Be More Productive and Competitive with Deep Work

There are many tips out there on how to be more productive and competitive. Too many. It’s overwhelming and confusing. But there’s one concept that has helped me over the years: Deep Work.

Here I share what I learned from Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. It’s gold, really, and I recommend it to everyone. But if you want something shorter, read on. I’ll tell you what it is, why you should develop it, and how. I also included how it can make you more productive and competitive.

What is Deep Work?

“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.” (p.14)

This is Cal Newport’s Deep Work Hypothesis.

It’s a mouthful, but the truth in it cannot be ignored. Let’s break it down for easier grasp.

“Deep work” is coined by Newport. It’s a result of his study on the practices of Carl Jung, Mark Twain, Woody Allen, J.K. Rowling, Bill Gates, and other influential people.

He defined it as: “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.” (p. 3)

It’s best understood in contrast to shallow work, which is, “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.” (p. 6)

In simpler words, deep work is uninterrupted work in a long stretch of time that produces new value. And it’s a skill that can be trained.

Be More Competitive and Productive

Why does Newport say that this skill is rare?

Newport claims that it has become rare because of network tools—”communication services like e-mail and SMS, social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, infotainment sites like BuzzFeed and Reddit.” He claims that these activities take up about 60 percent of the working time of knowledge workers, activities that are counter to the underlying concept of deep work.

This is where it becomes a competitive advantage. While others are spending (or wasting) a huge chunk of their working time on these distractions, you can be producing high-quality output by working deeply.

Majority of the people might not even know how valuable deep work is. You will not only know it, you will be able to practice it immediately. Cal Newport gave us what probably is the most effective productivity tool, which few people take advantage of.

If few people do it, why should you?

Deep work is a valuable skill in today’s world for two reasons, Newport claims.

First, the information age demands it. Technology advances continuously and rapidly, so programs and systems are quick to change as well. We have to keep up. We need the ability to learn complex things instantly, and that can only be done through deep work. You can’t expect to learn new code at a shallow level where distractions bombard you.

Second, the digital network created a global audience. That’s great if you have something exceptional to give; but give something substandard, and you can watch your audience look elsewhere. You can only create something valuable and relevant through deep work, because that requires intellectual work, not logistical.

Newport presented a formula for productivity:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

He found this practice common among efficient, productive people. These top performers produce quality work not because they simply put in extra hours. Their work is done in “intense and uninterrupted pulses.” It’s not only about the length of time. It’s uninterrupted hours with hyperfocus—that is deep work.

We can maximize our output by putting in the needed focus. We don’t have to put in extra hours.

The most basic formula to measure productivity is: output / input. To measure personal productivity, we get the ratio of work produced over the number of hours we put into it. Of course, there are other factors to consider, but let’s stick with the basic. In this formula, the higher the result, the more productive something or someone is.

Now if we follow Newport’s formula for productivity, we can increase our high-quality output by increasing our intensity of focus. Even if the time spent remains at the same level, we get better output, thus higher productivity (following the basic formula of measuring it).

So how do we increase our intensity of focus? Fight distractions.

We have been trained to open an email and respond the soonest we can. Technology has made everything faster, and everyone impatient. The danger in always opening that email is that we get distracted. We are pulled out from the depth we’re at when working. And attention residue prevents us from plunging back into that depth in a snap.

Attention residue is coined by Sophia Leroy in her paper, “Why is it so hard to do my work?” When we switch from one task to another, our full attention does not follow. That email still holds some part of your attention, making it impossible to give your work complete focus and depth.

Jason Fried echoed this depth disruption in his Ted talk, Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work.

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. He calls out the two main offenders (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make the workplace actually work.

He likened work to sleep—both cannot happen with distraction, and both have stages.

On the stages of sleep, he said:

“There are five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, the meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. If you're interrupted while you're going through the early ones—if someone bumps you in bed, or there's a sound, or whatever happens—you don't just pick up where you left off. If you're interrupted and woken up, you have to start again.”

The same is true with work. You have to start over after every distraction. And if you don’t go deep, you won’t get real work done, much like how you don’t get quality sleep when it’s shallow.

More than disrupting your flow, multitasking disrupts your mind. When you do multiple things at the same time, like tweeting while watching TV and also talking to your friend, you are training your mind to absorb all the information directed at you. It becomes how your mind processes information—by taking everything in. When it’s time to focus on one task, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the other information. You can no longer ignore what should be ignored.

