Deep Work

Deep Work is a book well written and full of interesting ideas to increase your focus in work and life. I found it surprisingly easy to read. As expected from a self-help productivity book, the arguments are based on many anecdotes and Newport's own experiences. They are sprinkled with references to related books and studies.

The book provides clear and effective advice on reducing shallow work and improving deep work. It's well structured and easy to digest in small chunks. I tried not to read too much at once, only small chunks - chapter by chapter - to be able to think about the ideas and experiment with them in my own life. I believe this was the right approach. I don't believe that Deep Work will affect my life profoundly, but it certainly gave me a lot of good ideas and techniques.

The reason why I only give 4 out of 5 stars is because I'm generally weary of the kind of modern productivity gurus like Cal Newport. Usually the ideas are presented with a tang of secret wisdom, but mostly they are not that profound. We all know that scrolling down that infinite feed is bad for your productivity and that saying "no" to unimportant things makes you get the important stuff done faster.

This book is great for knowledge workers. As a software developer I can relate to the ideas and it contains a lot of useful advice for my line of work. If I was a farmer or craftsman I would probably not have liked it at all. But, to be fair, Cal Newport is very open about this fact early in the book.

My final conclusion is that it's good to be able to do more quality (deep) work in less time, but the productivity-over-everything-mindset is a double-edged sword. I will probably have to add a book about mindfulness and spirituality to my reading list soon to balance things out.

Some good tips about methods of work, but ultimately glorifies hustle culture and productivity performance. While these tenets may benefit individuals, they will ultimately fail to meaningfully change the society we live in (apparently this is a superfluous moral argument). I picked this up because I thought Digital Minimalism was ok, but this one is blatant in its lack of critique of the reasons why meaningful engagement (read deep work) occur. For-profit businesses that operate not on common good, but on extractive tactics that steer people away from meaningful dialogue, create further polarization and care little about the health of people or planet is but one of these reasons that is acknowledged, but not questioned. The other is the assumption that everyone has an infinite amount of potential leisure time to recapture by being more effective at concentration. I hope someone extracts the good parts of this book and re-aligns it with a trauma-informed, community minded lens.

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about making use of deeply focused work. This book delivered only partially. There are some interesting pointers on how to integrate more highly-focused work into your life and how to expand your mental capabilities... but a lot of them will be exponentially harder for neurodivergent people, and the suggestions for integrating more "deep work" are probably not feasible for people who have caretaker responsability or people in precarized work. Nearly all of his success stories are people who have a pretty high degree of privilege to begin with.

In the first part, I got annoyed with his sales pitch for deep work - I already knew it was something potentially beneficial and open-plan offices are horrible. Maybe he needed to make this sales pitch because corporate culture is so invested in inhumane, focus-destroying work practices?

I also don't get his abhorrence of email, but perhaps I'm just an outlier in that my email influx is manageable? And although I have come to loathe Facebook and mostly avoid Twitter and Instagram, his "social media is evil and you ought to quit" chapter doesn't convince me either.

Overall, there were a few concepts I might revisit at some point, but otherwise, this book was a disappointment, not because the concept of "deep work" is bad, but because the book is coming from such a privileged and limited perspective.

این بازبینی بر اساس نسخه ترجمه خانم ناهید ملکی است.


یک کتاب موفقیت دیگه؟

شاید براتون سوال باشه که این کتاب هم از اون کتاب‌های موفقیته که داخلش پر از شعار و حرف‌های انگیزشیه که بعد از خوندنش یک کلمه حرف حساب دست آدم رو نمیگیره یا اینکه واقعا حرفی برای گفتن داره؟
سوال خوبیه، عقیده دارم کتاب روی مرز هستش و برای همین هم ۴ ستاره بهش دادم، میتونم بگم که بخشی از محتوای کتاب به چشم بنده خیلی به سختی رنگ عملی شدن به خودش می گیره و بیشتر توی حرف زیباست، منتها بخش دیگر کتاب به عقیده من ارزنده است، که در ادامه بیشتر توضیح میدم.


