Deep Work is work done during intense (and often long) periods of distraction-free focus. This may be writing a novel out in the woods in a cabin with no electricity, or it may be turning off notifications and closing out all applications other than your productivity application of choice to put together a business plan or write code.
<aside> 🔑 Deep Work is focused, intentional, work, utilizing a high level of knowledge and skill, that cannot be quickly routinized by automations or scripts.
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It is simultaneously becoming more valuable and more rare, which is a good thing for those who do it. Other people are distracted constantly. Living out of managing the minutia of an inbox, spending all their time either on Facebook or twitter or thinking about those things. The types of tasks that are most durable going into the future of greater and greater levels of automation is the Deep Work kind.
The other, more important reason for WHY: Deep Work brings out real joy and life satisfaction. The author gives several studies as examples, some of which are pretty clearly linked to deep Work, others were a bit more of a stretch - but I was already on board with the notion that working deeply (in Flow, as it was stated by the author of the book “flow” - which i would like to read) is supremely satisfying.
Cal Newport then transitions into a guide on how to achieve deepness in the work you are doing. He lays out five rules, the first of which is something like “do deep Work” - which to me felt like using the word you’re defining in its definition. He then lays out four strategies for WHEN to do deep Work, and which go from complete lockdown sabbaticals away from everyone and everything else in life, went to some less extreme versions of a few days a month, then down to weekly on a routine basis, and wound up with “oh just whenever”, which didn’t really seem like a strategy so much as stating the option as a possibility.