Shine’s Spotlight: ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport

As someone who loves reading, I have decided to begin a blog series exploring some of the ideas from any books I have read related to data or our work at Butterfly Data. 

The first book I am going to cover is called ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport, a guide to working effectively in an age of constant distractions. I first came across Newport when I read ‘Digital Minimalism’, which is a concept he coined about using technology with more intent and purpose. This was written after ‘Deep Work’ and definitely stemmed from some of the ideas he explores in this book, which is currently his most popular work.

What is it?

The term “deep work” is a concept which Newport has come up with and he gives it a definition in the opening pages, so I won’t attempt to explain it better than him:

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

There are several similar concepts around, such as ‘flow’, but this idea is particularly applied to moving into a distraction-free state, in a work setting, where you will be far more productive than normal.

Why is it important?

According to Forbes, there are more than 1 billion people in the world who are classed as “knowledge workers”. This encompasses a wide range of jobs and skills, but broadly the idea applies for those that are using their brain, creativity, and ideas to produce useful output. Therefore, if a knowledge worker can successfully utilise “deep work” they will, according to Newport, be far more productive and produce more genuinely useful output than they would otherwise.

Cal Newport is big on focussing on the outputs that are actually important and material to the fundamentals of the work undertaken. For example, as a writer, the most important thing he can do is write, not have a big social media presence. Similarly, when I am working on a project where I am developing something, the most important thing I can do is spend time, in “deep work”, programming, rather than constantly be replying to emails or messages on Teams. 

The goal is to give ourselves periods of deep work focussed on our most important goals. This will give us a much better chance of achieving them than if we are constantly bouncing between meetings or messages and immediately working on the latest task our boss has given us.

Some ways to implement it?

Regular meetings

Having regular scheduled meetings which everyone is aware of ahead of time. While this might mean you end up having more meetings, there’s actually less chance of unintended interruptions which, according to Newport, are particularly harmful to getting into a state of “deep work”.

There are two examples of ways we implement this at Butterfly Data; firstly we have daily scrums at the start of the day, and we are encouraged to keep the time after that free to give ourselves a chance to catch up with people where needed. This means that instead of calling someone out of the blue, we know there is a set time every day we can wait for, when we can catch up with them.

Secondly, on client projects we normally have weekly stakeholder meetings where we can keep stakeholders informed with our progress. This keeps them in the loop, but means they are less likely to message or call spontaneously as they know they have a set time for questions and updates. Newport points out that, generally, stakeholders also prefer this approach too, as they do not feel the need to constantly check in on progress.

Asynchronous communication

Create a culture where people are not expected to immediately reply to messages or emails, asynchronous communication, rather than instant (synchronous) messaging. This is quite counter-cultural to the current expectations in many workplaces, where the rise of instant messaging tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack mean that people can send you messages at any time and may often expect an instant reply. 

As mentioned before, Newport argues that unexpected interruptions are very disruptive for deep work. Generally, in my field of work, very rarely is a reply required instantaneously. I have not wholly implemented this yet, but I have been experimenting with ways of pausing notifications, and setting a ‘work’ focus mode on my iPhone which means it will only go off when someone calls me, so that if someone really needs to get hold of me, they can.

(Cal Newport hates email so much that his latest book is called “A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload”!)

Timeblocking

Newport is really big on this idea of “timeblocking”, wherein every morning you have already planned out every minute of your day into “timeblocks”. While this might sound daunting and a tad bureaucratic, the premise is that it will allow you to spend your workday actually accomplishing your important goals, rather than flitting between tasks and spending time doing “shallow work” such as messaging and emails. I’m not yet very good at this, but I can see the benefits in periods where I have implemented it well.

Quit social media?

There’s a million different books and blogs devoted to this idea. Basically, social media is almost certainly killing our ability to focus, as well as being an easy distraction. Newport believes we should be more careful in choosing which technologies to adopt, and postulates that the majority of us choose the “any benefit” approach with technology, e.g. “Facebook is good because it occasionally allows me to see what old friends are up to, hence I will use it”. This, however, does not necessarily take into account all the negatives of using Facebook, principally how much of your time it can take up, compared to any alternative approach such as simply ringing your old friends.

Final Thoughts

One major point that I would like to make about Cal Newport, is that he really is not a workaholic. He believes in utilising “deep work” to give us the ability to achieve our goals, within our work hours. Despite being a tenured computer science professor and author, he rarely works beyond 5:30 each day, and prioritises what he calls the “deep life” as well as “deep work”. This is in refreshing contrast to other productivity books which are usually focussing solely on your career and getting more things done professionally, without an emphasis or regard to the personal side of the work-life balance.

I would recommend this book as well as ‘Digital Minimalism’, which is an easy and informative read. Newport also has a podcast I like called ‘Deep Questions with Cal Newport’, which explores all the concepts he has written about and I have enjoyed thoroughly.

Get in touch if you have any questions, thoughts or book recommendations. Maybe even check out my Goodreads to see what I’ve been reading!