You’ve surely been through this. You start working on something and your cell phone vibrates because you’ve received a notification. You take a look at it and then get back to work. Some minutes afterwards, another vibration. This time you decide you aren’t going to check it. But curiosity gets at your head while you try to work. Shortly after, an urgent email arrives. You answer it and take that chance to check your social media. By the time you realize, your morning is over and you haven’t been able to produce practically anything.
Today’s world is full of distractions. We’re always connected to everything. And the whole world is connected to us… calling for our attention at all times.
The result of that is that we’re finding it increasingly difficult to be productive, to do a good job, to practice activities in a focused way.
Cal Newport decided to confront that problem head-on. In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport introduces the concept of Deep Work and establishes four rules for being successful in a world full of distractions.
In today’s Arata Academy Summary we’ll go into what exactly Deep Work means and which are those four rules you need to follow to retake control of your attention, be a more focused person and stand out in a world full of distracted professionals.
Deep Work is valuable. If you manage to focus, you’ll stand out in the workforce.
Before we continue, let’s make the meaning of Deep Work clear. This concept of Deep Work refers to those professional activities carried out in a state of distraction-free concentration. The advantage of entering a state of concentration free of distractions is that it takes your cognitive abilities to a whole new level.
When was it the last time that you entered such a state of total concentration for a long enough period of time?
The constant interruptions we undergo at work nowadays are detrimental to our productivity not only because they distract us. The problem is not just the distraction in itself.
After decades of psychology and neuroscience studies, research shows that the state of mental tension that comes with deep work is necessary to enhance our cognitive abilities. If our brain isn’t used to working for long periods of time in a focused way, it loses some of its capacity. Minds that are constantly interrupted don’t develop as much as they could.
Great names in Human History produced their best works during periods of isolation and deep work.
But what prevails nowadays is the opposite. Today, what abounds are superficial jobs, done between gaps of social media, emails, videos and photos without end.
In order to become a valued professional, you need to have two basic qualities. The first one is the ability to master difficult things quickly. The second one is the ability to produce at a high level, in terms of quality and speed.
Both abilities can be attained through deep work of high quality. And deep work of high quality is nothing but the time you spend doing a task, multiplied by your focus’ intensity.
It can even look quite simple, but deep work of high quality is always harder to reach. And that can be positive for you and for your pocket.
Deep work is rare. The market is ready to pay a high price for your concentration.
The ability to work deeply is getting rarer. All companies see is superficial, fast and careless work, work that quickly becomes out of date.
Because it’s so rare, the ability to concentrate is also becoming more valuable in our economy. The few professionals who harvest this ability get to prosper financially.
The law of supply and demand shows that people tend to pay much more for a very demanded but rare product. The same law applies to deep work, too. The market pays a lot for people who are able to make deep work the center of their professional work. That’s why, if you want to increase your salary, developing your deep work can be an excellent way to do it.
There’s a belief according to which all of us should be constantly connected. Answer messages as soon as they reach us. That companies value that kind of immediate answer, that kind of commitment, even during non-working hours.
Answering a message quickly and superficially is something everyone is capable of doing. That behaviour is the principle of least resistance in action. A lot of business environments don’t give clear feedback about the impact certain behaviour patterns have on the company’s results. That’s why professionals tend to adopt the easiest behaviour at each time.
We have a big problem today. There aren’t clear indicators that tell us what it means to be productive and valuable at our jobs. Due to this problem, a lot of workers use a productivity indicator that’s absolutely out of date, from the time of the Industrial revolution. This indicator only measures the quantity of worked hours, and not the quality of the work.
That’s why these workers do a lot of things in a visible way to look busy. But the truth is that being busy isn’t the same as being productive.
What is easier? Answering quickly and superficially to a message as soon as it arrives or taking the time, focus and effort to analyse the demand and offer an excellent solution?
Answering a message quickly and superficially is something anyone can do. That’s why it’s not highly valued. No one is paid a high salary just for answering a lot of messages quickly or for always being online on social media platforms.
On the other hand, someone who produces high-quality work as a result of time and effort is usually more valued. That solution is more difficult and, therefore, more rare, which means it is better paid.
