Book Babble #21: "Deep Work" by Cal Newport

"Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"

How do we go DEEP, avoid the SHALLOW, and be PRODUCTIVE? Let's ask Cal!

Here we have a book that it's safe to say is fundamental to any success. And if you want to do anything particularly grand or meaningful, you certainly need to get a handle on the ideas discussed here in some shape or form.

A couple of weeks back I posted a TED Talk from the author about quitting social media. That is one part of it all and worth a look, although the book of course delves much deeper.

I won't waste time with the intro here as there is a big notes section which will cover it all and more… I appear to have highlighted a fair chunk of the book, although a lot of it is different angles on the same principles.

This also ties in well with the BookBabble on Flow, so check that one out too!

Some great quotes from the book followed by my additional thoughts…

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.

The definition of deep work. This is rare, thus valuable. It's where the true gains lie.

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates famously conducted “Think Weeks” twice a year, during which he would isolate himself (often in a lakeside cottage) to do nothing but read and think big thoughts

Sounds good to me. And makes sense. Is there some way we can integrate a similar practice? It could be worth it and may even be necessary for our health…

Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

The opposite of deep work. Very common, thus little value.

Google, for example, might reduce our memory, but we no longer need good memories, as in the moment we can now search for anything we need to know.

The argument that technology is changing society for the better (vs is it ruining us). The teachers told us to do the workings in our heads as we won't have calculators in day-to-day life. They were wrong ;).

So the skills are changing but it still requires a level of skill depending on what you want to accomplish. You don't need a good memory or to be able to remember any facts… or any info at all really, it's all there in a few seconds and a touch of a button. The skill now is in being an expert sifter, and to get through reams of information, straight to what you need, whilst not being distracted.

The other chief skill is putting together work that other people are searching for. For that you need to go deep.

a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth

Rather than being an issue, this can spell huge opportunity to those who know how to work it.

To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work.

You can get to the information quickly. Assimilate the data in no time. However, things move fast so you'll need to keep on top of it all, and you need to go deep otherwise you'll be just like everyone else and another commodity. Expendable to a monkey or machine. It will take monkeys and machines a fair old time to catch the skilled, deep worker.

Charles Darwin said: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change". We're at the next stage of evolution.

Deep work is so important that we might consider it, to use the phrasing of business writer Eric Barker, “the superpower of the 21st century.”

That may well be true… almost a 'superpower' by default. Everyone being taken down rabbit holes, and the people who stay aware and focused will take all the spoils.

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.

I think this is a key quote and speaks for itself.

I build my days around a core of carefully chosen deep work, with the shallow activities I absolutely cannot avoid batched into smaller bursts at the peripheries of my schedule. Three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration, it turns out, can produce a lot of valuable output.

Nothing wrong with shallow work per se. There is a time and a place for it and it does need to be done. You also have a finite amount of deep concentration available anyway. The key is, structuring our days to reflect priorities and to go deep (and stay there) when necessary.

the lack of distraction in my life tones down that background hum of nervous mental energy that seems to increasingly pervade people’s daily lives.

We operate our days with a low level anxiety always beavering away in the background. This is all in the name of this so sought after connectedness. This may well be even more important than doing great work… a general feeling of well-being, rather than constant nervousness.

Jung’s Bollingen Tower

That ol' mentalist Carl Jung. He was always in the shadow of that other head case, Sigmund Freud. Jung offered differing ideas to his mentor, so needed to be on his game to deliver his message. He had a tower that he would go to, where he was cut off from the world to a degree and crack on with his work. He also had time for collaboration, teaching and socialising. The point is he had his 'tower time' fixed in his schedule.

In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.

We will be working with machines, AI, whatever, whether you like it or not. We will always have a role (eventually we'll be one and the same anyway) but the role changes over time. We need to complement the technology and use it accordingly. There are many tasks that can't be automated quite yet, so there will always be a place for a creative, conscious, 'human' brain. Until we merge into one that is, and no-one knows who's what anymore.

Being the best, or highly skilled, in a particular area of life is always going to be valued. And access to capital means it can be paid for.

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy: The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

So that sums up a couple of parts so far. Adaptability, mastering hard things, and operating at a high level (with efficiency).

If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.

And you need a growth mindset.

If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are

You need to keep pumping it out. Whatever 'it' is for you. Having mere potential doesn't quite cut it. It needs to be used.

Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges

A Dominican friar and professor of moral philosophy who wrote The Intellectual Life - read more here

deliberate practice

A deep form of concentrated practice brought to the fore by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson.

myelin—a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner.

Now we're getting into the mechanics. Or rather the biology. Myelin is the actual substance of the brain that aids learning and habit. To be great at something is to be 'well myelinated'.

