The Complete Guide to Mastering the Vital Skill of Deep Work

In our 21st century society, the ability to deep work on a task is becoming increasingly rare.

This is due to several things, some of them being:

  • Addiction to technology such as social media
  • Increasing digital distractions in the workplace
  • An addiction to “busyness” as a symbol of productivity

While this skill is becoming more rare, it is simultaneously becoming more valuable.

In this article, I give a short summary and overview of the deep work philosophy, why it’s so important, and how you can apply it to your life.

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What Is Deep Work? Why Now?

what is deep work

Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, defines deep work as such:

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.

He then puts forth the deep work hypothesis, which is:

People with the ability to do deep work are exceedingly rare in society while at the same time that the necessity of the skill is increasing.

Simply put:

The demand is going up while the supply is steadily down.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning here why Newport advocates a deep work philosophy, and why I subscribe to it myself in order to increase productivity

Our world is growing increasingly complex, especially in a technological sense.

An increasing majority of the jobs in our new economy are now desk-oriented, technologically based “knowledge worker” jobs that require consistent learning and application.

Because this new economy is technologically-based, Newport states that only three groups of people will become winners in the new mega-global economy. These are:

  • Owners – people who own the methods of production and have the capital to invest in new businesses
  • Highly skilled workers – people who are comfortable learning and working with technology
  • Superstars – people who can perform at a high level consistently

In order to join one of these three groups, you need the ability to master hard things quickly and to produce at an elite level in terms of quality and speed.

Deep work helps you do both of these and increase productivity.

And as a young person who is emerging in an economic climate that is vastly worse off than the one your parents raised you in, you need to make sure you are one of the winners and not one of the losers.

You become a winner in this new economy by mastering deep work and learning how to focus.

You might say,

Great! Let’s get started!

But there’s a problem.

Digital Distraction and Addiction to “Busyness”

deep work and digital distraction

“In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back towards an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work

One unique programming hitch about the human brain is that it thrives on novelty.

Obviously, the Internet is full of novelty at all turns. This is especially devastating to people who use the Internet for their working life, mainly knowledge workers.

Since knowledge workers generally have very little metrics on their output, they are susceptible to what Newport calls the “metric black hole”.

The metric black hole is a “space” that sucks up time, energy, and attention but its effect is not seen anywhere on a company’s bottom line. Some examples:

  • Spending all day chatting with a coworker on a company chat client
  • Internet browsing
  • Frequent meetings
  • Overemphasis on a company’s social media presence
  • Etc…

In the case of digital distraction, it’s possible to spend an entire day click, click, clicking around never getting anything done but feeling like you got something done.

That’s because we live in an attention economy where human attention is transferred into cold, hard cash in the form of clicks and page views via networking tools that offer very little benefits past a certain point.

It’s been proven that constant use of social media and other technological distractions that give little hits of dopamine decrease the ability to focus deeply on tasks for long periods of time.

The average person’s ability to focus has been shattered by the ubiquity of network tools, smartphones, and all other sorts of technological saccharine that act as a proxy for busyness but not productivity.

Too many people don’t know what pure focus is like because they’re lost in the haze of digital distraction.

If you’re used to being distracted constantly, you’ll find it impossible to establish a deep work habit.

A Pragmatic Approach to Establishing a Deep Work Habit

how to develop a deep work habit, how to do deep work

The concept of deep work sounds promising in the face of a world addicted to technology, but implementing it is another story.

Here’s how I have personally implemented deep work in my life and used it to increase my productivity.

Step 1: Create a Protocol

Creating a deep work habit throughout the day is much easier when you have a written schedule to adhere to.

This schedule should be:

  • Fluid to allow any type of inconveniences throughout the day
  • Rigid to create a sense of structure and balance
  • Batchable to provide for the ability to group similar tasks together
  • Stackable to allow for overflow tasks from the previous day

For example, a schedule that makes it easier to create a deep work habit may be one where you wake up early and start immediately on important tasks instead of checking your phone first thing in the morning and be sucked in.

It may be one where you group tasks that have little impact on your working life (laundry, paying bills, etc.) together to prevent friction.

Most importantly, it should be a closed loop that allows for the maximum amount of productivity with a minimal amount of mental leakage. This means it’s a schedule that feeds back on itself and flows into the next day perfectly with as little friction as possible.

