate practice. The first step is letting yourself be bored more often. An easy way to practice: don’t grab your phone every time you reach to. Just. Be. Bored. It’s uncomfortable and mentally unpleasant, just like concentrating on a tough task can be, so practice.
Eliminate (or drastically reduce) social media use, schedule any web browsing time and only go online at those times no matter how tempted you are;
Schedule every minute of your day and adjust as things come up to see just where the time goes (it will be a rude wake-up call);
Meditate productively by bringing attention to a current problem during unproductive time - e.g. household chores, taking a walk, etc. and
Stop work completely and thoroughly at a set time everyday and eliminate lingering cognitive load by using a shutdown routine.
He also provides rebuttals to likely arguments around the need to be responsive to clients and colleagues, which I found very helpful. He also pointed out that there are a few people who should have an open door policy all the time and be super-responsive on social media. However, these folks are few and far between and tend to be in the C-suite. In other words, most of us are being delusional when we use that excuse.
Some of the organization-wide ideas that I hope, no...plan, to apply one day are examples from Basecamp (formerly 37signals, makers of project management and team communication software). From May to October they have a 4 day work week for everyone except customer service staff. They want people to be able to enjoy the summer and have found that productivity does not suffer. Instead people do less ‘shallow’ work - administrative tasks, emails. etc. On an even more ambitious level, every year they also have a “full month of free time to think, explore, mock up, prototype, whatever.” They’ve developed great new products for their customers out of these months, which culminate in a pitch day.
How much more exciting and innovative would most companies and organizations be if they embraced practices like these and helped knowledge workers to hone their crafts in a supportive, rewarding and inspiring environment? A first step in that direction is reading and implementing the rules in Deep Work.
Have you read it? What did you think? Are you implementing any of the ideas?