And even if money isn’t as important to you, deep work is interesting. Because only with time and effort will you be able to produce something that’s actually meaningful.
Deep work is meaningful. You need time and focus to leave a legacy.
Apart from being better paid, deep work has another advantage of a subjective nature. When you devote your time and your concentration to produce work, you can create something meaningful.
A meaningful work is the one you’re proud of doing. It’s that work you show to family and friends, that work you keep with affection, that work which gives you personal satisfaction regardless of its financial results.
Imagine what you would think at the end of your life. Think about what you’ve built. It’s unlikely that you’ll say you would have liked to have spent more time answering messages on social media. You’ll probably be proud of some significant work you’ve done, or regret not having done something.
Your outlook on life is built on the basis of what you pay attention to. If your attention is always focused on unimportant activities, you may have the feeling that your life is meaningless too. But if you focus on producing meaningful work, you start finding more meaning in life.
Apart from that, when you stay focused on meaningful work, your chances of entering a state of flow increase. We’ve already talked about the state of flow here in the channel, on episode 134 from the series Hello! Seiiti Arata(https://arata.se/hello134) ]. Briefly, the state of flow is a state in which you stay so immersed in your activities that you don’t even notice the time passing by.
So, we can conclude that deep work really is something valuable, rare and meaningful. If you have the ability to do your work with total focus, you’ll be a more sought-after professional, better paid and more satisfied.
The question here is: how to acquire in practice that ability to focus? The answer lays in the four rules of deep work.
Rule number 1: Work deeply.
You fight against your desire all day long. If you can choose between something desirable and easy, and something not as desired and more difficult, you’ll probably choose the easier path. In the dispute between distraction and deep work, distraction is almost always going to win.
You have a limited quantity of willpower. As you resist distractions, you consume your willpower. You can think of willpower as if it were the batteries of your phone. At the beginning of the day, the batteries are full. But every time you use your willpower, you spend a bit of it. After some uses, the batteries will be empty and you won’t be able to use your willpower to resist the temptation to get distracted.
Your ability to resist temptations isn’t a question of character. At a certain point, no matter how committed you are, your storage of willpower simply runs out. And that’s how you give up deep work and surrender to distractions.
The solution to this dilemma is not having to rely on your willpower. To do that, you first need to decide your philosophy of deepness. You need to plan where, how and when you’re going to work deeply. And that can be done in four different ways.
The first way is the monastic philosophy of the deep work chronogram. That is, just as if you were a monk, you’d live a life completely focused on doing your job. You would isolate yourself and remove all distractions so that you can concentrate exclusively on your work.
The second way is the bimodal philosophy of the deep work chronogram. Bimodal means that it gives you two modes of life: the work mode and the distracted mode. When you’re in work mode, you disconnect yourself from distractions and focus just on producing. When you’re in distracted mode, you completely forget about work. The important thing is having clear limits and establishing specific times for the work mode.
The third way is the rhythmic philosophy of deep work. The idea is to set a pace, to create a constant habit of working deeply. Every day, at the same time or after the same trigger, you must work deeply. You can even use a visual aid, with a calendar with a sequence of days marked with an X when you worked deeply. Your task is simply not to break the pattern or marked X.
The fourth and last way is the journalistic philosophy of deep work. Journalists are trained to automatically enter the writing mode whenever their job requires it. News doesn’t wait for a predefined time to happen. When it happens, the journalist must be ready. That’s why the journalistic philosophy of deep work tells you to work methodically in the focused mode whenever you have free time for it.
No matter what philosophy you choose, remember to adopt a routine to start working deeply. That helps your brain understand that it’s time to concentrate. Define the place, decide whether you’re going to let other people know, check what notifications you’re going to turn off. Ideally, you should reduce the possibilities of distraction to a minimum.
The four ways of putting into practice the deep work fit perfectly in any kind of lifestyle. Whether you’re able to isolate yourself completely, or you have fixed schedules, or your work is based on habits, or you’re constantly interrupted. In every case, there’ll always be a philosophy for you to enforce the first rule: work deeply.
