One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of …
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.
A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories -- from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air -- and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
Although it gets repetitive a bit in the middle, the gist of the book can be summarized as - Do deep work instead of the shallow. You have to actively work on your habits to keep yourself from spiraling into the distraction laden life that the current online culture has inculcated. All this sounds like common advice and a touch of self-help vibe in the title of this book may make you skeptical to pick it up, but the advices and strategies Cal Newport suggests is applicable to everyone in the 21st century. If you can't make it through the entire book, read at least few of his blog posts on Cal Newport: Blog .
Fascinating and a compelling book arguing the need for focus and deep work in life. I am almost a convert now and ready to plunge in this style. Really a good read.
Cal Newport lays out his arguments for "going deep" — uninterrupted, long, and intense periods of focusing on the work that is going to further your goals quite well in this book.
I rarely disagreed with him and when I did it was because I was guilty of so much of his arguments against shallow work — email, Twitter, Facebook — all those non-essential, non-urgent, and non-important tasks that cause the dreaded decrease in focus from task switching (multitasking) which the effects of have long been debated. We know it takes a period of time from when you're working on a computer program and you switch to Twitter to recover that intense focus. The more you task switch, the worse it gets.
The book made me uncomfortable because I realized how much time I was squandering; how much I wasn't learning or practicing a certain skill. How many hours I've …
Cal Newport lays out his arguments for "going deep" — uninterrupted, long, and intense periods of focusing on the work that is going to further your goals quite well in this book.
I rarely disagreed with him and when I did it was because I was guilty of so much of his arguments against shallow work — email, Twitter, Facebook — all those non-essential, non-urgent, and non-important tasks that cause the dreaded decrease in focus from task switching (multitasking) which the effects of have long been debated. We know it takes a period of time from when you're working on a computer program and you switch to Twitter to recover that intense focus. The more you task switch, the worse it gets.
The book made me uncomfortable because I realized how much time I was squandering; how much I wasn't learning or practicing a certain skill. How many hours I've spent mindlessly scrolling Facebook on my phone. I also know I really don't know how to stop.
Cal offers great suggestions and I have a few plugins and tools to make this easier. Being comfortable with being bored is difficult for many. Cal encourages his readers to force boredom on themselves and to stick with it. The more practice you have the easier it will get and the closer you'll come to performing "deep work".
The book made take a long hard look at myself and for me that's worth five stars.