Step 2: Push to the Edge of Your Cognitive Limits

The goal of deep work and increasing productivity is to squeeze as much mental juice out of your brain as possible to create higher quality and greater quantity.

This requires stretching yourself and probably stepping outside of your comfort zone, pushing your brain and central nervous system to its breaking point.

In order to focus, the brain requires:

  • Good working memory
  • Processing speed
  • Presence of mind
  • Clarity
  • Subtle relaxation

Think of these as legs on a table. If a leg collapses, the entire table goes with it.

All of these are gained automatically in isolation after a period of time, especially as the brain enters a flow state.

However, a lot of people don’t even allow themselves the opportunity to get into flow because they are constantly distracted.

The only way to establish a deep work habit is to push to the edge of your cognitive capabilities and see what collapses first.

Did you become agitated after a certain period of time? Did you lose clarity? Relaxation? Identify which one it is and figure out ways to enhance that particular function, so you’ll be stronger the next time.

This is how you create the beginnings of mental focus.

Step 3: Get Rid of the Digital Distraction

One thing I’ve noticed a lot with people in my generation is the consistent checking of phones and task switching.

A lot of people in other generations do this, but millennials seem synonymous with technological ADD and Internet distraction.

A large majority of learning how to do deep work is in the ability in separating the trivial and unimportant from the urgent and necessary.

An increasing reliance on things such as social media destroy that ability. A lot.

If you want to be able to focus, you’re going to have to put away the smartphone and dramatically limit your social media use.

For some people, this may include deleting their social media accounts, turning off their cellphones, putting them on airplane mode, hell, even getting a site blocker, like Freedom.

Whatever you do, don’t check your phone or browse the Internet every 5 minutes.

If you find that you can’t do that, you may have a deeper problem with Internet use and it may be an addiction.

The best course of action then is to seriously consider seeing a therapist and consult them on how you can quit your Internet addiction.

Freedom is currently giving 25% off their yearly premium plans. If you’ve always wanted to get an Internet blocker but you don’t know how to do it, here’s your start.

Step 4: What’s your style?

In Deep Work, Newport outlines 4 different styles of deep work:

  • Monastic – Completely eliminating or limiting outside obligations allowing for full immersion into deep work
  • Bimodal – Segmenting long periods of time (like months) for deep work
  • Rhythmic – Creating periods in the day for deep work
  • Journalistic – Fitting deep work into your schedule wherever you can

We obviously all can’t be monks, so the monastic philosophy is out of reach for most of us.

We can however fit periods of deep work into our schedules during the day, depending on our other obligations. Knowing what type of deep work scheduling is best for you helps you to more easily integrate it into your schedule.

The end result will inevitably be increasing productivity.

Conclusion + The Benefits of Embracing Deep Work

Our work life is a large part of who we are. We spend a majority of our time at work.

If your working life is shit, then your life will be…well…shit.

Embracing the deep work philosophy will spill over into other parts of your life. You may find:

  • You have more time because you’ve spent a smaller proportion of it on max productivity
  • You have more clarity of mind
  • Less anxiety when it comes to work related issues
  • You’re able to learn faster, better, and more – which inevitably leads to better performance inside and outside of work
  • You can work when you work and play when you play

When done right, deep work combines power with effectiveness. Think of it like an extremely concentrated dynamite blast.

Deep Work is a great book for where we are in our culture, in the shift from an Industrial society to a purely Information-based one. Even if you don’t agree 100% with the philosophy, it offers incredibly effective tools for being an asset instead of a liability in our ever-changing world.

Have you implemented the deep work philosophy? What results have you gotten from it? Let me know in the comments.

3 Responses to “The Complete Guide to Mastering the Vital Skill of Deep Work

  • Great Article …

  • Hi Sim, thanks for the interesting post. However i would like to ask: how do you separate being a craftsman on something that you’re not good at (to shape it into something you’ll be good in) vs playing on your strengths? Are those mutually exclusive?

    • Hey Albert,

      They are not mutually exclusive. Something you’re not good at or passionate about, you will need to spend more time on it in order to get good at it than you would usually. You’ll also need to fight against mental friction which is a whole other article in and of itself.

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