Deep Work — Rules for focused success in a distracted world

Are you one of those who switches between Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and mails (basically the social media) while working? Have you ever felt like “Am I working in the middle of meetings or having meetings in the middle of work?” It maybe true that you will finish your work at the end of the day but just rethink whether you have satisfaction while doing that work?

It’s probably a NO. There might be two reasons:

1. You didn’t like the work
2. You didn’t involve in the work

If it’s 1, then either you need to change your career or look at your current work in a new perspective. But if it’s 2, then one of the main reasons is “Switching”. (A computer science perspective can be checked here). To make it more clear, try this activity.

Fun exercise 1: Place a book on a chair and place the chair at one end of the corridor. Now walk towards the chair, grab the book, read a page and place the book on the chair and walk away from the chair to other end. Repeat this for one hour. Note the number of pages you have read, total distance walked and calories burned (if possible).

Fun exercise 2: Now split the hour to two halves and read with no distractions in the first half and have a pleasant walk during the second one. Now observe the number of pages you have read, distance you have walked and calories you have burned.

In normal scenario, you will enjoy the latter exercise more and has a better output.

This is the effect of Context Switching i.e trying to switch among different tasks. Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work” tries to justify why this switching doesn’t yield good output and why it’s important to work in a distraction-free place.

Cover page of Deep Work by Cal Newport. This blog is an excerpt. Check this writeup or this YouTube video which adds some extra points

Deep Work:

Activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognition levels to their limit. These create value, improves your skills and are hard to replicate.

Shallow Work:

Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks often performed while distracted. These won’t create much value and are easy to replicate.

Shallow work is something that anyone can do with minimum effort (thus replaceable) while deep work needs extensive practice.

Psychological perspective of Deep Work:

1. Imagine one of your most involved day (where you focused) and a distracted day. Which one did you enjoy? For most, it will be the busiest day (where you are so involved), because your mind is in “FLOW”, a state of mind where time just passes by i.e can’t feel time because you have immersed in activity. (which is possible if you are free from distractions i.e working deeply)
2. Most of us believe that eternal relaxation makes happy and working is boredom but this is not entirely true. It’s the immersed work that makes us happy.

Eg: Recollect any of your vacation (where you just sleep, relax for entire day). At the start, you might be very happy as you escaped workload. But slowly you will feel bored and unhappy. This is because your mind doesn’t have much to do thus creates a negative feedback (of guilt etc;). While a short vacation from busy world is necessary, imagining to just relax for months/years is actually more painful than one can imagine (try speaking to your grandma)

Different states of mind based on the challenges we receive and our abilities. Proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in FLOW

Neurological perspective of Deep Work:

1. When you do a particular task, specific neurons fire to accomplish that task i.e the circuitry that helps you to do highly cognitive task (N_Cognitive) and the circuitry that help you to interact in social media (N_Social-Media) will be different and has less in common.
2. Myelin is a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and more efficient.
3. As you repetitively perform a task, that particular set of neurons gets fired again and again which helps wrapping layers of myelin around them thus strengthening that particular skill (remember brain is a muscle and muscle becomes stronger when exercised repeatedly).
4. So, if you switch between a highly cognitive task and social media (i.e the circuits relevant to N_Cognitive and N_Social-Media switches), you are firing too many neurons and it won’t myelinate effectively.

The more frequent the set of neurons fire (by repeatedly doing same task), the thicker the insulation happens (more myelinated) which effectively transmits pulses thus more skilled in that activity. Repeat the task frequently →More myelin forms → Neurons communicate more effectively → More skilled in that particular task.

High Quality work produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

Philosophies of Deep Work

It’s important to know different philosophies of deep work for one interested to implement it.

Monastic Philosophy: Monastic stands for monk. So, in this philosophy, one eliminates all distractions for a long time to achieve a well-defined goal. Simply speaking, no social-media, no mails etc; for years. It’s a bit difficult in present culture.

Bimodal Philosophy: Eliminate the distractions when you are working for longer duration. They believe a minimum of one day of distraction-free-work is needed to get satisfactory output.

Eg: Hackathons, Exams etc;

Rhythmic Philosophy: Daily, eliminate the distractions for a particular time (like morning hours etc;). Very easy to implement in our present culture.