Rule number 2: Accept boredom.
There’s a truth you have to accept. Your deep work is hardly going to be as relaxing, fun and distracting as checking your social media platforms, watching a video on youtube or chatting with a friend.
Oftentimes, long periods of concentration in which you’re doing some deep work that’s of high quality and meaningful can become boring. And the best thing you can do is to accept boredom as a natural part of the process.
You can even plan distraction gaps to break your boredom. But those gaps really need to be planned. Distractions mustn’t come every time a notification pops up at your screen. To understand how to plan distractions, watch our video about the technique of the time blocks(https://arata.se/study05)].
One of the best ways to embrace your boredom is having at hand only what is essential for your deep work. If you’re only going to write a text, leave your phone outside the room where you’re working, hidden in a drawer, or in any other way as far from you as possible. If you don’t need to use the internet, turn off the wi-fi. Lock the door if it’s necessary.
The more suitable the environment is for your concentration, the more likely that you’ll do a deep work. It can seem hard at first, but, with time, your brain will get used to it. And you’ll see how this is way easier than getting distracted all the time and having to regain your focus afterwards.
Rule number 3: Leave your social media.
Keep calm! Before you close this video because you find it impossible to leave your social media, let’s see what this third rule suggests.
In the first place, it’s not suggesting that you delete your accounts from your favourite social media. We know that those social networks are often essential to keep in contact with people who are far away from you, with family members, and even to have more job opportunities.
What the third rule of deep work suggests is for you to leave your social media during your working hours. The idea here is that you control your social media instead of being controlled by them.
That’s not an easy task. Social media are carefully developed and improved by programmers, advertisers and even automatized algorithms. All of them share one objective: to make you use them for as long as possible.
That’s why, if you don’t have a clear and well defined strategy, you can end up wasting a lot of time on social media. The best thing you can do is to make sure you know why you’re accessing that social network. Is it to distract yourself? Is it to keep in contact with someone? Is it because of professional reasons?
Whatever the case is, you should ideally have predefined blocks of time to access your social media. Nowadays it’s possible to set your phone or computer to establish limits of time or time slots in which you’ll be able to access your social media platforms.
Additionally, you can set up your notifications to only show in very specific cases.
In professional situations, you can use third-party programs to post on your social media only at certain times. This way, you won’t see anybody’s publications and, at the same time, you’ll keep your presence in social networks.
Every case is different. If social media are really getting in your way, you can consider leaving them altogether. But if they’re providing you with entertainment, contact with your loved ones, or even means of information, you only need to control your access to them.
In any case, you just need to focus on rule number three: don’t use social media while you’re working.
Rule number 4: Get rid of shallowness.
The fourth and last rule of deep work is to get rid of the shallowness in your life. You must avoid shallow work and focus on what really matters. Instead of answering messages quickly and superficially, focus on answering demands with a deep and original work that will bear fruits.
Plan your day so that you have time to do that kind of deep work. Besides scheduling breaks for distraction, you can devote blocks of time specifically to do the shallow tasks you can’t get rid of.
If you believe that your work’s culture doesn’t allow that, try to change that culture. But don’t try to do it with words; do it with results. Start showing the results of your deep work and people will start getting curious about your new way of working.
You can even measure your shallow work and your deep work by the hours. Afterwards, you can show your superiors how much time the company is asking the employees to waste on shallow tasks.
With minor adjustments, little by little, you can modify not only the way you work, but also the way your colleagues work. That will require some effort, but the final result will be worth it. And, if you realize that the company you work for isn’t interested in deep work, maybe that’s a valuable discovery and a sign for you that it’s time for a change.
In today’s Arata Academy Summary you learnt that deep work is valuable, rare and meaningful. By learning how to be focused in a world full of distractions, you’ll become a more sought-after, better paid and more satisfied worker.
To develop that ability to focus, you’ve gone through four general rules that guide deep work: working deeply, accepting boredom, leaving social media and getting rid of shallowness.
But there are even more advanced techniques to enhance your focus. In the FOCUS training you’ll learn in detail which are those concentration techniques that will take you to a whole new level. To get to know this training training, just click here now: this link