Last August, I had created the goal to read 200 books by the end of my college year. In high school, I hated English class and all the books the class made me read. But, because I’m planning on going into some kind of law, I’d be in for a rude awakening If I continued to see books as a chore. Looking at roughly a book a week, I knew I had to have some incredible concentration If I wanted to get through all of those pages, and one of my first books was a great way to find out more. “Deep Work” by Cal Newport is an incredible self-help book that tries to update the genre to a 21st-century world. Understanding how many people now are under the influence of what he calls shallow work; this MIT graduate has explained how deep work- the ability to increase the intensity of work while decreasing the time it takes to do that job- is often celebrated in a world of distracted workers.
One of the greatest lessons he expanded on were the concepts of myelin workouts and attention residue. Cal Newport goes to a neural level, explaining that the amount of myelin sheath that covers the neurons in your brain helps to determine how fast they fire. When people are working at an intense pace, it is similar to a weightlifter who uses heavier weights in one hour of his day than if someone was attempting to carry 2lbs for six hours a day: The former creates faster results. Also in his book, attention residue helps explain why multitasking is sub par to deep work. If you have multiple meetings to go to, or an email just popped up that you have to respond to, many of you will be thinking of the last thing you just did, and that robs you of your attention to the task at hand. To work in the same manner as business owners like Jeff Bezos (Amazon) or incredible thinkers like Charles Darwin, you must devote 100% of your focus to the amazing project you deemed worthy enough of your contemplation.
The greatest part of deep work is that it is one size fits all! Not everyone can become a hermit and live like a monk in a monastery. Others may prefer the Bimodal routine, which asks for a time of work and a time of well-appreciated relaxation. For example, a professor of mine in USC spends one-semester teaching classes to students and another for deep work, focusing on her research that demands all her time. If the life of a tenured Academic isn’t for you, there is also the Rhythmic Routine, which asks you to work a little every day in deep work: making sure your off social media and emails, focus for a set amount of time, and then reward yourself afterward.
As Gary Keller explained it in “The One thing” draw a red X on the days that you completed the job and do everything in your power to make sure that chain is never broken. Finally, there is the Journalistic philosophy, a method for the Deep Work elite, who can switch on and off intense focus on a moments notice, so long as their deadlines are met and their readers are satisfied. I’d love to give you an example, but I’m trying to type you one right now. In all of these methods, find what works for you and make sure your never in shallow work again, because life shouldn’t always be about work. Newport also goes in depth on how we should be taking time for high-quality fun, and to relax when we shut down completely from work. So when attempting these periods of hard work, make sure to put a “Shut Down Completely” ritual at the end of the day. After all, ask any triathlete and they’ll tell you: when they aren’t training, they usually consider themselves professional nappers!
