Deep work

Jag läste för ett tag sedan ut boken Deep work. En mycket intressant boken, där jag tog en hel del anteckningar. Nedan är anteckningar som jag gjorde när jag läste boken.

Shallow work

Shallow work is seen as non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, and often performed while distracted. These efforts and activities tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Studies have shown that the average knowledge worker spends more than 60% of his work time engaged in electronically communication including internet searches. Nearly 30% of the time is spent on reading and answering emails.

Hence, work has gone from deep work to shallow work. Which is problematic if you need to determine a new business strategy or other important tasks. The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established: network tools (like internet, social media and SMS). When you have gone into a state of shallow work it is difficult to reverse that treat/state.

Current big trends in society decrease people’s ability to perform deep work. Those big trends include e.g. social media, instant message programs and open office where even someone else’s phone call will distract you.

In today’s world where connectivity is strong and everyone is supposed to answer an email within an hour or as soon as possible, this is hampering the bottom line, although without companies reflecting that the bottom line is being hampered.

• The principle of least resistance: In a business setting without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviours to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviours that are easiest in the moment.
• Busyness a proxy for productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.

Many people send emails all around the clock to show others that they are busy. A workday driven by the shallow is likely to be draining.

People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They are chronically distracted. To be able to truly conduct deep work you need to get out of such a state.

Many assume that they can switch between a state of discipline and one of concentration as needed, this assumption is “optimistic” according to the author. This is because when you are wired for distraction, then you will crave it.

To avoid craving distractions, introduce an Internet Sabbath (= digital detox) once per week where you do not look at any screens. This is a good starting point, even though temporarily bans cannot by itself cure a distracted brain.

If you are a distraction addict it is not wise to use internet at all when you do deep work. The most dangerous thing is to repeatedly switch between deep work and stimuli. Instead of having a day off from internet (which is not too much help for an internet addict) it is better to schedule when you are allowed the stimuli.

Social media fragments our time and reduces our capability to concentrate. Identify and get rid of shallow tasks in your day to leave room for more valuable deep work.

Deep work

To succeed in many areas of today’s world, you must produce the absolute best you are capable of producing – a task that requires depth.

Deep work is seen 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.

Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. It is also a competitive advantage and so important that deep work can be seen as a superpower of the 21st century.

• 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. Consequently, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it to the core of their working life, will thrive.

To learn requires intense concentration. To learn hard things quickly you must focus intensely without distraction.

• Time spent x intensity of focus = high-quality work produced.

People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance. By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching you minimise the impact of attention residue and hence allowing you to maximise your performance on the task at hand.

Deep work is hard and shallow work is easier. Deep work often requires the rejection of much of what is new and high tech.

Deep work more often bring meaning to life. Deep work is then not only lucrative from an economical perspective but also from a life well lived perspective. Who you are is the sum of what you choose to focus on. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. We who cut mere stones must always envision cathedrals.

Deep work can over time be the difference between an average career and a career that will be remembered. The most extreme persons go into a constant monastic state to rip the benefit of deep work. This includes for example no access to emails whatsoever.

• The rhythmic philosophy: The easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a regular habit. For example, make a cross in your calendar everyday you do a task and then after a few weeks make it your main task to not break the chain.

Another idea is to start your deep work at the same time every day, then you remove energy from deciding when you will do deep work and hence have more energy available for the work itself.

To make the most out of your deep work sessions build rituals based on strictness and idiosyncrasy. This could include determine where you will work and for how long. This will also include stated restriction such as not using internet or having any phone on the desk, etc.

Distraction is a destroyer of depth. Focus on the wildly important. The more you try to do, the less you accomplish. Execution should be aimed at a small number of wildly important goals.

When you done with work for the day, shut down all thinking about work, no checking emails etc until the next morning. Downtime aids insights. Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply.

Your direct concentration is a finite resource. If you for example spend a few hours working at night when the kids have gone to sleep, you hamper the relaxation. Trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.

Your capability to do deep work is limited to four hours a day (according to a study), if you are used to conduct deep work. Those four hours are most effectively used during the day. This means that all evening work is mostly coming out as a shallow low-quality work and hence the evening work is better to be avoided. When you work, work hard. When you are done, be done.

A shutdown ritual is important to support that you don’t feel done for the day when you leave work and don’t bring all open tasks with you during the evening. A shutdown ritual can include checking the emails so that there are no urgent matters, write down open questions needed to be completed and how/when you will fix those tasks. End the ritual my telling out loud “shutdown work”.

The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. When not doing deep work, don’t spend that time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus.

To succeed with deep work you must require your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. It is therefore important to schedule internet blocks.

If you want to super-empower you deep focus skills try for example once a week give yourself a tight deadline (much tighter deadline than what you usually have or need) then you force yourself to have a deep work focus and it is easier to resist other stimuli.

Memory tricks: Looking repeatedly at one thing and try to remember it is not a great way to remember. Instead visualise what you want to learn as scene. The brain is good at remember things via the scene approach. For example, visualise that you are walking through five rooms in an apartment. Then place out things you need to remember. A good advice is to place the items on large subjects such as a dinner table or a desk (not a pencil).

If you push beyond those four hours of deep work it comes with diminishing returns. The rest of the workday is therefore better used to consume shallow work such as meetings, etc.

If you are uncertain whether a task is deep or shallow work, ask yourself: “How long time would it take (in months) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialised training in my field to complete this task”?

A task that requires many months of training can be seen as deep. With your expertise to focus on those deep tasks yields good value while let other people do tasks where little expertise is needed. Be incredibly cautious about the use of the most dangerous word in one’s productivity vocabulary: yes.

Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you will never find time for the life-changing big things. To concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done. To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it is incredibly valuable.