About Deep Work
Over the holiday I read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work while cuddling my sleeping baby niece on my brother’s couch.
This book was one of the few that made it through my ‘save for later’ digital decluttering recently and the library hold came through in time for the holidays. It also aligns nicely with my desire to explore a season of depth and helped me clarify a few ways I might do that.
Cal spends the book's first half explaining deep work, why it is rare and valuable, and all the things in the world (and our brains) that get in the way of it.
As I read nonfiction books, I tend to highlight sections in my Kindle app that resonate. Then, after I finish the book I’ll go back and take book notes. This practice helps me process the book’s contents, make sense of it, and absorb the meaningful or insightful parts. I don’t do it to have the notes, but to go through the process of taking the notes.
Here are a few notes from Deep Work:
“3-4 hours a day 5 days a week of directed concentration can produce a lot of valuable output”. This sentence is packed with points that come up throughout the book. First, we only have the capacity for 3-4 hours a day of focused work, beyond that the returns diminish. And often that time is polluted with task switching, shallow admin and logistical work, the spider web of social media, and the pretend urgency of communication responsiveness the entire day is lost to filler work. So little actual progress is made besides a lot of busyness masquerading as productivity. Second, directed concentration is the hard part. That means dialing down or eliminating distractions, building boundaries around what work happens when, and saying no to possible opportunities or shiny objects. Third, the output is important but the thing we have control over is the effort we input. If we improve the quality of the input effort by setting aside distractions and pushing our cognitive capabilities we can produce higher quality, more valuable, and meaningful things.
“If email moved to the periphery, you’d need to deploy a more thoughtful approach to figuring out what you should be working on and for how long” The act of creating a quiet inbox and demoting email is only the first part of the process. The next and maybe harder part is figuring out what to work on. This is what I’m navigating right now.
“The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish”. This is challenging for me because focusing on the ‘wildly important’ means saying no or not yet too many interesting or ‘urgent’ projects. Building a skill of discernment and strategic choice is always a work in progress for me. The trip-up is that if I don’t choose the one thing I try to do the competing projects at the same time and make little to no progress on any of them.
The second half of Deep Work dives into strategies and approaches to help cultivate depth including crafting routines and rituals, choosing a depth philosophy (how might you structure time blocks of deep work: in hours to days to weeks or months dedicated to focused work), tracking the leading measure (time spent in a state of deep work) as opposed to outputs, aiming for intensity, quitting social media, and cutting down on shallow work.
“Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead, take breaks from focus.” This flipped my perspective a bit. I’d been somewhat good at putting and holding time blocks for focused work on my calendar, but this part made me add time blocks for distractions and shallow work like email, admin, and communication to my calendar. I tended to default to checking email in the spaces of my day and using it in the transitions between tasks or activities. This week I’ve been experimenting with adding and then waiting for a dedicated Comms calendar block to do email and admin things. It’s a bit of a practice to hold that work to that container, but we shall see how it goes. And if it’s helpful or not.
“Don’t use the internet to entertain yourself.” Another approach this book reinforces for me is building in true breaks and rest as opposed to half-ass breaks where you end up scrolling the internet or cramming in admin and emails. I feel good about holding Saturdays as totally work-free days and practicing this pretty strongly throughout the week. But there are a few times I end up scrolling the internet when making more deliberate choices in my time would feel better.
A 2025 Preview: What’s Next?
So, what’s the plan for 2025?
Life Plans & Practices:
Dedicating time and maybe even a dog trainer with my 7-year-old cockapoo terrier mix dog, Devin.
Make a big macrame wall hanging for my bedroom. I found a pattern on Etsy and am gathering the supplies.
Lean into parallel presence - doing different things together in a shared space - with people at my coworking space and with friends.
A consistent movement practice including my new monthly yoga membership to a local studio, running a 5k in February, and picking back up softball and volleyball as the weather warms.
Lean into curiosity, creativity, and deliberate practice with piano and Spanish. What would six months of amplified effort look like? What if I did a few intensive language sessions?
Commit to consistent writing, building a rhythm that feels sustainable and exciting. And getting much more specific with my writing projects and tasks. Write weekly on my Substack is good, but I need a more clear topic when I sit down to actually write.
Make time to move through stockpiles like books and puzzles.
Work: Building, Connecting, and Experimenting
The work side is where I want to apply the insights from the Cal’s book and other places around depth, focus, and deliberate practice. I want to put in deliberate effort to make progress on a few projects.
Building Offerings: I have a few offerings I want to refine and build including an Idea Clarity mini course and reworking my strategy course. I’m co-leading the Ampersand Gathering and have an idea for an Ampersand Podcast Series about how we are building it.
Connecting: Showing up consistently in a few spaces is another thing I want to focus on. Spaces like sharing essays weekly here, start writing a monthly newsletter - Daring Atlas, and responding thoughtfully within virtual communities like WAIM and on Substack.
Experimenting and Outreach: What if I started creating videos on YouTube teaching strategy skills and leadership frameworks? What might a marketing assistant look like and how might that help provide external structure?
Closing Thoughts: Depth, Slowness, Intensity
The challenge is navigating the messy needs of life.
The need to do deep work to advance a project. While also doing the adulting, admin, and communication tasks needed to run a business and life.
Letting things take the time they need to take to be build or created, while also contributing concentrated input and actually shipping a thing.
Mistaking motion for action. Moving around information via email or planning is just motion. A day might be busy with chaotic and fast-paced motion, but nothing actually gets done with any level of intensity and progress. We are just rearranging furniture on the Titanic.
How might I actually live and practice a season of depth and slowness?
I’ve been thinking a lot about task switching and the way that trying to multitask lends itself to a slipper slide into a murky muddle of distraction.
My approach has been to clarify the containers of the various tasks or life modes so I can then have more clarity about what to work on when. I came up with six life modes and named them with emojis for funsies.
Life Modes:
🔥Blaze: Deep flow and do not disturb mode with intensity, single-tasking, and focus.
🌸Blossom: deliberate practice, thoughtful responding, following curiosity, learning, growth.
🦋Butterfly: social and playful, adventuring, connecting with people.
⚓️Anchors: movement, meals, morning routine, naps, structures, and habits.
⚙️Tinker: adulting, communication, and admin.
🪢Knots: tangles, browsing, streaming, scrolling, and distractions.
This mental activity has been clarifying for me - especially allowing for the knots and tangles the will happen in life. Knowing that those activities have a place to live means they won’t be creeping into the other modes as much. And while there definitely is overlap and reality is not neat, as a framework, I feel this provides a nice approach to nurturing more depth, slowness and intensity in my life in 2025.
What resonated with you? How might you be interested in cultivating more depth, slowness, and intensity in your life?
Until next time,
Rachel