Deep work: Book Summary
Deep work refers to distraction-free, high concentration work that improves your skills- creates a lot of value in little time, and is very hard to replicate.
The 4 rules of Deep Work
- Rule #1: Work Deeply
- Rule #2: Embrace Boredom
- Rule #3: Quit Social Media/Distractions
- Rule #4: Drain the Shallows
Other Important takeaways from the book
- Focusing on one important task at a time- that’ll advance your position is true and pure deep work.
- Deep work is a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.
- You lose the sense of time when you’re working on engaging things.
- Deep work leads to quick happiness and advances.
- If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive- no matter how skilled or talented you are.
- When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow — a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity, before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while
- Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.
- Deep work training must involve two goals: improving your ability to concentrate intensely and overcoming your desire for distraction.
- We spend much of our day on autopilot — not giving much thought to what we’re doing with our time.
- The differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.
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P.S. This is my book summary of “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. These points could be direct quotes from the book, and/or my thoughts and interpretation of those lines. Importantly, this write-up is dedicated to the key points from this book.
About the Author
Cal Newport holds the position of assistant Computer Science professor at Georgetown University and his area of specialization is ‘distributed algorithms’. He graduated from Dartmouth and obtained a PH.D. from MIT. Apart from studying technological development, he has authored books describing the impact of recent technological developments on our daily lives and work. Deep Work turned out to be a Wall Street bestseller immediately and garnered positive reviews from all major newspapers. His first book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, talks about the common myth of ‘following your passion’ and how it can actually prove to be detrimental. The controversial self-help books penned by him are realistic and appeal to practical readers across the globe.
Disclaimer:
Bear in mind that the links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links. I receive a small amount of compensation when you purchase from my links, which I’ll totally blow on buying and reading more books.
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Originally published at www.dipanshurawal.com on January 27, 2019.