To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction

I think there's a theme developing ;)

the batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches

Focused zones. High-quality work produced = (time spent) x (intensity of focus).

attention residue

This is where there's 'carry over' from one task to another. Part of your attention is still on that last activity and scatters what you have going in to the next thing. This can sometimes be obvious but sometimes a little quieter in the background. Either way, switching between tasks does have a huge effect.

The key is longer, focused bursts on batched tasks and no so-called 'multi tasking'. This will not only benefit the short-term objectives but also build the 'muscle' in your brain to improve your concentration longer term.

To summarize, big trends in business today actively decrease people’s ability to perform deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends (e.g., increased serendipity, faster responses to requests, and more exposure) are arguably dwarfed by the benefits that flow from a commitment to deep work (e.g., the ability to learn hard things fast and produce at an elite level)

There's always an opportunity cost whichever way you take it. There is nothing wrong with random conversations for example, they can be inspiring and actually beneficial for business. But if you're doing this all day just frittering in the wind, superior benefits will be gained by getting the truly great work done, where you need to avoid distractions and not be so available.

A reminder: the market and the world doesn't value the shallow and easily replicable. It values the deep and rare. Most people can have conversations and answer emails - very low level. Not many people can put together in-depth reports, articulate ideas that could change the world or do some complicated coding. That requires skill and effort, as well as a certain level of focus and concentration, which as we are aware, is becoming less and less common.

metric black hole

Results that are difficult to measure. Part of the trouble is, we don't realise how invaluable some of our daily tasks are as there is no real proof of return on investment, or lack of. Newport calls this the metric black hole.

We might agree in the global sense that distraction has costs and impacts depth, but there isn't necessarily always an exact, objective measurement that can be pointed to. If it becomes clear these behaviours are adversely affecting the bottom line, people may well sit up and take notice.

Although I think everyone does know to a degree but, you know, habit and addiction. Please lord, don't have email open and simply react to them as they come in through the day. You have to set your own agenda and incorporate other people's as you go, not the other way round.

The Principle of Least Resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment

Exactly. We tend to take the easy option, and that makes a lot of sense. It comes back to instant gratification vs long term gains. Successful people can generally delay any gratification whereas the less than successful take all they can get now and keep dancing on that merry-go-round.

You may well have heard of the marshmallow test which is a famous study on this very area.

Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner

Times have moved on. This may well have been appropriate at certain stages of our evolution, but not so much now. 'Face time' and looking busy are absolute nonsense. Real productivity, with positive tangible results is where it's at.

Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home

Not up with the times wasn't ol' Marissa. How dare you do something more efficient!

“If you’re not visibly busy,” she signaled, “I’ll assume you’re not productive.”

Okey doke. This gives out the complete wrong message. And is a bit clumsy to say the least.

“Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World”

A quote from a book called Technopoly, written by Neil Postman in the early 90s. He argued that we no longer discussed the pros and cons of emerging trends and that high tech and development was simply presumed good and progress. 'Technopoly' was his term for such a culture.

Evgeny Morozov. In his 2013 book, To Save Everything, Click Here

Another book potentially worth checking out and continuing the theme.

Part of the issue is clarity. Craftsmen like Furrer tackle professional challenges that are simple to define but difficult to execute—a useful imbalance when seeking purpose. Knowledge work exchanges this clarity for ambiguity. It can be hard to define exactly what a given knowledge worker does and how it differs from another:

If everything and everyone is the same, then what are we paying for? There needs to be something to differentiate this work or person for them to offer any great value and not be easily replaceable.

Ric Furrer is mentioned as he specialise in medieval metalworking, creating old swords and the like. His purpose is clear… so he has that important clarity, but it's very hard to do. Painstaking. A lot of time, concentration and attention to get it right.

What Newport calls 'knowledge workers' (those working on computers and the like, not manual labour) have far less clarity and can often all mesh into one.

Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.

It's not really what's happening to us or around us, more what we focus on and how we choose to attribute meaning. The example here was a science writer called Winifred Gallagher who received a cancer diagnosis, was less focused on the macro of the situation and more on her evening glass of martini (and other 'simple' pleasures) and was fairly happy as a result. These examples can sound a bit trite (the cancer would still be the overwhelming feature of someone's life however they face it) but the points still remain.

As Gallagher summarizes: “Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”

Perfect time for a cheesy line - where focus goes energy flows. It is what it is.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Our old friend Mihaly! A pioneer of the positive psychology movement and the writer of another deep work kind of book.

