Deep Work - Cal Newport

“To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.”

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Deep Work is Valuable

   1. Two core abilities for thriving in the new economy: the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

   2. Sophie Leroy's concept of attention residue

      1. When someone is trying to multi task and moves on from one task to another, their attention doesn't immediately follow. A residue of their attention is stuck thinking about the original task

      2. By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching, you minimize the negative impact of attention residue from other tasks, maximizing performance

4. Why don't people strive for Deep Work today?

   1. Nowadays, businesses are increasingly trying to make "collaborative" workplaces with cubicles without walls to encourage communication and exchange of ideas, counterintuitive to productivity

   2. Emails take away attention. To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.

   3. There was research conducted on BCG where a team was told to refrain from communicating with anyone inside or outside the office (team, clients) one day of the week. You'd think clients would be unhappy. Wrong. The consultants produced work of much higher quality than before!

5. We tend to emphasize our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us determines how we feel. If you focus on a cancer diagnosis, your life becomes unhappy and dark, but if you focus instead on an evening martini, your life becomes more pleasant, even though the circumstances are the same.

6. The Four Disciplines of Execution

   1. Focus on the Wildly Important: You should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours

   2. Act on the Lead Measures: There are two types of metrics for measuring progress, "lag" and "lead" measures. Lag is the end goal, eg: publishing 5 papers this year. It can only be measured after work is done. Lead measures the new behaviours that will drive the success. Eg: writing in deep work state for 2 hours a day. Focus on the lead measures.

   3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

   4. Create a Cadence of Accountability: If possible, engage with a coworker or a friend about what you want to complete.

7. Productive Meditation: Go for any physical activity which doesn't involve the brain too much. Like walking, or commuting to work. During this time, decide to focus your attention on only one thing. Could be as simple as a plan for your new book. Resist temptations that wander your attention actively.

8. Many of us use the "For Any Benefit" mental model when it comes to adopting tools, but they struggle to weigh the pros and cons. Eg: "Instagram lets me connect with my friends". But they don't realize the damage to their attention span and the fact that they can connect with friends through simpler messaging apps as well. Whenever you use a new tool, look at opportunity cost as well.