Our modern world presents us with a despondent paradox about work.
The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare. At exactly the same time, it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.
Hence, to help us overcome this paradox, I’ve extracted three of the most profound strategies from Cal Newport’s bestselling book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Hopefully, these three steps can help you find your deep work flow, maximize your productivity and keep burnout at bay.
But before we hop into the three steps, we need to first identify the deep and shallow work in our lives.
Distinguishing between deep work and shallow work
Upon going through the definitions of each concept, we then need to list out everything we do on a typical workday. I’ll list out a few examples of tasks I do on a typical workday :
- Check emails
- Meetings
- Do research for articles
- Write, edit, proofread articles
- Plan my work/content calendar
- Organize meeting notes
- Upload articles
- Design graphics
Once you’ve listed down all your typical workday tasks, next we need to distinguish them between deep and shallow work:
| Deep Work Any professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration, pushing your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These tasks create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. | Shallow Work Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These tasks tend to not create new value in the world and are easy to replicate. |
| 1. Research work 2. Write, edit, proofread articles 3. Design graphics | 1. Check and respond to emails 2. Meetings, and organizing meeting notes 3. Schedule work/content calendar 4. Upload articles |
Prior to identifying the nature of everyday work tasks, I always assumed that doing more equates to higher productivity. That more emails replied to equals more work done. However, true production requires me to strip down on the number of tasks to focus deeply on what actually creates more value. By understanding the nature and value of depth, we can then structure our work and life to be more intentional. As a result, we become more productive and less stressed.
Three steps to creating a deep work flow
1. Choose strategy
Newport listed down four different deep work strategies to choose from depending on your lifestyle and work preferences:
| Strategy | Explanation | Example |
| Monastic | Maximizing deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations. | Spending every workday only on specific high leverage activities while rejecting all other things that arise. |
| Bimodal | Dividing your time and dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. | Devoting Fall and Winter to deep work and Spring and Summer to shallow work. |
| Rhythmic | Transforming work sessions into a simple daily habit. Getting a little done regularly. | Mornings for deep work and evenings for shallow work |
| Journalistic | Fitting deep work wherever you can into your schedule. | If a meeting is canceled, or you unexpectedly finish something early, you spontaneously hop into deep work. |
The idea is to select the approach that best suits your work and life. I thrive on the rhythmic approach because I love consistent momentum. This approach realistically fits my lifestyle as it leverages the simple heuristic of doing deep work a bit every day. I can sustainably pile up deep work hours throughout the week by expending reasonable doses of mental effort per day.
2. Create routines
Routines reduce the friction and inertia of achieving focused work. It’s worth it to carve out some time to plan a ritual you can stick to most days of the week. Ultimately, you don’t want to waste precious mental energy figuring out what you need at the moment. Here are five ritual points to consider, and examples of how I structure mine:
| 1. Identify location | I will work at my study desk with doors closed |
| 2. Set duration | I will immerse in deep work for four hours every day. My deep work sessions will be two 2-hour blocks. Each block alternating between two 1.5hour shallow work sessions. |
| 3. Set rules | I will turn on my Forest app to block access to social media during deep work blocks. |
| 4. Set productivity metrics | My goal is to produce and proofread a 800 word article. |
| 5. Prepare resources | I have coffee and snacks prepared, and headphones in listening to lo-fi music while I work |
3. Define limits
According to Newport, there is a limit to our daily cognitive capacity. And working beyond our limits can be detrimental to both our work quality and overall wellbeing. This is an important point in an era of knowledge work – where it’s easy to cave into our screens with no tangible limits.
Hence, define your work limit for the day. For reference, the most adept deep thinkers cannot spend over four hours in true depth. Using this as a guide, start with two hours of uninterrupted work, and work your way up. Anything more than four to five hours, and you’ll experience diminishing rewards trying to cram in more.
i. Embrace fixed-schedule productivity
Recently, many have opposed the traditional 9-5 adage, and the reasons to that are valid. However, merging deep work principles with the eight-hour workweek has its value. Ultimately, it helps prevent work from bleeding beyond those eight hours. By committing to this fixed-schedule system, I become ruthless on what goes in that 8-hour period.
| 9.30am – 11.30am | 11.30am – 1pm | 1pm – 2pm | 2pm-4pm | 4pm-5.30pm | 5:30pm |
| Deep Work (2hrs) | Shallow Work (1.5hrs) | Break (1hr) | Deep Work (2hrs) | Shallow Work (1.5hrs) | Shutdown |
Concluding thoughts…
With the current technological landscape, our propensity to succeed is directly proportional to our ability to work in-depth. Without the power of focus, we will fall behind on high-leverage work that increases our value as contributors to modern-day projects. While these techniques seem simplistic, the core idea is to be more intentional when structuring your work life. Ultimately, having a structure to fall back on allows you to leverage your most valuable resource, your time and your attention.
I’m far from implementing all the work life advice recommended by Newport. However, equipping myself with these strategies has improved my approach to work and boosted my productivity and quality. Beyond that, I’m able to relax better both during work and by the end of each day.
“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