Eg: Exercise hour, reading hour etc;

An example of Rhythmic Philosophy is Pomerado Technique where we have small blocks of distraction free time

Journalistic Philosophy: Whenever you get free time, focus on work. Can effectively implement only by extensive practice.

“Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to”

Lag and Lead Measures:

Suppose one of your resolution is “To read 30 books by the end of this year”.

1. If your metric for motivation is “How many books you have read till now?”, it’s a lag measure (i.e your ultimate goal) because you can’t change that instantaneously thus won’t get enough motivation towards your ultimate goal
2. But instead, if your metric for motivation is “How many hours you are reading?” it’s a lead measure (which you can control now) because you can change that instantaneously i.e increase your read time from today, thus you will get enough motivation towards your ultimate goal.

A real life example (Bowling) explaining lag and lead measures. While a lag measure tells you if you’ve achieved the goal, a lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve the goal. (Source: Blog)

Similarly for all your goals, try to find the lag and lead measures and work on improving the lead measure.

Shutdown Ritual

Have you ever experienced working on a hard problem which you couldn’t solve but are able to figure out after a break (or) a walk? It’s most probable that you might have experienced Attention Restoration Theory (ART) where one can concentrate better after spending time in nature. It’s like refueling your concentration levels. But the downside is, we just can’t refuel continuously.

Abstract level representation of Attention Restoration Theory (ART)

So, it’s necessary to shutdown everything after a particular time of the day i.e define an endpoint of your workday (eg: 5 PM). For example, most people won’t check e-mails after their office hours and that tends to be a good habit.

But suppose you are in the middle of some work and the endpoint has reached. Is it okay to finish that particular task or should I need to leave it? What about the other pending tasks for the day?

Zeigarnik effect: We have stronger memories for uncompleted tasks than completed ones which makes us feel uneasy and have mental tension.

You can experience a sort of this effect when you prepare for exams (i.e you remember a lot before the exam and forget most of the information just after the exam. It’s not just because of rote learning)

An example of Zeigarnik effect being implemented in LinkedIn UX. Because it’s showing the tasks that are not done, somehow we feel forced to finish it. The good thing is, this effect helps to avoid Procrastination.

Remembering involves lots of usage of short-term-memory thus draining brain resources. So, a simple shutdown ritual is

1. Stop all the works when approaching the endpoint (eg: 4:30 PM)

2. In the next 30 min, make a list of all the works and plan how to start the next day.

Because of this, there is no reason to remember the unfinished task thus avoiding the Zeigarnik effect.

“When you work, work hard. When you are done, be done”

Embrace boredom

Suppose you are waiting in a restaurant for your friend. You can either fill that time with your smartphone or just wait idly. Which one do you prefer?

Most of us prefer the former as we feel it’s better to check smartphone instead of doing nothing. But research suggests the opposite. Metaphorically, it’s like “If you eat healthy one day a week, you are unlikely to lose weight, as the majority of your time is still spent gorging”

So, it’s important not only to be focused while doing deep work but also not to be distracted at other times. You might get diverted but being resilient during other times improves your mind.

A typical example of timeline of a working day (Blue: Deep work blocks, more in morning hour, Yellow: Media/Entertainment time, Green: Lunch and rest, Red: Planning for the next day to avoid Zeigarnik effect and rest). The key point is, “You may work during the entertainment block but must not check social media during the deep work blocks”. This increases resilience. Note: Research says that one can focus to a max of 4 hrs in a day (with breaks in the middle)

“Don’t take breaks from distraction, instead take breaks from focus”

Tips:

1. Organize your next day work so that you don’t have to allocate resources and directly jump to work the next day.
2. If you are not getting inspired to work, this might be helpful — “Read good books, extract points, work, work and work so eventually you will get inspired”
3. Try some variation of “Internet Sabbath/Online Detox” i.e be away from all forms of technology devices/net for one day/week.

Pictorial Representation of Internet Sabbath

“Learn to have a little disconnectedness within the connected world — Don’t run away”

4. Scheduling is far more important than multitasking

P.S: Though the author completely suggests to quit social media, it entirely depends on an individual. Scientific suggestion is “Just don’t switch between social media and your work”. You can allocate some time exclusively for shallow activities (like checking mails at end of the day etc;)

Personal Website: namburisrinath.github.io

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/namburi-gnvv-satya-sai-srinath/