Deep Work

I get the “deep work” concept and it does prove to be valuable, but that’s because it’s nothing new. Since when do we not know that concentration and the ability to work uninterrupted isn’t valuable? Newport just repeats the same idea over and over again with examples of white men and “great thinkers.” Not to be one of those haters who cancels books because they don’t include female perspectives but… I don’t think I saw ONE reference by someone categorically different from the author. This, to me, just goes to show the audience, the privilege, and also the erasure of other forms of knowledge and living.

The author also goes to explain who will and will not thrive in today’s economy and basically narrows it down to knowledge. How elite is that?

I accept the concept of deep work and value the reminder for more concentration and mindfulness in everyday tasks but everything else in this book is jargon to me. Wouldn’t recommend.

A student said to Master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.” The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.” In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” Frustrated, the student demanded, “What does the word ‘attention’ mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

But no one will publish your book with only the word "Attention" in it, hence we have this one instead. To be fair, this book has to prove its thesis. We don't just accept what the master says without studies using fMRI and references to the brain these days. Am I suggesting we should? Our culture is a skeptical one in which ideas need to be marketed and someone claiming authority is assumed to be operating out of self interest. This book is steeped in the values of western capitalism, its masters having credentials from elite institutions or being CEOs of corporations. Though, in theory, we could attempt to replicate the results of experiments, in practice, we follow today's masters. We envy them and wish to join their ranks or even to replace them. This book is telling us (and selling us) the magic trick that it claims can enable us to do so.

Its thesis is you, the reader, have a chance. Great things are produced by the right kind of work, not by the specially endowed. That kind of work is called "deep" and research shows that those we thought specially endowed actually do a lot of deep work. What's more, most people (i.e. readers of this book, and especially those people who aren't readers like us) do practically none. Instead our attention is scattered for various reasons, some cultural (e.g. Facebook) and some due to lack of discipline. Though deep work is ultimately deeply satisfying, few of us ever get to taste that satisfaction.

The rest of the book suggests those "weird tricks" that can help us engage in deep work. Examples are getting off social media, engaging in habit-forming rituals supporting deep work, investing lavishly in tools for the work as an expression of commitment, emulating others who choose the life of depth. Some of these tricks are phrased as rules, one of which (rule#1 in chapter 4)is to "focus on the wildly important."

I would like to suggest a reversal of cause and effect here. To me, those whom the author calls deep focus on "wildly important goals" do so because they find them wildly important. They pay attention to what they find interesting out of interest, not out of following a rule. Even singling out goals doesn't really happen for these people. The goals call out to them and they respond. Mr. Newport's example of Bill Gates's "preternatural deep work ability" is a case in point. It wasn't an ability but an inability to do otherwise. If you've never experienced that kind of obsession, you don't realize that this isn't the kind of mind state that you cultivate just for the results. It's more like the kind of mind state that were it not having positive effects, would get you diagnosed with a mental illness.

Often, while reading this book, I felt like I was experiencing an infomercial. What makes this especially ironic is that advertising is a major source of distraction in our culture and our willingness to subject ourselves to it is symptomatic of our undervaluing our attention. I don't want to say that cultivating more focus and less distraction can't improve one's life, but that there's something shallow about turning depth into a growth tool.