قلم و نگارش

کتاب از نظر نگارشی تکرار زیاد داره، مدام یه سری نکات رو تکرار میکنه و یادآوری میکنه که البته زننده نمیشه و اتفاقا توجه رو جلب میکنه و تا حدی کمک میکنه که نکاتی که از نظر نویسنده مهم‌تر بوده پررنگتر بشه.
نکته قابل توجه دیگه کتاب داستان‌های زیادی هستش که از اشخاص مختلف داخلش نقل میشه که طبیعتا باعث تاثیرگذاری بیشتر کتاب میشه، البته نباید نادیده بگیریم که این شکل داستان‌گویی باعث طولانی شدن و گاهی برعکس انتظار خسته کننده شدن هم میشه.


ساختار کتاب

از نظر ساختاری کتاب دو بخش داره، بخش اول با عنوان «ایده» حاوی سه فصل هستش که قصد داره ایده کار عمیق رو توصیف بده و همچنین مخاطب رو متقاعد کنه که کار عمیق تاثیر مثبت روی روند پیشرفت دانش‌ورزان میگذاره.
بخش دوم کتاب با عنوان «قوانین» از ۴ فصل تشکیل شده که در واقع هر کدام مجموعه‌ای تکنیک‌ها، قواعد و نکات زیر مجموعه موضوع فصل هستند.
اگر با مفهوم کار عمیق آشنا هستید و صرفا قصد دارید به کار ببندیدش میتونید مستقیما از بخش دوم کتاب شروع کنید، چون چندان ارجاع زیادی به بخش اول نداره.


برداشت من

چیزی که این کتاب به بنده اضافه کرد، شاید بر خلاف انتظار نویسنده بیشتر آگاهی از مفهوم «کار کم‌عمق» بود تا کار عمیق، نه اینکه کار عمیق مفهوم ارزنده‌ای نیست ولی کنترل کار‌های کم‌عمق ساده‌تر هستش و پاداش نقد تری هم داره برای همین به نظرم کوچکترین و اولین قدم‌ها باید از کنترل کردن کار‌های کم‌عمق باشه و نه ایجاد عادت برای کار‌های عمیق
در بدبینانه‌ترین حالت شاید اکثر روش‌ها و تکنیک‌هایی که آقای نیوپورت توی کتاب قید کرده رو به طور مستمر به کار نگیرم ولی حداقل اثر مهمی که روی من داشت این بود که حواسم رو به کار‌های کم‌عمقی که در طول روزها انجام میدم جمع کنم، معتقدم که این یک آگاهی ارزشمند محسوب میشه.
آگاهیی که اگر با صرف زمان و انرژی بیشتر همراه بشه میتونه منجر به کنترل کار‌های کم‌عمق و در قدم‌های بعدی بیشتر کردن عمق فعالیت‌های روزانه‌ام هم همراه بشه و در نهایت ایجاد عادت برای انجام کار عمیق درست و حسابی

ممنون از اینکه بازبینی من رو مطالعه کردید

Sometimes we need to be hit in the face in order to realise that the work we are doing is probably not valuable and that we can, for sure, achieve more by using better the time that we have got.

If you think that the previous statement applies to you, it might be good to pick this book from the shelf and start reading it.

As someone that has been dealing with the illusion of being busy all the time, denying going-out with friends or even cancelling some family plans, because I was busy, I felt that Cal Newport has given me what I needed right when I felt I could use it more. Right before college. A time when there are so many opportunities ahead of me, that I would have surely thought of jumping in all of them, without caring too much about the quality of the result of each individual chosen activity. Now, I would think twice before doing that, think twice before deciding to reply to an e-mail that has arrived in my Inbox, think twice before deciding whether or not I should pick up the phone while I am waiting in line to buy the groceries from the market. I might kill boredom and my parents have been long-telling me (and also my teachers) that I should not allow myself to get bored. Keep your fingers busy all the time, do something, just do not settle. And here I am, ten years of following this advice, but with such a bad concentration skill. Dealing with the urges of receiving social confirmation from the social media websites and trying to keep myself from replying to e-mails the moment they arrive. Are those so important? I might not say so.

For me, it seems like it was an awakening call that I have been waiting for to receive. I have started a personal experiment of giving up on the social media websites I have been using on a daily basis and also told myself that I will work only until a certain time of the day. I will see how this works and document it at the same time here: medium.com/@stochitaradu

Thank you, Cal, for the hand!