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

There's this myth that free time is so great and work is bad and something to get away from. For sure, if you have a terrible job, but work does have inbuilt mechanisms which make you feel good. Sitting around gets a bit boring after a short time and you feel bad. Of course, there's time for both and should be encouraged, but a stimulating environment has to be better than a bland one. This is expanded on in Flow.

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging

Yes! The correct balance between challenging yet achievable. Not too difficult as to induce anxiety, but hard enough so as not to be bored.

To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.

This is the aim of the game.

“We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.”

Delightful quote, nothing more to add.

The Eudaimonia Machine

The Eudaimonia machine is actually a building, constructed by an architect which is said to built for full productivity and encompass all the points being made here. It's not clear whether this actually exists yet, or is an idea for construction.

ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia (a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential)

Those Greeks. The first I've heard of this and a great concept. This is what the previously mentioned 'machine' is built on.

Each chamber is conceived to be six by ten feet and protected by thick soundproof walls (Dewane’s plans call for eighteen inches of insulation).

Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Full concentration! There are communal areas to this building but there are no shared corridors, so the 'social time' is limited to certain areas. It's constructed in such a way that you can have the best of all worlds.

Baumeister summarized in his subsequent book, Willpower (co-authored with the science writer John Tierney):

Research based on willpower and a book worth reading (pop 'e on the list).

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it

It's a constant battle and you have to work with it. Know yourself, and once again, use wisely.

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.

This helps to leave willpower to one side. It will always win eventually, given a long enough timeline. Routines and rituals take over and make fighting willpower obsolete.

Knuth deploys what I call the monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling. This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations.

A tough one to put into practice but essential to take a step back and assess your priorities and then prioritise accordingly.

Practitioners of the monastic philosophy tend to have a well-defined and highly valued professional goal that they’re pursuing, and the bulk of their professional success comes from doing this one thing exceptionally well.

Focusing on one thing and becoming insanely good at it. You can spread out your interests, that's up to you, but you won't be great at any. This is the opportunity cost we all have to assess.

It’s this clarity that helps them eliminate the thicket of shallow concerns that tend to trip up those whose value proposition in the working world is more varied.

"When values are clear, decisions are easy" ~ Roy Disney

Stephenson sees two mutually exclusive options: He can write good novels at a regular rate, or he can answer a lot of individual e-mails and attend conferences, and as a result produce lower-quality novels at a slower rate.

As we've discussed, anyone can send an email. Yes, it needs to be done (or dealt with) but you have to choose what's most important. In this example, he doesn't use email as it's just too labour intensive and takes him away from his true purpose. Producing novels may well be more valuable over the course of time and to more people (as well as fulfilling for himself), rather than the banal, basic back-and-forth people have through digital communication.

Conferences and networking are another thing entirely. There's something to be said for these. Again, it's an assessment for you whether it takes you further down the road you want or more of a time waster and distraction.

2008 science fiction epic, Anathem

A film from Neal Stephenson (referenced in above quote). This shows a world where an intellectual elite live in monastic orders, isolated from the distracted masses and technology, thinking deep thoughts. Perhaps worth a watch.

Einstein knew Jung

A couple of titans right there, and they used to chew the fat on occasion.

Jung’s approach is what I call the bimodal philosophy of deep work. This philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, the bimodal worker will act monastically—seeking intense and uninterrupted concentration. During the shallow time, such focus is not prioritized.

Mix and match method. He would take the hermit approach for lengths of time and then the more social side. He didn't mix the 2 randomly, nice and defined to tick all his boxes.

The Rhythmic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

Jerry Seinfeld was used as an example here. He famously had the habit of writing one joke a day and putting an X on his calendar, thus making a chain… which is a way of rhythmic scheduling as it clearly reminds you to continue in that vein. Another way is scheduling specific work hours and that be your trigger.

The Journalistic Philosophy of Deep Work Scheduling

This is a bit more haphazard. Taking little bursts of deep work where possible between things. I'm not sure about this, as it may well go against the whole principle, but I guess it may work for some and may actually be necessary.

As an aside, I'm trying out the Pomodoro Technique this week, and I'm in the middle of a 25 minuter as I type! But that's a story for another day…

Ritualize

So important to have rituals, routines, habits and triggers. All working in your favour rather than against you. Successful people don't tend to work in a random manner, there are structures to it all. Which ironically then gives more freedom (if that's what you're worried about losing).

There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration—that there is some strike or bolt or bubbling up of creative mojo from who knows where … but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.

Excerpt from journalist Mason Currey. ‎

"I only write when I'm inspired, and I make sure I'm inspired every morning at 9 o'clock" ~ William Faulkner / Peter De Vries.