These were proven in a study by Stanford researchers. High multitaskers performed poorly against light multitaskers in ignoring irrelevant information, organizing memories, and switching between tasks.

Newport gave valuable, actionable advice on how to successfully fight distraction, keep your mind intact, and work deeply.

How to Cultivate the Skill

He outlined four rules in his book with numerous tips under each, but I’m not including all of those here lest this article reach 200 pages.

Rule 1: Work Deeply

The ability to give a task intense concentration has to be trained. And you can do that by crafting deep work habits suitable for you. Newport advises:

Add routines and ritual to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

There is debate on whether willpower is a finite source. Let’s not delve into that. But I’m sure we can agree on one thing—unbroken concentration requires effort. It’s so easy to pick up your phone in the middle of work and scroll through your news feed. Willpower exertion can be tiring. And it is used in plunging into deep work.

I understood Newport’s advice better by using the framework in Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit. He explained that habits become automatic. As we do things over and over, what once required thinking will no longer need it.

In an experiment by MIT researchers, they found a stark difference in the brain activity of mice once a habit became automatic.The mice had to go through a maze where chocolate awaits at the end. During the habit formation, when they encounter the maze the first time, the neurons are active throughout the task. They are analysing every step. Once they learned the path, however, once they learned the habit, they no longer thought about the route at every step. Their neurons were highly active only at the beginning, where there’s a cue, and at the end, where there’s chocolate.

Duhigg further explains that creating habits is the brain’s way of making space for other cognitive activities. When you don’t have to think about how to fire up your stove and cook scrambled eggs, there is more space to think about the day’s tasks. When you no longer have to think of the gears, driving no longer requires the same energy—that’s why you’re able to think about that meeting you’re going to while driving.

Newport’s claim is now clearer. As you add routines and rituals into your working life, you no longer have to think about them—what time to start working, where to work, for how long. And once you’ve gotten used to the length of unbroken concentration, once it becomes habit, plunging deep will no longer use as much willpower. It becomes easier and faster to enter the state of hyperfocus which, again, will give you higher productivity.

Under the same rule, he asks us to choose a depth philosophy. He gave four, but one that best suits most of us, which even someone with a 9-hour work day can follow is: The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling. This approach asks you to dedicate time every day for deep work. For example, arrive at the office two hours before everybody else does. Take advantage of the quiet environment and finish that pitch with intense focus. Be strict—do not pick up your smartphone. Protect your time. And again, create your own work ritual. You’ll see yourself getting more and more productive.

Rule 2: Embrace Boredom

This might be the most important advice yet. Smartphones gave us a solution to boredom. When we’re in line, on the bus, or at a cafe waiting for a friend, we turn to our smartphones for distraction.

And because we do this all the time, we can’t stand boredom anymore. We now crave distraction—and that makes it all the more difficult to master deep work, because uninterrupted work for 90 minutes is ****boring.

We must be comfortable with boredom in order to survive intense concentration. How? Start with: “Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus.”

Instead of an internet hiatus where you take a break from the internet for one day every week, you should take a break to use the internet. And it doesn’t have to be a whole day. Work demands that we stay connected. Structure your day such that you have an offline time and an online time, like a 5-minute online break every 20 minutes of deep work. Less frequently, if you don’t need it as much.

Do not give in to temptation, even if you need to check something from the internet. Wait until your offline time is done, and then go online. This practice helps rewire your brain and break your craving for distraction.

Thrive Through Deep Work

Newport’s deep work gives clarity and a great advantage. It’s a valuable skill, which isn’t yet possessed by many professionals. His rules and steps make it easier to practice deep work (though I’m still years from mastering it). The book is worth reading from cover to cover—do get a copy.

Instead of scouring for productivity tips on the internet and trying to do all of them, start with deep work. Because once you integrate it into your working life, those other tips (like avoid social media, say no to social gatherings, and dedicate limited time for email) will follow. You’ll be more competitive too.

The next time you’re in line, resist the temptation to whip out your phone. Do not give in to distraction. Be comfortable being bored. Remember how powerful deep work can be, and how it will put you at an advantage in this impatient, distracted world.

I’d like to end this with one of my favorite quotes. Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”