In a New York Times column on the topic, David Brooks summarizes this reality more bluntly: “[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”

Another great quote. Creatives do need that little bit of structure. There's this whimsical, romantic tradition of just going with the flow. That can work once in a while but is a pretty bad strategy overall. Trust me. The ironic thing is that having these systems in place frees you up and increases your creativity, not to mention production. This then has a huge effect on forward progress and more creation and production!

As Nietzsche said: “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.”

Ol' Nietzsche was a walker. Steve Jobs was famous for walking meetings. I think it's a good idea to get out and do a bit of the ol' steppy steppy.

[re J.K. Rowling] She checked into a suite in the five-star Balmoral Hotel, located in the heart of downtown Edinburgh.

Rowling had a bit of cash but the point is a good one. A 'grand gesture' can help get things done. Not only getting away to another place without distraction, but also organising it, paying for it, packing a bag and going there makes it more of an event.

the whiteboard effect. For some types of problems, working with someone else at the proverbial shared whiteboard can push you deeper than if you were working alone

There is a time and a place for collaboration. Brainstorming ideas, and development of those ideas are certainly worthwhile and necessary. They just need to be integrated appropriately.

[The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX)] Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important

"Prioritise and execute" ~ Jocko Willink

“If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.”

Learning to say no is key. Not everything is all that important and will halt your progress. Only let in what fuels the fire.

Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

Keep track of your progress. You can't manage what you don't measure. Cliché but true…

Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

Checking in with someone or people regularly to keep you (and them) on track. This could be a coach or mentor, team, mastermind group, or a friend with similar goals. Any form of accountability is great as it pushes you into action. This is something I've never utilised enough, but unfortunately you can't just rely on yourself as you're bound to let yourself off, however much you want it.

shut down

When you're finished for the day, finish for the day. Set a time and stick to it. Then you walk away until the new day begins. This forces you to use that time to its optimum and then turn your focus to leisure pursuits without either impeding on the other.

downtime.

It's important to hustle (a la Gary Vee!) but there's a time and a place. You need to know when it's time to push it, and when to rest. If done right, you're not missing out anywhere, you're actually gaining (and importantly, in all areas of life).

Then there's the law of diminishing returns. Mark Manson wrote in an article on his blog that when he was writing his book, the times he worked past a certain point, he spent the first couple of hours the next day correcting the mistakes or re-writing it as it was poor quality! This actually made those additional hours not only wasted but eat into his productive hours the next day.

This also takes a high amount of self-awareness, tracking of results, then acting on both. It's also not an excuse to sit around doing nothing. But striking the right balance is where it's at.

Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, set out to prove that some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. In other words, to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over.

Overthinking is not a good idea. Once you know the facts and have assessed the situation, there's not much more you can do going over it, and it may not end up the best outcome either. Although it sounds a bit woo-woo, letting your subconscious do the work (which is ridiculously powerful by the way, we have no idea) will actually assess all the variables, the unseen and give a more accurate idea. There's a reason why Einstein and many more took little naps through the day.

Your conscious mind, according to this theory, is like a home computer on which you can run carefully written programs that return correct answers to limited problems, whereas your unconscious mind is like Google’s vast data centers, in which statistical algorithms sift through terabytes of unstructured information, teasing out surprising useful solutions to difficult questions

A bit more info on your subconscious and how it works. Worth tapping into!

attention fatigue. To concentrate requires what ART calls directed attention. This resource is finite

ART = attention restoration theory. Like willpower, it's finite so needs to be used appropriately.

When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done

We should all try and be 100% present wherever we are and whatever we are doing. We don't want any of that pesky attention residue following us around!

Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction

It's an addiction like any other, so it takes a bit of effort to shift.

multitask

Let's say this again - there's no such thing as multi-tasking and it is a bad idea. For the most part anyway… you can do it in certain circumstances but not for deep work.

Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction

Yeah, we've got it upside down. We need to schedule blocks for our social media, for example, rather than take a break from that for work.

Work Like Teddy Roosevelt

Teddy had a good routine at college where he got a lot done in a set schedule.

Estimate how long you’d normally put aside for an obligation of this type, then give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces this time

Deadlines help keep you on task and make positive use of Parkinson's Law.

commit publicly to the deadline—for example, by telling the person expecting the finished project when they should expect it.

That's one method of accountability.

countdown timer

This is what I'm doing at the moment. Earlier I mentioned the Pomodoro Technique. I think 25 minutes is a bit itty-bitty in chunks, so I'm doing 50 minutes with 10 minute breaks. I think this is the ideal length (and fits in with other advice I've heard), but find what works for you. Get a few of those through the day and specific tasks scheduled and you're away! A lot of work gets done and you have plenty of down time too.

Roosevelt dashes leverage artificial deadlines to help you systematically increase the level you can regularly achieve—providing, in some sense, interval training for the attention centers of your brain

An interesting way of looking at it. People work the body but how about interval training for the mind?

card memorization

A great brain exercise. There's a way to memorise a pack of cards in the book, and that can also be adapted and applied across the board.

The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection: You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it

There's always going to be a benefit to many things. But is that benefit strong enough to counter the losses? We very easily just do anything as it has some benefit. That isn't really good enough and we need to weigh up all the pros and cons if we're to allow something to affect a big part of our lives.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it ignores all the negatives that come along with the tools in question.

Exactly. It's not all just innocent little messages. It's a barrage of abuse. Get clear, get ruthless.

hay baler

This was an example of a farmer and as to whether he should buy a hay baler. There were many benefits and made a lot of sense. He's a farmer and needs to bale hay, no brainer? Well, no. Turns out he can just buy in the hay and the overall costs (financial and otherwise) would be less. So no hay baler for this chap. It's not always obvious but it's worth assessing honestly.

opportunity costs

This is a classic and can be applied to all things. If you're doing one thing then you'll be missing out on another. You can be in one country but you can't also live the life of another. There will always be pros, cons and an opportunity cost for all. "To have the rainbow you've got to put up with the rain" ~ Dolly Parton.

tools are ultimately aids to the larger goals of one’s craft

Tools. You use them to improve your life, they're not there to in-prison you.

The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts

An honest assessment and taking action on it. Again, there will always be opportunity costs, but this is for the greater good.

The Law of the Vital Few*: In many settings, 80 percent of a given effect is due to just 20 percent of the possible causes.

Vilfredo Pareto had something to say about this ;).

After thirty days of this self-imposed network isolation, ask yourself the following two questions about each of the services you temporarily quit: Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this service? Did people care that I wasn’t using this service?

This is about taking a break, from social media for example. No big parade or fanfare, just stop for 30 days and see what happens. Will people have even missed you? Will you have missed it? Could there be adjustments you could make to how you use it in future? Essentially, do you have a better quality of life with it, or without it? Or perhaps there exists a middle ground?

if you want to eliminate the addictive pull of entertainment sites on your time and attention, give your brain a quality alternative.

It's not just about cutting something out, it's about replacing it with something better. That's how all habits work.

treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated.

Back to a central theme of the whole book. We think it's harmless and we think it's necessary. The opposite could be true.

“What makes the most sense right now?”

A good question to ask to get on top of priorities.

Schedule every minute of your day.

It's essential to plan your day. And an actual schedule rather than a to-do list. This will adapt and change through the day and isn't set in stone. But it does give an outline and make priorities clear. Without it you may well find yourself pissing in the wind, if you will.

Tip #2: Do More Work When You Send or Reply to E-mails

This is an interesting one. Actually put a bit more effort into emails in order to cut down the back and forth. It's easy to send of a quick reply and it gets it off our plate… temporarily. For now it's in the other person's court… but it will come back until it's resolved. And this can go on for a while. So it could just be worth taking more time and making clear proposals for the next step(s) and making it easy for the other person and reducing your involvement.

Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.

The more directions your mind is wandering, the worse it is for any kind of deep work or thinking. Take out the trash!

Tim Ferriss once wrote: “Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.”

You don't want to miss an email and you want to keep on top of things. However, the smaller unimportant things may occasionally slip through the net and in fact may need to for the greater good.

It’s safer to comment on our culture than to step into the Rooseveltian ring and attempt to wrestle it into something better.

A deep life is not for everyone, and requires a bit of work and introspection. People talk a lot about comfort zones, and there is much comfort in living the more superficial way. The author also makes the point that it forces you to confront your fears that you might not actually be that good (yet). Easier to talk about it than dive right in.

Thanks Cal! Anything else?

As I said at the start, there's a lot of repeating of the same central tenet there. And that is reinforced throughout the book with examples and case studies.

In the age of coworking, coliving, co-this and co-that it is something worth thinking about. These things are coming more in to play due to more people working remotely but still wanting the human contact. Fair enough. However, too much 'co-everything' will stifle any big progress. You can have fun and you can socialise, worthy goals for sure… it's just that it will all be more on the surface level rather than monster gains. This is all still a vast improvement on the old style workplace approach where no-one gets anything done and it's no fun either.

It all comes down to what you want from life, and there is no right or wrong. Just important to have that awareness and then do what's right for you. Either way, some more deep work in our lives has to be a good thing!

You going deep today??

Check out the others in the series…